I just said in my last post, “what I experience in my world has everything to do with what I do in my life, what I choose to believe, and whether I own up to the choices that I make.” It rings true to me for myself. But how can I say that of people who are really struggling for their lives? Are they owning up to their own choices?
I guess it is just that casting another stone just doesn’t help. It only continues the cycle of violence. Can we create the change we need through love?
Earlier, I mentioned what I believe is the cause of my distress. I since changed the post. It is easy to blame someone else for your own pain. It seems really natural to do so. But when it comes right down to it, what I experience in my world has everything to do with what I do in my life, what I choose to believe, and whether I own up to the choices that I make.
I am so lucky to be where I am now. I have some ideas about what I want to do which excite me. I love the friends that I am surrounded by. Connections with people are very important to me. I want to help other people find connections too. Music is so basic to me, that may be an avenue which I use, but making a living is really tough through art. My impression is that it may be harder still when you stay true to your heart in the art, but I may be wrong about that. I really don’t know much about it. I just see the glitz and surface sheen of so much of what seems to be financially successful. That may be just a perception I have.
I have been thinking for a while that I may use my music through special education: music therapy, I guess. But wouldn’t it be nice if music and other art could be used as an educational avenue in some local cooperative effort.
Ervin Laszlo is a systems philosopher and a concert pianist. He began with a focus on music and spread that focus to develop theories of interconnectedness on all levels. I hope it is OK that I simply place his words and image here so that you can all get a taste of this individual who presents a direction that could increase our chances of surviving and flourishing. The following is one of his messages about the challenges we face and the direction we could follow:
“In the first decade of the 21st century we face the choice between living in the last decade of an unsustainable, crisis-prone civilization, or in the first of a new and more peaceful world.
The world we have created is changing under our feet. On New Year’s eve the Russians celebrated in the former Red Square without a trace of ice and snow; in January New Yorkers walked in Central Park in shirtsleeves; the center of Greenland is taken up by an unfrozen lake the size of Lake Michigan, Lake Superior and Lake Eyrie combined, and there is hardly any of the legendary snow left on top of Kilimandjaro.
The climate is just one of many changes under way. Connected with climate change are a host of other processes that are just as prone to change as the ecology: economic, social, and political. In more respects than one, continuing to tread the path we have been treading up till now takes us to a dangerous tipping point.
Interestingly and importantly, also our map of the world is changing: science, too, is in the midst of a paradigm-shift. Understanding the emerging paradigm is important—it shows that the changes we face are not haphazard and chaotic, but have a deep logic of their own. Complex systems such as human societies do not evolve smoothly step by step: their development is highly nonlinear. Step by step they evolve merely to a point, then they reach a threshold of stability and either break down in chaos, or break through to a new way of functioning.
Yet the key contribution of science is not just theory, but a new and vital insight. It is the confirmation of what people have long felt but for what they could not give a rational explanation: our close connection to each other and to the cosmos. As the smallest particles we call quanta are connected with each other throughout space and time, so there are subtle but real connections among living beings throughout the biosphere. Recognizing these connections is vitally important, for it can inspire the solidarity we urgently need to live in harmony with each other and with nature.
The key insight from the sciences can be not only understood; it can also be experienced. To experience our connections with others, with nature, and with all of reality we need to foster inner growth: meditate, pray, open our consciousness to the subtle impressions and intuitions that flow into it when we do not repress them. When we no longer view the world through five slits in the tower but open the roof to the sky we develop empathy with other people and other cultures and sensitivity to animals, plants and the whole of the biosphere. ”
Here is a video of Dr. Laszlo talking about his own life, and the development of his ideas.
I have been in a dream for months now. I have been allowing myself to believe that if I dream hard enough I will create a vision so strong that I will be able to will it into being. But you can’t use a dream to cover up reality.
