Mr. Nobody, Jaco Van Dormael's Sublime Universe

In the year 2092 Nemo Nobody is 118 years old and the last mortal human. A journalist asks Nemo what life was like back when humans were mortal and Nemo replies:

"There were cars that polluted. We smoked cigarettes. We ate meat. We did everything we can't do in this dump and it was wonderful."

I haven't enjoyed a movie as much as Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody in years. It's like Vladimir Nabokov on screen. Brilliant, provoking, intelligent, playful, beautiful, pitiful, awful and awesome -- Sublime.

"Creativity Class," A New Oxymoron?

A few weeks ago Newsweek printed an article entitled "The Creativity Crisis" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, which detailed the decline of creativity in America. I laughed my way through the article because one of the ideas for fixing this problem was "creativity training" in the classroom--Creativity Class.

If ever there was an oxymoron Creativity Class is one. So is Creativity Training.

"[A]merican teachers warn there's no room in the day for creativity class" (Bronson and Merryman). Actually, there's no room in the classroom, a structured and controlled and biased environment for any creativity, unless you're one of the lucky little children with parents willing to fight the ADHD label and the pharmaceutical monopoly's terrorism on brains. Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign needs to make a come back, this time to save children from mind-altering and damaging pharma fascism.

According to James C. Kaufman, quoted in the Newsweek article, "Creativity can be taught" (Bronson and Merryman). By who?

If creativity can be taught and learned within a classroom setting then why hasn't the State school system used some creative thinking to come up with better ways of dealing with children, other than labelling and drugging them? Obviously, there is no creativity amongst those operating the State school system, and to deal with their inability and laziness they have turned to drugs, blaming the victim and their parents.

And then, to contradict the first article, the following article, "Forget Brainstorming," also by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman tells the reader that "[P]eople generate more and better ideas separately than together," and "Don't tell someone to 'be creative,'" Hmm.

The closing paragraph of "The Creativity Crisis" shows how ignorant and unable to make sublime connections we have become with an insult upon the very thing that has inspired all great thinkers, inventors, artists, and scientists: the Muse at the well, sprinkling inspiration and love:

"Creativity has always been prized in American society, but it's never really been understood. While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying to a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike. Fortunately, the science can help: we know the steps to lead that elusive muse right to our doors."

And so, the great wells have been covered over while we continue un creatively to look to the gods in white lab coats to inject us with creativity, herd us into Creativity Class and subject us to yet another standardized assessment of who is creative and who is not.

Creativity is born of love, of freedom, and yearning. It cannot be synthesized by science, the State, or by pharmaceutical candies, pills, and patches.

"Now these two Kings and two Queens governed Narnia well, and long and happy was their reign. At first much of their time was spent in seeking out the remnants of the White Witch's army and destroying them, and indeed for a long time there would be news of evil things lurking in the wilder parts of the forest--a haunting here and a killing there, a glimpse of a werewolf one month and a rumor of a hag the next. But in the end all that foul brood was stamped out. And they made good laws and kept the peace and saved good trees from being unnecessarily cut down, and liberated young dwarfs and young satyrs from being sent to school, and generally stopped busybodies and interferers and encouraged ordinary people who wanted to live and let live" (C.S. Lewis, "The Hunting of the White Stag," The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, emphasis added).

Keeping the Temple

The Bard has been feeling a bit rebellious and wondering if....

If the body is a temple, whose temple is it? Does it belong to the owner or to a chain of temples, like a fast food chain in which each temple is designed in nearly the same design as the place down the road and serves up the exact same frozen meat briquettes, "toasted" buns, rehydrated onion and shake mix?

If I, the inheritor of this temple own it and don't want to join a franchise, then I should be able to run things as I please, organizing the feast days, the alms giving, and requirements for entry into the Holy of Holies.

Who exactly has decided what the rules for my temple are? Who has said it should look a certain way and what rules it should follow and who has decided what foods, music, and people are permitted within its sacred walls?

Of course,very often the answer is that we're each to be part of the Judeo-Christian group and that God has set the rules and design and has told us how to design the building and how to operate it. The Bard doesn't dispute that God set the patterns out, but the Bard disputes that his temple must conform to a uniform human ideal, for the Bard has not been designed to conform to the uniform ideal, and when he has tried he finds himself a sad and dark temple full of false idols cluttering up his space. He finds himself spending too much time and money buying costumes and other acceptable regalia for the grand boredom of being preached at. And after that he has to prove his pockets are empty by pulling them out and placing the last bit of lint in the offering plate.

Once, when the Bard attended a great temple gathering and all the lint had been placed in the plate a great grey-blue lint cow appeared and we all bowed down to worship it. Moses asked the pastor in charge of the flock what had happened and the pastor said he had no idea. It didn't taste too well when we were forced to eat it. Lint doesn't melt in the mouth the same way that cotton candy does, and on the other end it reminds one of what an owl expectorates.

