Alexandersmap

    Category: Art

    • A Beautiful Reluctance

      We were born saying goodbye
      to what we love,
      we were born
      in a beautiful reluctance
      to be here,
      not quite ready
      to breathe in this new world
      – David Whyte, Cleave

      I understand this reluctance. I wrestle with it myself. And tackle the moments as they wash over me and undermine my footing like a relentless surf. We’re never quite ready for what the world throws at us, but with a subtle shift and a will to persevere we find a way to keep our footing.

      For all the harshness in the world we learn that, more often than not, the waves come from within. The demons aren’t out there marching towards you in waves, they whisper in your ear. The distractions and busywork and perceived obligations squander our moments and precious minutes. The reluctance pulls at our sleeve, back towards what we are comfortable with, back towards the safe and predictable and indistinct.

      Each step is uncertain, but slowly we move forward. The farther we venture, the harder it is to hear the call to come back. And in the growing quiet we might hear something just out of reach. Just ahead. And we continue towards those who call us, towards the Muse, towards our boldest dreams. One moment, and one breath at a time.

      But it begins, as it must, with goodbye.

    • To Be Touched by Everything I’ve Found

      One obvious problem with long drives is that it eats into reading time. You can solve this with audio books, of course, but then what of podcasts? As a heavy consumer of both, what do you choose? And this is where time becomes our enemy.

      Long drives require epic podcast episodes, and there’s nothing more epic than Hardcore History with Dan Carlin. For the last year I’ve been saving long stretches of travel to complete Supernova of the East, which is like all of Carlin’s podcasts: devastating edge of your seat listening. You want a little perspective as you crawl along in traffic over the Tappan Zee Bridge? Listen to the details of the Battle of Okinawa as Carlin spins his magic.

      What do you do when you’ve finished a series like Supernova of the East and you need to step back into the better side of humanity? Music helps. Lately I’ve been mixing classic rock and what today is known as “Americana” music (personally, I just call it music). Specifically, diving into old Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tunes and new Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit compilations. Looking for poetry set to music? You can’t go wrong with either. As a lover of words piled together just so, Isbell does to your brain cells what a complex Cabernet does to your taste buds.

      The best I can do
      Is to let myself trust that you know
      Who’ll be strong enough to carry your heart
      – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Letting You Go

      When you get to a hotel room in some remote place and you’ve caught up on all those emails and administrative work, what next? Drink? Watch television? Or dive back into the books that have tapping you on the shoulder for attention? There’s a place for every form of entertainment, but in most of my travels the hotel television never gets turned on. But the Kindle app does.

      After some consistent prodding by a friend of mine, I’m finally finishing Sapiens by Yusef Noah Harari. I know, what took me so long? Honestly it just kept slipping down the pile as other books jumped ahead. Regrettable, but life is about tradeoffs. What we choose to dance with in our brief time makes all the difference in how we see the world. Now that I’ve almost wrapped it up, I see what all the fuss is about.

      “Even today, with all our advanced technologies, more than 90 per cent of the calories that feed humanity come from the handful of plants that our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BC – wheat, rice, maize (called ‘corn’ in the US), potatoes, millet and barley. No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated in the last 2,000 years. If our minds are those of hunter-gatherers, our cuisine is that of ancient farmers.” – Yusef Noah Harari, Sapiens

      Speaking of that stack of books, I put aside a couple of other books to focus on completing Sapiens. One in particular, The Blind Watchmaker, is a heavier lift than Sapiens, but compliments it well. I’ve referenced it before in the blog, and look forward to moving it to the virtual “done” pile. Combined, these two books have shaken my perspective of the world and how we got here.

      “If you have a mental picture of X and you find it implausible that the human eye could have arisen directly from it, this simply means that you have chosen the wrong X.” – Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

      Inevitably I need to sprinkle in page-turner fiction, poetry and sharp left turn material to shake off reality until I can catch my breath again. Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda was a definite left turn for me, an interesting read that got me thinking about mysticism and craving more time in the desert Southwest.

      “You can do better. There is one simple thing wrong with you—you think you have plenty of time.” – Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan

      The Sea in You: Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love by David Whyte is a lovely collection of poems by one of our living masters. Whyte stirs words together with the best of them and catches my imagination with his alchemy. I’ll surely spend more time with Whyte in this blog in the near future.

      “be weathered by what comes to you, like the way you
      too
      have travelled from so far away to be here, once
      reluctant
      and now as solid and as here and as willing
      to be touched as everything you have found.”
      – David Whyte, The Sea in You: Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love

      We collect bits of wisdom and memorable nuggets in our consumption. Does this make us better conversationalists or a faster draw on Jeopardy? Most likely, but there’s something more to it than that. To revisit the old cliche, we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. What we consume either amplifies our biases or challenges them. I choose to be challenged, and find myself slowly stretching and building a better mind, with greater perspective, through what I listen to, watch and read.

