My mom and dad, when they were first married, lived in a trailer home, and the place of course was small. Small enough that even though they were newlyweds, without much stuff, the living space quickly became cramped. So the two of them made up a rule: that whenever a new object came into the house, something already there of about equal size would have to come out first.
I'm not really sure how strictly my folks kept the policy, or for how long; though my guess is that, given my mother's determination in practical matters, it probably really was kept strictly at least for a time. I also think it's safe to say that, at least on some occasions, following through with the policy must been pretty painful. How to weigh one item against the next? How to say whether a new pair of shoes was more important than a couple of good books? Or a foot stool more useful than an end table? Or a Monopoly game more fun than a Mah Jong set?
And yet the point of the rule was to keep themselves sane. Without it there would have been that ever-oppressive sense of clutter, especially for my mother who stayed at home much of the day. There would have been accidents: tripping over things, running bang into things with your shins. There would have been arguments between the newlyweds about just how messy it was and who ought to clean up. So they did this work of weeding their possessions before they brought in anything new. Or at least that's how I like to imagine it. Out on the prairie outskirts of a town called Cosmos. My mom and dad bravely banishing the demon of clutter.
I think of Mom and Dad's rule fairly often. I thought of it just this morning in fact, when I went to the basement to bring up a new batch of music CD's. Yes we Sunnysiders still listen to actual recordings that can be held in the hand. It's direct. It's easy. It's the whole album. But it's also, well, much more prone to cause clutter than streaming is. And so, in order to prevent clutter, we keep most of our recordings downstairs, and what we listen to, we listen to in sets. Every couple of weeks I venture down to pull up a new set that we might enjoy listening to.
It's a fun thing to do--playing DJ for the next couple of weeks. Trying to anticipate what we might enjoy. Fitting the season of the year to the music. Fitting the music to whatever else we might be taking in as well. For instance just last month I read Styron's Sophie's Choice, which contains many references to music. I made it a project to listen to at least several of the works cited, and I found it quite meaningful.
So the choosing out and the bringing up is the fun part. But there's a hard part to the task as well: it's to go to the cupboard where the current CD's are shelved, take them (with a little sigh) down from that shelf, bring them back downstairs and THEN and only then get down to choosing out the new ones. It's an essential step of course, to bring the current set down. Without following through on it, in no time at all the whole collection would migrate up to the living space. Guaranteed.
You wouldn't think the act of bringing down the CD's should be so hard, but it is, or can be. In the first place, there are all those CD's you brought up a week or two ago, but didn't actually listen too. These CD's make you feel guilty! After all, like an inconsiderate impresario, you dangled the promise of performance in front of them, but then never followed through, and now they have to return to the frustrations of obscurity. Or maybe too, for me it's a bit like the feeling you get when you're traveling, and you pass through a town where some old friends of yours live, but you don't stop. You had planned to, but now you can't. Or just don't.
Then too, among the CD's due for return, there's always a certain number that you've enjoyed and don't want to put away, at least not just yet. Of course there's no law that says these have to be returned just now, but then too, not all of them can stay! And do you really want to be cogitating and waffling about which ones stay and which ones go? I myself have found the best strategy is to return them all--ruthlessly. "There'll be other opportunities later," I say to myself. And so far there have been.
Here's the moral, or as preachers used to say, the application: We human beings display instincts for both novelty and continuity, and both instincts have their useful places in our lives. But these instincts also, often enough, conflict with one another. And part of living wisely and simply has to do with learning to allow the conflict between the old and the new to play out with some regularity, and then take care of it, re-balancing the equation. It's really best not to put that task of rebalancing off; otherwise, our lives can get pretty seriously cluttered up and complicated.
All this is just as true in the dimension of time, as it is in the dimension of space. Let's remember this! Schedules can get as cluttered as any room. So before we take up some new task, however novel and fun, or useful to the world, or genuinely altruistic, we ought to consider (first!) the need to make the space for it--by giving something that's already in the schedule up. There's only so much time in a day, and we want to use that (limited) gift of time intelligently, meaningfully, joyfully; nor do we want to suffer mission creep, which has such a way of overwhelming us with responsibility and stress. After all, it doesn't really matter if the tasks we do, in themselves, are dear to our hearts, if in sum they only make us miserable!
I offer this up as a meditation for the New Year. As something to think about as we all move forward across that arbitrary yet meaningful border in time. It's a good time to think about how to do better. How to impose some sanity in our lives. How to love what we do. How to enjoy ourselves. How to nurture our relationships. How to taste some sweet aspect of the elemental even within this brew of complexity that's modern life.
Happy New Year to all my readers! I enjoy writing for you! Your visits to this space are such an honor.
HB
Until Saturday the 4th!
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Love in the Here and Now
Every year around Christmas, I like to get out James Joyce's story The Dead, and re-read it. The tale is set on a snowy night in Ireland, and much of it takes place during a Christmas dinner/dance, which of course is why it feels so appropriate for this time of year, and for a holiday tradition. So it's just a custom of mine. One I especially relish. It's such a beautiful, powerful story. About married love. About first love. About what true love really is. Not, of course that the story has any final answers for us! Only that it explores the questions in a most beautiful and compelling way.
I hope that it's apparent in these posts on 9-volt nomad, that I'm a big fan of married love. I'm a fan of of love in general, and generally find there's not enough of it around, but I also think that married love needs more of a booster club these days than most people recognize. I know that may sound silly and bourgeois to some, and for some it may even seem distasteful. We're so much in the habit of wanting to believe that any lifestyle choice is equal to every other, that we're afraid to cheer for any given script. And especially any supposedly boring, traditional script.
I really do think that more people ought to get married than seem to want to get married these days. Partly because again, I think love in general ought to be more highly rated than it is, but also because I think that getting married is just a good way to get yourself to grow up and be adult; to learn that you're not the center of the universe, and that sacrifice is a part of life, and that it really is a meaningful act--to regularly put another human being's interests before your own. And to work out compromises. And to listen to advice. And to have someone who knows you deeply, always available for counsel. And to be able to serve your partner as counsel too.