Of late there has been much talk about other people's temples. Females in leadership roles are even accusing their own beautiful daughters of being fat, somehow hoping that this motherly love will inspire the rest of us to look at all thin children and do the same. If the particular Great Mother I have in mind believes her children are fat, then each of us must be fat too. Perhaps, we've all been blind, imagining that what we see is thin when in reality it is fat. Or perhaps, we are being asked to conform to someone else's "reality."

Anyway, this zealous interest in other people's temples is getting carried away. Who cares? And whose business is it to care? Not mine, not yours. Well, it's somebody's and they must be planning on making a mint on accusing people of the sin of eating. Everyone eats. We're all dependent, addicted, and habituated to food. We're all guilty of the sin, and we all have gathered in little circles to pass the cake and cookies and get the giggles and mumble terms that addicts use, such as "Mmm. This is so good! Mmm. MMMM." And we've all displayed that strange sensation of rubbing our belly after Thanksgiving, or perhaps unbuttoned the top snap to let the pressure loose (a sign of a hardcore addict).

The ineffable state of New York wants a sin tax on carbonated beverages. According to these high priests of health, morals, and science this type of beverage is as dangerous as smoking, and alcohol. Somehow, when something is labelled a "sin" it makes it okay to tax it and ban it from privately owned temple use.

The Bard doesn't believe any state should make money from something if it's considered a sin. Why would those who don't agree with smoking, alcohol, and now pop want to benefit from the bad habits of others? The Bard doesn't believe in taking dirty money for his benefit. Of course, the bard doesn't believe that tobacco, alcohol, or pop are impure; but he doesn't believe the government should benefit from supposedly bad habits.

The Bard thinks that the problem of sin and habits would be eradicated if people were banned, rather than the things they ingest and do. Hitler called this the Final Solution. Of course, then the governments of our states would not have any funding for their programs, but then, they wouldn't need the money because the problems would all be solved, finally they would be effective.

Ideally, the Bard would like it if people not respectful of his temple would stop standing outside demanding their right to entry. He doesn't stand at their gates yelling and screaming about his rights to enter into their temples, or how their temple practices harm his temple practices.

If....if the body is a temple, then it is mine and it is holy. Stop desecrating it with heathen practices and idols, stop eating up my stores, or I may have to send for my temple-home's rightful master. Can I weave and unweave much longer? Beware of the beggar that returns for his Penelope, his Bride.

image: John William Waterhouse, Penelope and the Suitors (1912)

Musical Chairs: How Music Organizes, Evokes, and Intoxicates

Have you ever noticed the tendency to put on the music while cleaning and organizing?

I've been researching habits, addiction, dependency, and neurotransmitters; and it occurred to me as I delved into these things that music is like a substance that we ingest.

When we get a new CD we are excited by it for awhile, playing it over and over, enjoying the discovery and the new sounds, but after a time, we stop listening to it as often or enjoying it as much. We then, move on to new music and begin the experience of pleasure and discovery all over again. This is tolerance in the world of drugs, especially painkillers.

When a person builds up a tolerance to a dose of painkillers, they need a higher dose or new drug in order to achieve the same feeling of freedom from pain.

But why do we listen to music while organizing around the house and elsewhere? Because it's a "drug," like nearly everything else in our life. Drugs and other substances open and close doors in our brain, helping us to function better--or worse, depending on what it is and who we are.

The rhythm of music is a substance that we ingest through our ears. The rhythm causes our brain to go into a straightening up mode, to organize things in the rooms. Rhythm and Melody, that skipping lady of the tingling, tripping toes, unlocks the doors to let that delightful child, Joy run up and down the halls to show us the simple pleasures at her feast table.

Joy is the child that runs up and down relaxing the tension in the springs. She peeks out when we see beautiful art, music, when we smell the lilacs, or coffee. She is springtime. Joy is that one who makes us cry when we're happy, when our emotions have been evoked. And because of her special light touch, yet powerful emotional powers she causes us to remember. Joy increases our short term and long term memories, embedding them within those rooms of our mind.

When Joy is locked up, kept prisoner in a dark room, there is a gloomy mood in the house, the pleasure of eating is disrupted causing one to eat too much or too little, there is nothing worth remembering or learning. If Joy is not let loose the owner of the house may sink into a dark place, overcome by depression, low self esteem, and may strike out against their joyless life with aggression.

Even plants grow better when music is played to them. Perhaps, that saying about plants growing better if we talk to them is true.