      In short, to be touched by everything I’ve found.

    • Beauty, Reflected

      “When Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.
      “Why do you weep?” the goddesses asked.
      “I weep for Narcissus,” the lake replied.
      “Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,” they said, “for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.”
      “But . . . was Narcissus beautiful?” the lake asked.
      “Who better than you to know that?” the goddesses said in wonder. “After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!”
      The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:
      “I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.”
      – Paulo Coelho, Prologue to The Alchemist

      Great writing reflects. It collects the beautiful essence of living in this world and polishes it up to reflect back on the reader. It’s what any writer worth their salt aspires to. It’s what I aspire to here and elsewhere. Call this blog a work in progress. What is published daily isn’t as polished as a Fleetwood Mac song, you get maybe the second or third draft here. But I try like hell to make it worth our collective time.

      The garden is well past the dance of the Daffodils. Maybe the timing of this quote should have been aligned with their peak, but looking back on my posts from that time I see my focus turned towards other things in this world. Such is the way with writing, you can’t possibly capture it all. The very process of focusing on one thing allows other things to escape notice.

      In all art you hold up the mirror in the moment, reflecting what you can with the tools you have at hand. Developing an eye for beauty is perhaps the most important thing any artist can aspire to, more than a steady hand or a grasp of the nuance of language or paint colors or lenses. An eye for the beautiful allows us to see what others might miss. And in seeing it, attempt to reflect it back on the world.

      Narcissists aren’t generally looked upon favorably. The brilliant turn in Coelho’s prologue is in showing that even Narcissus inadvertently offered something to another. To write at all is to wrestle with the narcissism within. To expect greatness of ourselves is bold, just who are we serving in our attempts? Nothing smacks the ego like the silence of the universe when you say “ta da!”

      The hardest part of creating something is seeing the beauty and not measuring up to it with your reflection of it. But each clumsy attempt brings us a bit closer to the possible. Beauty, reflected, casts a light on both sender and receiver. The best work will come. That which is beautiful patiently sparkles in anticipation of you seeing the best in yourself through your efforts. And, maybe, lighting up the world.

      But do try not to drown in your reflection.

    • Adding Extra to Ordinary

      “A master is in control. A master has a system. A master turns the ordinary into the sacred.”
      – Ryan Holiday

      “The primary math of the real world is one and one equals two. The layman (as, often, do I) swings that every day. He goes to the job, does his work, pays his bills and comes home. One plus one equals two. It keeps the world spinning. But artists, musicians, con men, poets, mystics and such are paid to turn that math on its head, to rub two sticks together and bring forth fire. Everybody performs this alchemy somewhere in their life, but it’s hard to hold on to and easy to forget. People don’t come to rock shows to learn something. They come to be reminded of something they already know and feel deep down in their gut. That when the world is at its best, when we are at our best, when life feels fullest, one and one equals three. It’s the essential equation of love, art, rock ’n’ roll and rock ’n’ roll bands. It’s the reason the universe will never be fully comprehensible, love will continue to be ecstatic, confounding, and true rock ’n’ roll will never die.” – Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run

      I’m beginning to understand the art of weaving magic. I am by no means a master, but each turn in the blog, each tangle with words in other work I’m developing, leads me closer to the sacred. The blog is my apprenticeship, never fully realized because I ship the work daily whether the magic is sprinkled on yet or not. This is a turn of the ordinary, and a march towards something more.

      Routines infer ordinary. We have our habits and generally stick with them, and we feel out of sorts when the routine is broken by happenstance or travel. But routines are where you find the magic, hidden deeply in layers of repetition and persistence. You don’t pull magic out of your ass, you work for it.

      You know it when you see it. Moments crackle with excitement. And one plus one does, for a brief moment, equal three. The greatest artists and performers regularly dance with the extraordinary. But hidden from that brilliant moment of now are the buried hours of falling flat, picking yourself up and trying something else then. You don’t add extra to ordinary without sacrifice.

      I’m well aware of where I am with my own work, and I also know where I’m going. Towards the sacred. Towards three. Towards the incomprehensible and magic and the extraordinary. I hope someday to share that with you.

    • The Muse

      There’s a ghost in my head. A story that won’t go away. Compelling and screaming to be written. The boy in the story died over 300 years ago, and he didn’t live much of a life at all. A life of lost freedom and sadness. But his story is screaming out for someone to tell the world about him.

      So the muse taps my shoulder, asking when I’m going to get around to it. Threatening to leave me and take the boy elsewhere. And I feel the guilt of ignoring the call of the dead boy for the obligations of the living. Your story must be told… but not just yet. And the muse grows restless.

      I suppose I could just write about him in the blog. It would serve to tell his story. But I’ve held on to his life as the kernel of a novel that could grow around him. It seems selfish when I write that, holding a ghost boy hostage while I procrastinate on writing his story. Yet here we are.