Of course I'm not claiming that there aren't other ways of learning how to become an adult. But getting married and staying married is a time-tested and very effective path. Surely it's one of the most effective ways devised. Plus, at least if you're willing to work at it, being married is a good way to stay happy. You have company. You have a means of facing up to hardship. It's my conviction in fact that, as circumstances in general over the next couple of decades become more and more difficult (as they will), the economic and psychological advantages to marriage will become more and more obvious and compelling. It's paradoxical that so many these days say they want a career first, and then they'll think about love. But why not the other way around? Especially if two are usually more effective at providing economic security than one? And again, especially when the future looks more and more difficult?
Of course there are downsides to being married. One of the hardest parts has to be this: facing up to the certainty of death, and more specifically, facing up to the fact that--since the two of you are unlikely to die at the same time--one of you is going to have to do without the other for a time. Maybe for years and years. This is a really hard thing to think about. In fact it's so hard to think about that I find very little actually written about it. Very few poems or songs for instance that contemplate it directly, I mean ahead of the fact. Yes there are umpteen laments. But what about proleptic laments? Laments ahead of the fact?
All of which is to say, here's one such poem, on that theme, which I intend to use in my next play, and which I think is appropriate to this blog, because part of what 9-volt is about is the art of doing without, and the need to contemplate doing without, and finding that state of being in which transcendence is possible.
I'm sorry the music for the song is not available yet. The tune is set. It's simply not recorded. But when the soundtrack does become available (and it will be lovely I promise) I'll certainly let you all know. Then you'll be able to read the words married to their tune.
Here, Now
(A song from the play "Myles to Go")
I had a dream, what can it mean?
You were transformed into an angel:
Wings bright and strong, but somehow wrong;
They're far too heavy for your shoulders.
Glimpsed from below, a shooting star
Tumbles through the heavens.
Two feathers fall, and then that's all;
Waking up, I reach for you.
Some say that death, one final breath,
Could disestablish our communion.
It's just not true, a clearer view
Says grief's an art that takes its time.
Would Keats have dared to write an ode
Requiring such revision?
All we've arranged is sure to change,
Whether death takes me or you.
But who goes first, and who's immersed
In melancholy of division,
Oh let that be love's mystery
That's to be answered in its time!
No earnest heart would make its love
Contingent on the future;
Love gives its all, come flight or fall,
Hazarding the here and now.
HB
Until Tuesday the 31st!
I hope that it's apparent in these posts on 9-volt nomad, that I'm a big fan of married love. I'm a fan of of love in general, and generally find there's not enough of it around, but I also think that married love needs more of a booster club these days than most people recognize. I know that may sound silly and bourgeois to some, and for some it may even seem distasteful. We're so much in the habit of wanting to believe that any lifestyle choice is equal to every other, that we're afraid to cheer for any given script. And especially any supposedly boring, traditional script.
I really do think that more people ought to get married than seem to want to get married these days. Partly because again, I think love in general ought to be more highly rated than it is, but also because I think that getting married is just a good way to get yourself to grow up and be adult; to learn that you're not the center of the universe, and that sacrifice is a part of life, and that it really is a meaningful act--to regularly put another human being's interests before your own. And to work out compromises. And to listen to advice. And to have someone who knows you deeply, always available for counsel. And to be able to serve your partner as counsel too.
Of course I'm not claiming that there aren't other ways of learning how to become an adult. But getting married and staying married is a time-tested and very effective path. Surely it's one of the most effective ways devised. Plus, at least if you're willing to work at it, being married is a good way to stay happy. You have company. You have a means of facing up to hardship. It's my conviction in fact that, as circumstances in general over the next couple of decades become more and more difficult (as they will), the economic and psychological advantages to marriage will become more and more obvious and compelling. It's paradoxical that so many these days say they want a career first, and then they'll think about love. But why not the other way around? Especially if two are usually more effective at providing economic security than one? And again, especially when the future looks more and more difficult?
Of course there are downsides to being married. One of the hardest parts has to be this: facing up to the certainty of death, and more specifically, facing up to the fact that--since the two of you are unlikely to die at the same time--one of you is going to have to do without the other for a time. Maybe for years and years. This is a really hard thing to think about. In fact it's so hard to think about that I find very little actually written about it. Very few poems or songs for instance that contemplate it directly, I mean ahead of the fact. Yes there are umpteen laments. But what about proleptic laments? Laments ahead of the fact?
All of which is to say, here's one such poem, on that theme, which I intend to use in my next play, and which I think is appropriate to this blog, because part of what 9-volt is about is the art of doing without, and the need to contemplate doing without, and finding that state of being in which transcendence is possible.
I'm sorry the music for the song is not available yet. The tune is set. It's simply not recorded. But when the soundtrack does become available (and it will be lovely I promise) I'll certainly let you all know. Then you'll be able to read the words married to their tune.
Here, Now
(A song from the play "Myles to Go")
I had a dream, what can it mean?
You were transformed into an angel:
Wings bright and strong, but somehow wrong;
They're far too heavy for your shoulders.
Glimpsed from below, a shooting star
Tumbles through the heavens.
Two feathers fall, and then that's all;
Waking up, I reach for you.
Some say that death, one final breath,
Could disestablish our communion.
It's just not true, a clearer view
Says grief's an art that takes its time.
Would Keats have dared to write an ode
Requiring such revision?
All we've arranged is sure to change,
Whether death takes me or you.
But who goes first, and who's immersed
In melancholy of division,
Oh let that be love's mystery
That's to be answered in its time!
No earnest heart would make its love
Contingent on the future;
Love gives its all, come flight or fall,
Hazarding the here and now.
HB
Until Tuesday the 31st!