I have used so much of my energy trying to escape this messed up reality that I have in front of me that I could have used approaching it. OK. But here I am. I am now basically a single Mom. I need to find a means of support for myself and my two kids in what feels to me now like an unforgiving world. There are all kinds of things about my present reality that I don’t want to look at. I have some growing up to do. I guess that’s what the world does. It offers you opportunities to grow.
The longer I let this go, the more opportunities I may lose. It is time to put my feet on the ground and my nose to the grindstone. But it really ain’t so bad. As I have mentioned before, I am warm, I have enough to eat, I have friends, and I do have a few ways of making a living, even though I am not going to get rich doing them.
And in the mean time, I won’t give up on my dreams. I’ll just use them to help me create a plan for where I want to go.
Now let’s see how I feel as I let the blood actually flow through my veins in the pursuit of hard work!
I have been spending the last few days reading. I have been reading a book by Ervin Laszlo called The Chaos Point and I have been exploring blogs associated with Sophia’s blog, “Visions of the World“. I realize as I read and think about it that what I have to say in most of my entries has so much simply to do with immediate reactions. I really don’t trust my own intellect at this point. I don’t bother to engage it much. I am scared to take responsibility. I am a bit lazy.
It’s easy for me to conclude that it doesn’t matter whether I am engaging my intellect or not, after all, it is limited in its application. But everything is limited, isn’t it? At least everything that we each do as individuals. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t use our full potential.
I guess I am going back and forth here. Forgive me, everyone. So what is it, Suzie? Are you going to sit and disappear into the emptiness or are you going to get on with life? Maybe both.
I have been concentrating for many days now on this blog. I enjoy it very much. I like the reflection that I think I see here of myself and my interactions with the world. But it is limited. It may be limited in its effect by the fact that it is words digitally transmitted. Granted, it has some effect, but certainly there is more to life.
It’s just that I find myself becoming lost in this world of the internet. It has great potential as a medium. And I think that the effect is generally quite positive. But, again, here I sit in my chair at the screen typing. Some of this is procrastination. I find this easier somehow than more material obligations that I have. Some of what I am doing here has real substantive positive intent. This process of blogging has, I guess, many of the benefits of journaling and may also benefit others as well, at least that is my hope.
But face-to-face interactions with other people are more powerful. You can read something on the internet and it only goes through you so far. But you meet a person and that can envelop you. At least this is my experience. I love this blog, and I will continue it, but I am convincing myself that the work in my community, through friendship and through livelihood, must be more basic to me.
As I already indicated, some of my attention to this medium is pure and real, some of it is avoidance of that which is difficult to me. It seems to follow the same pattern as many other things in my life. It may have to do with the integration of the abstract with the organic in my life. As I said before, I need to bring the love and attention to my lower chakras. To earth, home, money, emotion, whatever else is involved. But integration suggests the bringing together of disparate parts. I am not giving up on this blog, but maybe this will reflect a shift in my thinking further down from ethereal and abstract to the material.
Perhaps my readers will learn as I learn. This is a process that I don’t understand. I guess I will not try to understand it, but I will try to convey it as accurately and honestly as I can in the hopes that it will propel the process for myself and others.
I am still thinking about the words. The fact is, notes can be limiting too. But somehow they come. Maybe it is the process I use to find the words that is limiting.
In a sense, I let the notes come to me. But I am trying to find the words. I am just a container through which the notes come. But I am trying to control the words. Maybe this is the difference.
I have been hesitant to write lyrics for my songs for a while now. I did write one song with lyrics a few months ago. But usually, I can’t seem to fit what I want to convey into words.
It could be that my level of craft is not up to snuff in my use of words. Words seem too tight. They hone in on a thought. I don’t want my thoughts to be captured that way.
Feels to me like when I try to hone in on a thing, its meaning becomes more elusive. You try to pinpoint a thing and somehow the space grows around it, and it is no longer as definable as you once thought. Like particles. I never studied physics. But I have heard that if you study small “things” on a nano scale called particles, their behavior changes depending on whether they are observed or not.