      The confession serves as a concession to the muse. I’ll get to the boy, one of these days. I’ll write his story as best I can. This year? Yes, absolutely. This year. Just after I finish these other things…

      And the muse grows more restless.

    • The Practice

      “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” – Kurt Vonnegut

      “The practice of art isn’t to make a living. It’s to make your soul grow.” – Kurt Vonnegut

      This blogging business can be a grind if you think about it the wrong way. I try not to think about it the wrong way. Still, it pops up in my head in certain moments. What the hell am I writing for? I don’t actively accumulate followers and don’t chase likes. Nor will this site be monetized. So what’s the point?

      The writing is a discipline; a routine of consequence. A practice of art carrying me towards who I fancy myself to be, and I chase it down relentlessly every day. And though I wonder sometimes at what the point of it all really is, I already know the answer. It’s simply to write.

      Kurt Vonnegut was one of those people whom I’d have around that dinner table, along with a cast of characters larger than life through their practice of being what they pretended to be… and thus became. Then again, I hang out with them all the time through their contribution. Or at least the character I think them to be. For they were just people like us, who chipped away at their work until they built something of consequence.

      And there’s that word again: consequence. What are we building in our daily work? Followers, or our souls? I may not ever meet my great-grandchildren if they should ever debut in the world, but I fancy them someday knowing something about me from the way I stack words together… just… so.

      The crew of SV Delos (Brian and Karin) had a live stream conversation on Mother’s Day. For those who don’t know, they sail around the world and post videos on YouTube. They’ve been cranking out videos for years, first as a way to share experiences with family and friends and later as an income stream as it became apparent that plenty of people were interested in what they were doing. Watching their 300+ videos helped me get through the void of travel-less lockdown during the pandemic.

      One thing Brian said caught my ear. He spoke about people who keep working on their boats, project after project, waiting for things to be perfect for them to set out on their own passage. And of course that day never comes because nothing is ever perfect. The point being to just go when things are ready enough.

      On a much smaller scale, blogging is the same sort of passage that Delos is on. You chip away at it, maybe picking up a follower or two along the way (thank you) and see where the passage takes you. And maybe that’s enough. Then again, maybe there’s more.

    • Poems and Cat Puke

      The clouds have left the sky,
      The wind hath left the sea,
      The half-moon up on high
      Shrinketh her face of dree

      She lightens on the comb
      Of leaden waves, that roar
      And thrust their hurried foam
      Up on the dusky shore.

      Behind the western bars
      The shrouded day retreats,
      And unperceived the stars
      Steal to their sovran seats.

      And whiter grows the foam,
      The small moon lightens more;
      And as I turn me home,
      My shadow walks before.
      – Robert Bridges, Dusky Shore

      There’s a moment when expectations meet reality. Certainly we all expected more out of 2020 than we got, and I can say the same about this morning’s blog. It started with a poem – Dusky Shore, as you see. It became cleanup in aisle 5.

      I’ve toyed with Bridges’ famous poem for some time, undecided about whether to dance with the classic romantic lines, or leave well enough alone. It has all the ingredients sprinkled together just so – the moon and the sea, post sunset dusky bliss and a turn towards home… but it still misses the mark for me. And I’m not sure why.

      I believe it’s in the way the words are stacked just so. It feels like he’s playing to the audience a bit to me, instead of mining his soul. But still the words are lovely in the way that a Thomas Kinkade painting is. Pretty, I suppose, but not really my style.

      As I walked down the stairs contemplating this poem and whether to go there, I came across the apocalyptic mounds of yellowish cat puke on the area rug that announced my quaint dalliance with Dusky Shore was going to take a back seat for the moment. As the designated early bird in a house full of night owls, I’m faced with such moments more than I care to remember. You either pretend not to see it or grab the paper towels and deal with it. I’ve learned it’s best to tackle the demons head-on and get on with your life. There’s nothing more demonic than cat puke on an area rug.

      I wonder about Robert Bridges, turning from the white foamy sea towards home, shadow walking before. As he opened the door to his humble home, what greeted him? For all the beauty of the prose, every now and then a little cat puke intrudes upon your Rosebud Cottage. It may be unwelcome, but it teaches you a bit about who you are when the moment of bliss is interrupted.

    • Quicksand and Tasks of Consequence

      “Bad writing is almost always a love poem addressed by the self to the self.” Toby Litt

      “The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.” – Cyril Connolly

      The time we spend, these moments slipping through the hourglass, are either consequential or quicksand. And so the tasks filling those moments are loaded with questions – is this the right use of this brief moment in time or might there be a better place to spend the grains of sand? Is this a task of consequence, or is it a love poem to the self, mere folly?