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Why We Might Not Need a Bedtime Story App
Of course I'm aware that there are smart phone apps these days for everything under the sun. I'm also aware that I wouldn't like most of them, and would consider a large portion of them dispensable and maybe even hostile to the project of genuine human flourishing. Still, when I heard about the bedtime-story app (this particular one is in the planning stages) it threw me for bit of a loop, and I want to set down a few words about it, to show why it marks a sort of limit for me. It may be that I'm over-reacting. It may also be that it's almost quaint of me, to be remarking on something that's so obviously a sign of the times. But here goes anyway.
To wit, the app would involve this: a collection of stories read by some pleasant-voiced expressive elder, to be punched up for the kid at bed-time (or I suppose whenever) and maybe spiffed up on the screen with the homey picture of a fireplace crackling and acoustically heck maybe with the sound of some crickets doing their summertime chirpy thing. "Snuggle down junior! I'm a bit busy for this kind of thing, so, hope the phone will do. Oh, and while you're at it, after you're done listening, could you tuck yourself in, too?"
Of course, it's true that recordings of good voices reading good stories have been around for a long time, and that listening to a fine book read beautifully is one of the great pleasures in life. The thing that I resist here is the invasion of the recorded and the technologized into the act of nurturing. Story-time for children (especially bedtime story-time) is about intimacy and imagination, reassurance and preparation, settling in and looking forward to rest. It's about recollection of the day's activities. It's about wishes and prayers and hopes. It's about the human body's warmth. It's about song and more songs. It's about voices tuned soft and low. And actually, as I recall, at least when my father was in charge of bedtime, it involved a fair bit of roughhousing and wrestling too!
In short, bedtime's pretty much about humanity. So taking the humanity out of bedtime, and asking what might be wrong with that, is well, like taking the three bears out of the Story of the Three Bears. Um, there's no bear there.
Now I'm sure that the potential creators of this app would never claim it's about replacing the parent at bedtime. "Hey, it's just an option, and isn't it better than watching TV?" Here's the thing though. That's what they all say; they always say it's not about replacement. And hey give them credit that's what they usually sincerely mean. But then somewhere, sometime, exactly the thing they didn't mean is exactly the thing that happens. So let it be said loud and clear from this little soapbox at 9-volt Nomad. At long last, let's stop giving people a chance to be lazy and half-hearted about living their lives and about raising their kids. At long last, let's learn some discipline so that, when and where our complex machines start acting as emotional wedges, separating human from human, we see that and set them aside.
There's a wonderful book by the historian and singer-songwriter Tom Roznowski about Terra Haute, Indiana, in which he points out that around 1920 (just before radio really started to get big) in every middle class household a piano, yes a piano, was just standard equipment, and if you didn't have one, why you were probably considering getting one. And folks really knew how to play. Whole families entertained themselves for hours every week, just listening to each other play or singing along. Sure, there were professionals who knew how to play better than the average Jack or Jill or Uncle Lou or Aunt Betty. Still, that wasn't the same thing, was it? It's clear from Rosnowski's writing that he doesn't consider the changes that came over the culture after that time (in terms of our ability to entertain ourselves) as an improvement.
So, when the original production site of our entertainment becomes someplace other than home, what do we lose? Or when the ones who produce our entertainment are not in any way known to us personally, what do we lose? Or when our family members are no longer the ones we lean on for entertainment, what do we lose?
The simple answer is that we lose the opportunity to show love and to deepen our relationships. Consider first the 1920 parlor sing-along, in which family members made music communally, joining voice to voice, and telling stories and jokes between numbers. The scene isn't perfect of course. The singing is hardly professional. Disagreements break out. Maybe someone has a little too much to drink along with the songs, and ends up saying something a little too lusty to his sister-in-law. But look the scene is human. It's memorable. It's full of life and scenery. It's vivid and rich with experience and relationship.
Now compare that with typical household today, where every member has his or her own separate device in hand as a means to pass the time, and one is playing video games, another is watching a movie, another is taking in some music, another is texting a friend. Maybe these people are all physically in the same room, but are they sharing anything? Are they showing love to one another? Are they doing anything that might deserve to be written down? That might be the stuff of a story someday at a funeral or a wedding or over a glass of beer? No, everyone is in an isolated space of consciousness. A cubicle. A cell. And there is no flow between one cell and the next. How can love build from this? What sense of shared experience can be made here? What common social identity?
There's so much more to say about all this, that I have to trust to time, repetition and the ability to return to a theme which is so richly the gift of blogging, to supply me with opportunity to express what I find so wrong and dangerous about this invasion of devices into our communal lives, and with the professionalization of all our entertainment. But before I leave it for now, there's just a bit more to say.
We don't have to banish technology from our lives to be human; absolutely not. We do have to take real care though, that we do not let it intimidate us into believing:
1. That it can substitute for other people in our lives.
2. That it can serve as a substitute for us, in the lives of others.
In my opinion the best place to start practicing a skepticism of the machine, is in the area of entertainment. Never ever stop believing in your ability, dear reader, to enchant and entertain, no matter how modest you consider your abilities at the task. In the first place there are so many ways to entertain one another that involve no special skills. When we have no skills at the piano or at the bridge table, there's banter and there's craziness, and there's just plain pleasant conversation. Then too, particularly if it's family that's involved in the entertainment, there's just the simple joy of seeing those who look like you and sound like you (or who have just been given to you by circumstance and love!) doing the work of making you happy. No stranger-performer is ever going to have that power over us. And we can count on that same power when we ourselves are the ones telling the joke or telling the story or singing the song or throwing the monopoly dice in that weird spinny way we do.
Which--to bring this full circle--is why parents should never let themselves feel self-conscious about reading aloud to their children (many do!). Perfection in performance is never the goal. Sharing a story is. You're just born to be your childrens' storytellers, and your children recognize in your very face and voice, your right to enchant them.
Long live the bedtime story, voiced by the ones we know and love!
HB
Until Saturday the 28th!
To wit, the app would involve this: a collection of stories read by some pleasant-voiced expressive elder, to be punched up for the kid at bed-time (or I suppose whenever) and maybe spiffed up on the screen with the homey picture of a fireplace crackling and acoustically heck maybe with the sound of some crickets doing their summertime chirpy thing. "Snuggle down junior! I'm a bit busy for this kind of thing, so, hope the phone will do. Oh, and while you're at it, after you're done listening, could you tuck yourself in, too?"