Maybe it is this rational analytic process of thought which is self limiting. Maybe it just goes in circles after a while. I don’t know. How can I? I may just be going in circles myself.
So I give up. Well, part of the time, anyway. Sometimes I seem to be able to convey so much more when I wail and growl and create my own language and just send my raw emotions through that avenue.
I have a friend who is an artist who encourages me to think outside of the box in regards to my own art. At my friend’s suggestion, I went down to see an exhibition of Xu Bing’s art at the Williams Art Center at Lafayette College in Easton. There is a book there which must be a part of a work called Books from the Sky The piece was created through a long painstaking process of carving small wooden blocks with imaginary Chinese characters and using those characters to print the book I saw and a lot more. The book I saw was put together with rice paper, traditional Chinese binding and water based ink. The book is beautifully crafted, but the characters used are made up. The book does not actually say anything. There were other works there as well, and they all spoke to the relationship between meaning and language.
There seems to be a lot similarity in the different ways in which we humans express. I guess it says something about what it means to be human. Or does it? Sometimes it seems like the shape of a thing on the outside has little relationship with what is on the inside. There is so much to know. Yet, maybe silence will tell me more.
What is it about Rock and Roll? It is so much fun to play. It is so simple but packs such a wallop. I have been playing some simple bluesy rock and roll lately. That’s what has been coming out of me much of the time. Generally it is very happy music. Bluesy-happy? Somehow, yes.
I don’t know much about structure in music. I took piano lessons when I was 5 or 6 years old. I learned how to read notes then. I guess I progressed into the second book of piano music. I learned to use two hands in my playing and in interpreting the notes at the same time! I started writing songs at the same time I picked up the guitar when I was nine. My first song was called, “Oh, My Little Gerbils”.
When I was in seventh grade I had a music class where I learned that songs can be written AA BB structure, or ABAB structure. I guess I must have learned a little bit more than that, but I don’t remember now. I did apply some of what I learned to writing music.
Mostly though, I have been a real snob about learning about structure generally. I guess I gave up on “fitting in” in most ways at some point in my teenagerdom. But I realized later that I could have benefited some by learning theory. But then again, I concentrated on theory in a very general sense in college. Actually, I love theory. I want to share ideas.
When I was fourteen, someone gave me a book called Think On These Things by J. Krishnamurti. His writings had a huge effect on me. I carried that book around with me for a couple of years. I used to go walking everywhere as a young teenager with my guitar and a backpack with my journal and that book in it. It was partly through Krishnamurti’s influence that I decided to at least in some ways, rely upon my own perceptions to decide what is and is not true, and to realize the influence that the world has upon me in developing those perceptions. I decided that I wasn’t going to let anyone tell me what the truth of anything was, including any truth about music.
I guess, though, I did end up compromising myself in some ways. But now, as I have said so many times now in earlier posts, I want to learn. I want to listen. And I want to share.
I think the next time I get on stage at the Wildflower I will express my desire to learn a little about Rock and Roll. There are some amazing folks there. I would love to try to play Rock and Roll with some of them. For Fun. What better goal is there?
I have been licking my wounds for a while now. I was in a very difficult situation. I am still extracting myself from it but at least today, I find that I am seeing past my own pain and thinking about what is next. Mairead Corrigan Mcguire’s speech has inspired me.
I am now in a unique position to make all kinds of decisions. My life is, for now, fairly flexible. I want to figure out how I can direct my energies towards making a positive contribution to the world around me and in the process, support myself and my kids. I am sure there is a way.
There is an organization in the Lehigh Valley called the Alliance for Sustainable Communities. They provide a great network for individuals and organizations in the area who are working towards sustainability. There are folks who focus on the environment, on peace, on sustainable farming, education, alternative energy sources. The list goes on. I haven’t gone to one of their meetings in a long time. I am going to try to make the next steering committee meeting.
I know that there are a lot of other people who are thinking along this line. It’s just hard, somehow, to take the first step. It’s time to go from thought into action.