      You know when you’ve stepped in quicksand. Maybe not immediately, but soon enough you recognize the stickiness of a habit and the sinking feeling that you’re not making any forward progress. Quicksand is tricky stuff. The one thing you don’t want to do when you’re in it is flail in place.

      Writing a blog every day might not be a masterpiece, but is it folly? The act of writing is pouring your grains of sand into a jumble of words and placing them just so. With a picture in your mind of what they might be if you could just get it right.

      The ultimate measure of tasks is whether you’re flailing in place or going somewhere consequential. What might you otherwise be doing with those grains of sand? The answer isn’t what are you doing now. Not really. It’s what are you becoming? That is what really matters. For what will your masterpiece be, in the end?

      Work towards that.

    • The Lindy Effect

      A few years ago Nassim Nicholas Taleb described a phenomenon known as the Lindy Effect in his book Antifragile. Soon after you started hearing about it in other work, referenced in blog posts, magazine articles and even its own Wikipedia page. I tend to shy away from uber-trendy topics, but I’ve thought a lot about this Lindy Effect since reading about it in Taleb’s book.

      “I follow the Lindy effect as a guide in selecting what to read: books that have been around for ten years will be around for ten more; books that have been around for two millennia should be around for quite a bit of time, and so forth.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile

      Lindy’s was a famous deli in New York where comedians and actors would gather and discuss such things as the durability of a Broadway show. The observation is that if something survives for a period of time longer than the norm, it implies that it will survive at least that long into the future. The Lindy Effect only applies to non-perishable items, so you and I and that orange on the counter don’t count. But that picture you take or that book you write or the product you release to the market do count. The implication is that you might build something that outlasts you by a long stretch.

      Henry David Thoreau died just eight years after publishing Walden, but the book lives on to this day. When it was originally published it was hardly noticed. Yet today it’s been read by millions. When Ansel Adams took the photograph “Monolith, the Face of Half Dome” in 1927 he was creating something that still captures the imagination of people around the world almost 100 years later. It was the picture that built his legacy and helped preserve Yosemite.

      Ernest Hemingway published his first classic, The Sun Also Rises, in October of 1926, six months before Adams took that photograph. Hemingway had a burning desire to be a great writer, and to publish great and lasting work. Many people point to the last lines of the novel for the way it captures the relationship between the two central characters. You might also see the final line as a hopeful wish from Hemingway that this book might fly:

      “Oh Jake,” Brett said, “We could have had such a damned good time together.”
      Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me.
      Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
      – Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

      I’ve noticed a small trend in this blog where 6-10 specific blog posts seem to get views all the time, while the other 1000+ have their moment in the spotlight and fade away over time. Millions of books and paintings and pictures similarly fade away over time, but some stand up forever as legendary. Making art may have a formula, but creating its stickiness remains a mystery to most of us.

      Ironically, Lindy’s, the delicatessen that gave birth to the concept of building something that might last forever, closed forever in 2017. For businesses are perishable too. Yet its name lives on. Maybe, like Thoreau or Adams or Hemingway, that is as it should be.

    • Leaning Into Revelatory Writing

      “I feel it’s important for me to be completely honest in what I write about. To me artists fall into two categories, they are revelatory or obfuscatory. There are artists that want to create an image of themselves, that isn’t really them, but it’s part of the product, the brand and stuff like that. So whenever they are in the context of performance… they adopt this persona. And the words that they write are from this persona not from themselves… I have always been a revelatory artist. I am most interested in writing about the things that I actually think about rather than trying to think about what someone wants to hear and write about that.” – Todd Rundgren, from The Moment podcast interview

      There are days when I’d rather have published anonymously. There’s something liberating about the free pass granted to the anonymous – you see it in Tweet and troll comments I suppose, where people feel they can say anything that comes to mind. But, deep down, can you really respect the anonymous? I don’t believe so. We respect those who put themselves out on a limb.

      We all balance the character we want to present to the world with who we actually are. As you get a bit wiser you stop worrying about becoming a character and you just become yourself (and some of us are real characters). Artists either play for the hits or mine deep for the gold. Now and then you get both in the same work.

      If you’re lucky and a bit brave, you reach a point where you just write for the love of discovery and revelation. Joyful bits of magic stumbled upon and written about, one post at a time. Some frivolous, some tedious, but now and then you scrub the words together just so and something sparkles. Sometimes you’re the only one that sees the glimmer, other times it bounces around the room like laser light on a disco ball.

      You know when you’ve put it all out there, just as you know when you’ve held back a bit of yourself. I’ve written a few posts where I clearly obfuscated and see it immediately when I look back on it. I think most people see it too. Deep down we all know when someone is holding back or playing to the audience. Fluff writing designed for clicks and likes and whatnot.

      Rundgren reminds me that there’s more to do. You want your work to crackle and spark imagination and wonder? Go deeper. Leaning into revelatory writing is a leap into the the chasm. But where else would you rather be?