Of course, it's true that recordings of good voices reading good stories have been around for a long time, and that listening to a fine book read beautifully is one of the great pleasures in life. The thing that I resist here is the invasion of the recorded and the technologized into the act of nurturing. Story-time for children (especially bedtime story-time) is about intimacy and imagination, reassurance and preparation, settling in and looking forward to rest. It's about recollection of the day's activities. It's about wishes and prayers and hopes. It's about the human body's warmth. It's about song and more songs. It's about voices tuned soft and low. And actually, as I recall, at least when my father was in charge of bedtime, it involved a fair bit of roughhousing and wrestling too!
In short, bedtime's pretty much about humanity. So taking the humanity out of bedtime, and asking what might be wrong with that, is well, like taking the three bears out of the Story of the Three Bears. Um, there's no bear there.
Now I'm sure that the potential creators of this app would never claim it's about replacing the parent at bedtime. "Hey, it's just an option, and isn't it better than watching TV?" Here's the thing though. That's what they all say; they always say it's not about replacement. And hey give them credit that's what they usually sincerely mean. But then somewhere, sometime, exactly the thing they didn't mean is exactly the thing that happens. So let it be said loud and clear from this little soapbox at 9-volt Nomad. At long last, let's stop giving people a chance to be lazy and half-hearted about living their lives and about raising their kids. At long last, let's learn some discipline so that, when and where our complex machines start acting as emotional wedges, separating human from human, we see that and set them aside.
There's a wonderful book by the historian and singer-songwriter Tom Roznowski about Terra Haute, Indiana, in which he points out that around 1920 (just before radio really started to get big) in every middle class household a piano, yes a piano, was just standard equipment, and if you didn't have one, why you were probably considering getting one. And folks really knew how to play. Whole families entertained themselves for hours every week, just listening to each other play or singing along. Sure, there were professionals who knew how to play better than the average Jack or Jill or Uncle Lou or Aunt Betty. Still, that wasn't the same thing, was it? It's clear from Rosnowski's writing that he doesn't consider the changes that came over the culture after that time (in terms of our ability to entertain ourselves) as an improvement.
So, when the original production site of our entertainment becomes someplace other than home, what do we lose? Or when the ones who produce our entertainment are not in any way known to us personally, what do we lose? Or when our family members are no longer the ones we lean on for entertainment, what do we lose?
The simple answer is that we lose the opportunity to show love and to deepen our relationships. Consider first the 1920 parlor sing-along, in which family members made music communally, joining voice to voice, and telling stories and jokes between numbers. The scene isn't perfect of course. The singing is hardly professional. Disagreements break out. Maybe someone has a little too much to drink along with the songs, and ends up saying something a little too lusty to his sister-in-law. But look the scene is human. It's memorable. It's full of life and scenery. It's vivid and rich with experience and relationship.
Now compare that with typical household today, where every member has his or her own separate device in hand as a means to pass the time, and one is playing video games, another is watching a movie, another is taking in some music, another is texting a friend. Maybe these people are all physically in the same room, but are they sharing anything? Are they showing love to one another? Are they doing anything that might deserve to be written down? That might be the stuff of a story someday at a funeral or a wedding or over a glass of beer? No, everyone is in an isolated space of consciousness. A cubicle. A cell. And there is no flow between one cell and the next. How can love build from this? What sense of shared experience can be made here? What common social identity?
There's so much more to say about all this, that I have to trust to time, repetition and the ability to return to a theme which is so richly the gift of blogging, to supply me with opportunity to express what I find so wrong and dangerous about this invasion of devices into our communal lives, and with the professionalization of all our entertainment. But before I leave it for now, there's just a bit more to say.
We don't have to banish technology from our lives to be human; absolutely not. We do have to take real care though, that we do not let it intimidate us into believing:
1. That it can substitute for other people in our lives.
2. That it can serve as a substitute for us, in the lives of others.
In my opinion the best place to start practicing a skepticism of the machine, is in the area of entertainment. Never ever stop believing in your ability, dear reader, to enchant and entertain, no matter how modest you consider your abilities at the task. In the first place there are so many ways to entertain one another that involve no special skills. When we have no skills at the piano or at the bridge table, there's banter and there's craziness, and there's just plain pleasant conversation. Then too, particularly if it's family that's involved in the entertainment, there's just the simple joy of seeing those who look like you and sound like you (or who have just been given to you by circumstance and love!) doing the work of making you happy. No stranger-performer is ever going to have that power over us. And we can count on that same power when we ourselves are the ones telling the joke or telling the story or singing the song or throwing the monopoly dice in that weird spinny way we do.
Which--to bring this full circle--is why parents should never let themselves feel self-conscious about reading aloud to their children (many do!). Perfection in performance is never the goal. Sharing a story is. You're just born to be your childrens' storytellers, and your children recognize in your very face and voice, your right to enchant them.
Long live the bedtime story, voiced by the ones we know and love!
HB
Until Saturday the 28th!
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Investing in Beauty
The struggle to remake our civilization into something actually sustainable has begun, and in our homes is where the struggle will be centered. There's a lot that has to be jettisoned in the work: expectations for day to day novelty, for long-distance travel, for physical pampering, for plenty of cash on hand--all these. And these renunciations and goodbyes will be painful. They're guaranteed to be.
But this necessary change isn't just defined by subtraction. It's not JUST about paring down, giving away, and doing without! It's about addition too. It's about stronger muscles and greater physical health. It's about added pride in your home, because in many ways that home will be the work of your own hands. It's about the deepening of family and community relationships. Then too it's about beauty, and a surprising amount of beauty to be discovered; yes, there's a princely place in this direction for beauty.
It's time to invest more prolifically in beauty. Time to cultivate beauty in our lives and the lives of others. And I say this not only as a literary artist, who would naturally benefit if people cared more to invest in the beauty of books, theater, and poetry. I say it as a citizen of the earth who believes without hesitation that the pursuit of all kinds of beauty could serve as a substitute for owning stuff and consuming stuff; and a much superior substitute at that! After all, the main need in life, after basic needs have been minimally met, is for meaning. And since beauty and meaning are naturally allied, it makes sense to seek meaning by cultivating beauty.
I have no means of proving this statistically--though I imagine the attempt has been made--but I wonder if there has ever been an era, when the gap between what might be spent on beauty and the amount actually spent on it has ever been so wide? We live in an age in many ways choking on its own abundance, and yet I think it's not an exaggeration to say that we're also choking on ugliness. Any glance into history will show that it has been different. In ancient times, cities vied with one another to build the most beautiful bath houses and temples and to claim the most beautiful harbors and markets and hilltop views. Today though, the cultivation of beauty in the urban landscape (especially if taxes are involved) is dismissed as a dispensable extra, and in our personal lives, it's generally treated that way as well. At least when push comes to shove.
I'm thinking of a picture I saw once of the wardrobe of a nomadic woman in Mali. She owned only two garments--the garment she had on and the one that was packed away in a wooden chest. But both of these were intoxicatingly beautiful: hand woven, stunningly designed, colorful, exuberant, flaring with life. Of course we in the so called developed world could demand more beauty in our clothes. We could afford that beauty too, especially if we reduced the number of items in our wardrobe. But we don't. We prefer cheap and plenty to beautiful and few. Sad.
Some time ago, I was reading an article on life in post-crash Greece, and specifically life for young people, over half of whom are still unemployed. It was a sobering article. The young men and women interviewed expressed a sense of being cut off from the future, of having no prospects and no sense of personal agency anymore. Many of them described feeling depressed and bored. Time itself seemed to weigh heavy on their hands. They complained that, with no money, there was nothing to do. One woman said her brother stayed in his room most of his day, sleeping or trying to sleep.
At one level I felt bad for these young folks; here, after all, were genuine victims of an economic system created for the profit of a few, and not designed for general human flourishing. A system based on speculation and the pretense of labor, not actual goods, and not active investment in the lives of living human beings. At a different level though, I felt impatient and angry at their complaints. None of those interviewed was going hungry. All of them had a home. Many of them had large families. So, what exactly was their problem again? Not enough money? Well any child playing a game of tag, knows that money isn't necessary to have fun. Too much time? Some people retire from work to have time!
Too little imagination--was that their problem? Too little insight to see the advantages of their situation? Well yes, that might be. Too small a thirst for beauty? Almost certainly. Honestly I wanted to wave my arms and tell them: plant flowers. Plant lots of them.Take a walk in the country. Play sports. Sports are beautiful. Read a bunch of good books (particularly some Thoreau). Clean up your streets. Learn to play the guitar or just sing a lot. Cook your next meal with attention to beauty. Bake your next loaf of bread with attention to beauty. Paint a mural on the walls of your room. Shine your shoes. Shine your furniture. Comb your dog. Arrange some of those flowers that you grew. Go to the museum and look at those Greek antiquities, or heck since you're in Greece dig in your back yard and see if you can find some yourself. Take a bus into the countryside some night with a blanket and a lover and look up at the stars. Let things progress from there.
Again, I don't consider myself unsympathetic toward the young; I have an eighteen year old myself. Nor am I blind to the fact that many of these young people honestly yearn for professions they will find meaningful. The prospect of not finding such work ready for you when you really would like it, is indeed a sad one; it shouldn't be wished on folks. Still, sometimes some things just don't happen, and so you have to look elsewhere for meaning. And if that's the case for you and everyone you know in Greece, well it's no good lying around complaining about it and pining for what's not going to happen. Much better to get out there and make something beautiful happen. Beauty is a wage as well.
And of course I don't just mean beauty in art (though that's an obvious place to find it). I mean beauty in all the places that we can find it and put it: gardens and public spaces, homes and offices. Beauty in our clothes and our furnishings, in our books and meals. In our childrens' toys. In our theater and literature. We must banish the notion that beauty is an extra to be occasionally indulged in, and never taken too seriously. No, it's an instinct in all of us. It's our human birthright, and we ought to claim that birthright and insist on its presence in our lives, doubly so if things in general aren't going well. Furthermore, if the world around us will not give beauty freely to us, then we have to make the beauty ourselves. This can be done, often or very little cost at all.
Please consider, dear readers, the possibility of adding beauty to your own lives. Sit back and dream up a more beauty-rich existence. Write a few possible projects down that might bring that richness into being. Start humble and small. For instance I've always delighted in the custom the Japanese have of covering their books with colored paper. I've often wanted to do that, with at least a few of my books, and maybe I will. The point is this though: honestly, forthrightly let's all pursue the work of adding beauty to our lives. Most likely, with a little persistence, something significant will come of it. The muses reward sincerity.
Until Tuesday the 24th!
HB
But this necessary change isn't just defined by subtraction. It's not JUST about paring down, giving away, and doing without! It's about addition too. It's about stronger muscles and greater physical health. It's about added pride in your home, because in many ways that home will be the work of your own hands. It's about the deepening of family and community relationships. Then too it's about beauty, and a surprising amount of beauty to be discovered; yes, there's a princely place in this direction for beauty.
It's time to invest more prolifically in beauty. Time to cultivate beauty in our lives and the lives of others. And I say this not only as a literary artist, who would naturally benefit if people cared more to invest in the beauty of books, theater, and poetry. I say it as a citizen of the earth who believes without hesitation that the pursuit of all kinds of beauty could serve as a substitute for owning stuff and consuming stuff; and a much superior substitute at that! After all, the main need in life, after basic needs have been minimally met, is for meaning. And since beauty and meaning are naturally allied, it makes sense to seek meaning by cultivating beauty.
I have no means of proving this statistically--though I imagine the attempt has been made--but I wonder if there has ever been an era, when the gap between what might be spent on beauty and the amount actually spent on it has ever been so wide? We live in an age in many ways choking on its own abundance, and yet I think it's not an exaggeration to say that we're also choking on ugliness. Any glance into history will show that it has been different. In ancient times, cities vied with one another to build the most beautiful bath houses and temples and to claim the most beautiful harbors and markets and hilltop views. Today though, the cultivation of beauty in the urban landscape (especially if taxes are involved) is dismissed as a dispensable extra, and in our personal lives, it's generally treated that way as well. At least when push comes to shove.
I'm thinking of a picture I saw once of the wardrobe of a nomadic woman in Mali. She owned only two garments--the garment she had on and the one that was packed away in a wooden chest. But both of these were intoxicatingly beautiful: hand woven, stunningly designed, colorful, exuberant, flaring with life. Of course we in the so called developed world could demand more beauty in our clothes. We could afford that beauty too, especially if we reduced the number of items in our wardrobe. But we don't. We prefer cheap and plenty to beautiful and few. Sad.
Some time ago, I was reading an article on life in post-crash Greece, and specifically life for young people, over half of whom are still unemployed. It was a sobering article. The young men and women interviewed expressed a sense of being cut off from the future, of having no prospects and no sense of personal agency anymore. Many of them described feeling depressed and bored. Time itself seemed to weigh heavy on their hands. They complained that, with no money, there was nothing to do. One woman said her brother stayed in his room most of his day, sleeping or trying to sleep.
At one level I felt bad for these young folks; here, after all, were genuine victims of an economic system created for the profit of a few, and not designed for general human flourishing. A system based on speculation and the pretense of labor, not actual goods, and not active investment in the lives of living human beings. At a different level though, I felt impatient and angry at their complaints. None of those interviewed was going hungry. All of them had a home. Many of them had large families. So, what exactly was their problem again? Not enough money? Well any child playing a game of tag, knows that money isn't necessary to have fun. Too much time? Some people retire from work to have time!
Too little imagination--was that their problem? Too little insight to see the advantages of their situation? Well yes, that might be. Too small a thirst for beauty? Almost certainly. Honestly I wanted to wave my arms and tell them: plant flowers. Plant lots of them.Take a walk in the country. Play sports. Sports are beautiful. Read a bunch of good books (particularly some Thoreau). Clean up your streets. Learn to play the guitar or just sing a lot. Cook your next meal with attention to beauty. Bake your next loaf of bread with attention to beauty. Paint a mural on the walls of your room. Shine your shoes. Shine your furniture. Comb your dog. Arrange some of those flowers that you grew. Go to the museum and look at those Greek antiquities, or heck since you're in Greece dig in your back yard and see if you can find some yourself. Take a bus into the countryside some night with a blanket and a lover and look up at the stars. Let things progress from there.
Again, I don't consider myself unsympathetic toward the young; I have an eighteen year old myself. Nor am I blind to the fact that many of these young people honestly yearn for professions they will find meaningful. The prospect of not finding such work ready for you when you really would like it, is indeed a sad one; it shouldn't be wished on folks. Still, sometimes some things just don't happen, and so you have to look elsewhere for meaning. And if that's the case for you and everyone you know in Greece, well it's no good lying around complaining about it and pining for what's not going to happen. Much better to get out there and make something beautiful happen. Beauty is a wage as well.
And of course I don't just mean beauty in art (though that's an obvious place to find it). I mean beauty in all the places that we can find it and put it: gardens and public spaces, homes and offices. Beauty in our clothes and our furnishings, in our books and meals. In our childrens' toys. In our theater and literature. We must banish the notion that beauty is an extra to be occasionally indulged in, and never taken too seriously. No, it's an instinct in all of us. It's our human birthright, and we ought to claim that birthright and insist on its presence in our lives, doubly so if things in general aren't going well. Furthermore, if the world around us will not give beauty freely to us, then we have to make the beauty ourselves. This can be done, often or very little cost at all.
Please consider, dear readers, the possibility of adding beauty to your own lives. Sit back and dream up a more beauty-rich existence. Write a few possible projects down that might bring that richness into being. Start humble and small. For instance I've always delighted in the custom the Japanese have of covering their books with colored paper. I've often wanted to do that, with at least a few of my books, and maybe I will. The point is this though: honestly, forthrightly let's all pursue the work of adding beauty to our lives. Most likely, with a little persistence, something significant will come of it. The muses reward sincerity.
Until Tuesday the 24th!
HB
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Hand Work as a Way to Joy
A little boy's picture of a ladybug on the refrigerator door, the rough carving of a boat, a clay soap-dispenser, an exercise in Japanese flower arrangement, a bar of lavender soap crisply wrapped in brown paper, these are all proof: that whatever is done or made by hand, however imperfectly, has a natural dignity to it, and carries the signature of meaning. And that meaning is generally more intensely felt the closer the hands are to being your own hands or the hands of someone you deeply love. The bread you eat has more meaning to you if you baked it yourself or if someone you loved baked it. The music you hear has more meaning to you if you're playing it yourself with your own two hands, or if someone you love is making it. We can debate why all this is true--there are certainly many reasons for it--but there is I think almost no question that it is true.
The fact that handwork feels so meaningful, has to be one of the biggest reasons why so many who adopt a lifestyle low on consumption and high in do-it-yourself activity find their lives more satisfying after they've shifted them that direction. Joy depends on meaning and since (to say it a different way) human meaning depends in a remarkable way on the sensed presence of human hand, then cultivating the domestic arts--cooking, gardening, carpentry, flower arrangement etc.--are an obvious place to start investing in that market of joy. Decorating our homes with things that we ourselves have made and designed may be one of the most straightforward ways of making ourselves feel at home. Again it's not so much a question of how perfect the work in question is; it's more a question of the source, of whose fingers shaped, assembled, or produced it. I have access to any number of recordings of the finest musicians in the world playing the finest work of the finest composers. But I would always prefer to hear my son improvise on his violin or my wife sing in her beautiful pure voice a simple folk tune at the piano. How could it be otherwise? Loved and live always beats even the best of what a recording can supply me with.
Of course, it's only fair to admit that taking up the task of learning hand-skills guarantees some heartache and trouble as well and joy and satisfaction. What bakes can also burn. What's grown in the garden can also wither and die. What's smoothed by hand can also be gouged. And it's hard to get used to this truth, because of course every failure in handwork gestures embarrassingly toward our larger human fallibility, and makes us feel embarrassed and inadequate. My mother was a good cook, but I suppose some of my most painful memories as a child involve scenes at the dinner table, in which the family simply wasn't able to be polite about her more exceptional failures. In part this was our fault--we could be unforgivably frank--but in part it also had to do with her inability to let a disaster be a disaster, and just give up on the dish and throw it out. "It looks odd, but it tastes fine," she would assert, when in fact, it looked odd and tasted pretty odd as well! But you see, the thought of waste was so distasteful to her, and her wish for the dish to be perfect was so overwhelming, that on occasion she was just unable to admit defeat. So where our gustatory skepticism collided with her unwillingness to consign the dish to the compost--there at the intersection of six o'clock and the dinner table--we got these almost ecstatically tearful episodes. It was absolute misery.
To say it again, it takes time and practice to acquire domestic skills. And this is one reason why my wife and I often say to ourselves that, as much as we might want to change our lives quickly (to live within the limits of ecological reality, and also more in solidarity with the poor) we still say to ourselves: "one big step at a time." That is, don't set your sights too low--really work toward change. But at the same time remember that the attempt to do so all at once will likely bring the whole project of change to a shuddering halt. Better to be strategically ambitious, tackling one difficult project at a time, and integrating each new skill in with the others as time goes on. So for instance this past year we made the digging of a substantially larger garden our biggest project, and combined that with learning to preserve several new items of food. In 2014 we'll work hard on improving the garden soil; also I intend to to build a cold frame (to provide us with early greens and seedlings) as well as a solar oven to expand our food-preservation options. Also, because I want badly to find a way to serve the community with my own hand-work, and most particularly with my theater work, I plan to make my newest play "Myles to Go" into an engine for community fundraising. My troop will perform at as many venues as possible in the Valparaiso area, in order to raise funds for a low income housing project.
All of which brings up something more about hands: they can grasp one another. They can work together. It is not possible to do everything ourselves, nor should we ever try to make that a goal. No, the best place to live and be, as a human being, is where skilled hands meet skilled hands in community, exchanging one skill for another, and finding joy in the sharing. So. Out with business as usual in this anonymous economy-at-large, where stranger provides service to stranger, and products are manufactured at a distance to fill our (often imaginary) needs, and natural limits are continually transgressed, and speculation is the most profitable enterprise, and the poor (who do not know how to speculate except in lottery tickets) are left to their own devices. Truly a different world is possible, one in which we put our own beautiful flexible hands to collective work until the earth becomes a garden and a holy wilderness, instead of moving, as it is moving, so inexorably, so mechanically, toward a vision of emptiness, smog, and infinite loss.
HB
Until Saturday the 21st!
The fact that handwork feels so meaningful, has to be one of the biggest reasons why so many who adopt a lifestyle low on consumption and high in do-it-yourself activity find their lives more satisfying after they've shifted them that direction. Joy depends on meaning and since (to say it a different way) human meaning depends in a remarkable way on the sensed presence of human hand, then cultivating the domestic arts--cooking, gardening, carpentry, flower arrangement etc.--are an obvious place to start investing in that market of joy. Decorating our homes with things that we ourselves have made and designed may be one of the most straightforward ways of making ourselves feel at home. Again it's not so much a question of how perfect the work in question is; it's more a question of the source, of whose fingers shaped, assembled, or produced it. I have access to any number of recordings of the finest musicians in the world playing the finest work of the finest composers. But I would always prefer to hear my son improvise on his violin or my wife sing in her beautiful pure voice a simple folk tune at the piano. How could it be otherwise? Loved and live always beats even the best of what a recording can supply me with.
Of course, it's only fair to admit that taking up the task of learning hand-skills guarantees some heartache and trouble as well and joy and satisfaction. What bakes can also burn. What's grown in the garden can also wither and die. What's smoothed by hand can also be gouged. And it's hard to get used to this truth, because of course every failure in handwork gestures embarrassingly toward our larger human fallibility, and makes us feel embarrassed and inadequate. My mother was a good cook, but I suppose some of my most painful memories as a child involve scenes at the dinner table, in which the family simply wasn't able to be polite about her more exceptional failures. In part this was our fault--we could be unforgivably frank--but in part it also had to do with her inability to let a disaster be a disaster, and just give up on the dish and throw it out. "It looks odd, but it tastes fine," she would assert, when in fact, it looked odd and tasted pretty odd as well! But you see, the thought of waste was so distasteful to her, and her wish for the dish to be perfect was so overwhelming, that on occasion she was just unable to admit defeat. So where our gustatory skepticism collided with her unwillingness to consign the dish to the compost--there at the intersection of six o'clock and the dinner table--we got these almost ecstatically tearful episodes. It was absolute misery.
To say it again, it takes time and practice to acquire domestic skills. And this is one reason why my wife and I often say to ourselves that, as much as we might want to change our lives quickly (to live within the limits of ecological reality, and also more in solidarity with the poor) we still say to ourselves: "one big step at a time." That is, don't set your sights too low--really work toward change. But at the same time remember that the attempt to do so all at once will likely bring the whole project of change to a shuddering halt. Better to be strategically ambitious, tackling one difficult project at a time, and integrating each new skill in with the others as time goes on. So for instance this past year we made the digging of a substantially larger garden our biggest project, and combined that with learning to preserve several new items of food. In 2014 we'll work hard on improving the garden soil; also I intend to to build a cold frame (to provide us with early greens and seedlings) as well as a solar oven to expand our food-preservation options. Also, because I want badly to find a way to serve the community with my own hand-work, and most particularly with my theater work, I plan to make my newest play "Myles to Go" into an engine for community fundraising. My troop will perform at as many venues as possible in the Valparaiso area, in order to raise funds for a low income housing project.
All of which brings up something more about hands: they can grasp one another. They can work together. It is not possible to do everything ourselves, nor should we ever try to make that a goal. No, the best place to live and be, as a human being, is where skilled hands meet skilled hands in community, exchanging one skill for another, and finding joy in the sharing. So. Out with business as usual in this anonymous economy-at-large, where stranger provides service to stranger, and products are manufactured at a distance to fill our (often imaginary) needs, and natural limits are continually transgressed, and speculation is the most profitable enterprise, and the poor (who do not know how to speculate except in lottery tickets) are left to their own devices. Truly a different world is possible, one in which we put our own beautiful flexible hands to collective work until the earth becomes a garden and a holy wilderness, instead of moving, as it is moving, so inexorably, so mechanically, toward a vision of emptiness, smog, and infinite loss.
HB
Until Saturday the 21st!
Saturday, December 7, 2013
On Hiatus till December 17
9-Volt Nomad will be on hiatus until Tuesday the 17th of December, as I put the finishing touches on a new play, and prepare it for a public reading. Thanks so much for your patience!
HB
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
The Drones are Coming! Hurry Up and Buy!
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon has informed us that within a year or two we may well have the privilege of receiving packages under five pounds by way of automatic flying drones. Yes sir, request a product over the web and within perhaps as little as half an hour it could appear at your doorstep. Yeehawwww. Just whipping up that fruit compote and realize you're out of vanilla? This is just for you! Need some birth control pronto, with only minimal interruption at the love nest? Amazon Air Prime to the rescue!
Once upon a time, the only thing a drone was good for was impregnating the queen bee, whose progeny kept the fruit trees fruiting, and the honey jars flowing, and come to think of it pretty much all of human agriculture afloat. Then THAT form of drone was translated into something large and mechanical and useful for exterminating wedding parties in Afghanistan, paradoxically losing its association with fertility. Now however the benefits of drones come to humble little ol' you and me! Because now, like everything that started out good and natural, the drone has been reached its final state of perfection, and has been transformed into an instrument of commerce and consumption!
Apparently the only thing standing in the way of drone delivery nirvana is those pesky government regs regarding low-flying aircraft and public safety. Aw who the heck cares? Kid playing on the jungle gym gets bombed by sack of organic sugar? Hey it's a Darwinian world. Gust of wind hits drone, which snags a massive transmission wire, blacking out half a mid-sized city? Let it go! In general they look so cool, landing in the yard, like they're out of Mission Impossible.
I'm even told that Bezos's proposed delivery method is going to be "very green." That is, because the drones will run on electricity, they're theoretically less polluting than delivery trucks. Color me skeptical. First of all, electricity comes from all sorts of sources, among them coal; now coal is about as green as a black bear's coat is blond. Second, dunno how many packages each one of these drones can carry, but I doubt it's that many. So sure, delivery to a half dozen houses would probably be "greener" than the pizza guy delivering the pizza to the same number of houses, but it ain't going to be "greener" than all of us waiting for a day or two to get what we ordered by way of a good-old-fashioned, big-ass truck. Those trucks may run on petroleum, but they also carry hundreds of packages. They're also driven by human beings, who sometimes say hi to you and smile, but hey, we all know those are going obsolete. Heck some of them even belong to unions.
Actually if we really wanted to make instant delivery into something green, why not hire folks to pedal rickshaws? It's just a thought. We could power the drivers on rice and dhal. Come to think of it, there were once a few places where this was done. Even within living memory. A country of hundreds of millions, if I recall, and with a civilization of some age and repute.
Mind you, I'm not saying the drone scheme is going to be unprofitable, though it may prove to be. I'm not going to insist that it's unsafe, though it probably is. I won't even claim it's uncool. I am however going to claim that the genius of the scheme (and it is genius) fits a general and insidious pattern of distraction. I am going to claim that its primary function is to serve as the propaganda of progress and to associate the Amazon name with it. In other words it's today's update of the Roman bread and circuses. Lost and lonely in suburbia? Don't have a job? That's okay, have your consumer soma delivered by drone. At least you got that!
If you're a glutton for punishment, take a look at this article, on a slightly, but not all-that-different, subject. It really honestly comes within a whisker of telling us that the poor and downtrodden in these bright shining days of the modern financial super-state, ought to be content with their situation, because by golly they got some good programs on the tube, and by golly they can see them nice and clear on that really big screen that they bought at Walmart!
"I know it seems like it's out of science fiction, but it isn't," says Bezos in the interview, which was aired on Sixty Minutes. Well great. Listen I have news for you, Mr. Bezos. A whole lot of science fiction is really damned dystopian, and I don't use either of those d-words lightly.
Thanks for making the world such an obviously better place, Mr. Bezos.
Thanks for injecting some balance and perspective into our lives.
Thanks for reminding us that what really matters in life is power, speed, and convenience.
Thanks for helping to make the automatic earth so much more than just a cool phrase in a Paul Simon song.
Thanks for being out in front of the pack on the question of labor too, and who or what ought to be given labor: robots with no needs but only missions; or living, needy flesh. The second category is so yesterday.
Thanks once again for harnessing the power of golly gee-whiz in the service of existential distraction. This especially helps us ignore the dying of natural world, and the relationship of that death to universal instantaneous gratification and conspicuous consumption, which after all we can do nothing about.
By the way, I propose that--partly in honor of the Christmas season-- you name the first drone Gabriel, after the archangel of the annunciation, who was said to have informed Mary that she would give birth to a savior. Clearly we, too, are on the cusp of a new age, of what, we are not free to say. The mind however reels in an ecstasy of anticipation. The spirit rejoices in Amazon our groovy savior, whose messenger is landing soon in our very yards, delivering toothpaste and flip-flops.
Oh, just one more thing, Mr. Bezos, you might want to take a look at this. Clearly there are a few yahoos who might impede the glorious coming of the Amazonian Lord. Though maybe you can buy them off with a few free handgun deliveries.
HB
Till Saturday the 7th!
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