And if Music is an ingested substance that causes the release of different neurotransmitters, is it any different than a prescription pill, or street drug? Is this why we have music "wars," because unconsciously we know this?

Is this why different groups of people imbibe in different strains of music? There's gospel, classical, soul, bluegrass, rock, hip hop, the blues, and countless other strains of the plant. Certain strains are considered "hardcore" corruptions of music, dangerous hybrids laced with toxic substances, which cause the user to behave destructively.

Then, there is the patented laboratory musical formula produced en masse for the majority of users. This is the polished, "clean" stuff that we rave about, but only releases Joy in small doses. Then, there is the patented formula of rap, a strange concoction that has been altered from its roots, and sold to the mass produced white kids of suburbia.

We all have our favorite strains of the substance. And it may be ignorance of its purpose and wreckless use that harms its purpose of releasing that joyful tingle. All drugs can be abused. Are we binge drinking music, or enjoying it and getting some pleasure or release of tension from it?

Albigence Waldo, in his Rustick way, sums up perfectly how music unlocks Joy and lets her do her job:

Valley Forge, 23 December 1777 - "This evening an excellent Player on the Violin in that soft kind of Musick, which is so finely adapted to stirr up the tender Passions, while he was playing in the next Tent to mine, these kind of soft Airs it immediately called up in remembrance all the endearing expressions, the Tender Sentiments.... and filled me these tender emotions, and Agreeable Reflections, which cannot be described, and which in spite of my Philosophy forced out the sympathetic tear. I wish'd to have the Musick Cease, and yet dreaded its ceasing, least I should loose sight of these dear Ideas, which gave me pain and pleasure at the same instant" (emphasis mine).

What Albigence describes is the ingesting of music and the freeing of Joy to do her job. This is what C.S. Lewis calls Sehnsucht.

image: Lena Horne and Duke Ellington

Why We Fight

I have been reading The American Revolution, Writings from the War of Independence, selected by John Rhodehamel, part of Penguin Putnam's Library of America collection.

The selections alternate between British and American writings by various authors. Many of the writings are journal entries and record the constant ups and downs of those for and against independence. After hundreds of pages of battle, starving, travel, and exposure to the elements; we suddenly come upon Sarah Wister, a very young woman living at Gwynedd, Pennsylvania (not far from Valley Forge), excited that her home is to quarter General Smallwood of the Contintental Army.

Sarah Wister's little heart goes pit a pat with all of the brave young company filling her home, and she falls in love with a handsome young Major Stodard of Maryland, who "has the softest voice never pronounces the R at all." As she closes her diary the first night of blushing excitement she says, "adieu I am going to my chamber to dream I suppose of bayonets and swords, sashes, guns, and epaulets."

And Major Stodard, his weary soul filled with hospitality, food, peace, and beauty goes to sleep to dream of pretty Sarah Wister who represents life, liberty, and happiness. She put on her best dress for this young soldier, and he put up his best fight for her.

And not far from Sarah Wister, is Albigence Waldo a surgeon with the Continental Army, who is ill, and homesick for his wife and children in Connecticut, who write to him that they have no money or food, and wish he would come home to take care of them. Albigence has no money, he eats a paste of water and flour, and breathes the smoke of the campfires every day while in Winter Quarters at Valley Forge. He writes on Christmas Day, 1777:

"We avoid Piddling Pills, Powders, Bolus's Linctus's Cordials and all such insignificant matters whose Powers are Only render'd important by causing the Patient to vomit up his money instead of his disease."

But a couple days earlier, December 23, he records, "This evening an excellent Player on the Violin in that soft kind of Musick, which is so finely adapted to stirr up the tender Passions, while he was playing in the next Tent to mine, these kind of soft Airs it immediately called up remembrance of all the endearing expressions, the Tender Sentiments....

"....and filled me with these tender emotions, and Agreeable Reflections, which cannot be described, and which in spite of my Philosophy forced out the sympathetic tear. I wish'd to have the Musick Cease, and yet dreaded its ceasing, least I should loose sight of these dear Ideas, which gave me pain and pleasure at the same instant."

This is why beauty and art cannot be neglected, ever. They are not mere entertainments and diversions, but lifters of the soul, healers, keys that open doors of sweet remembrance. Although it may be against the "philosophy" of many brave and war-torn souls, there are acceptable and quiet moments when a cleansing is required so that peace can be regained, and morning made to shine sweeter. How many dirty, sick, and starving soldiers were replenished and washed with memory of home, love, and warm tables by that unnamed violinist? How many remembered what it felt like to be human, and that this is why we fight--for our natural desire to live as humans, not drudges?

"The Man who has seen misery knows best how to enjoy good" (Albigence Waldo, Valley Forge, Dec. 1777).

image: Renior, Woman Playing Guitar

Motive For Metaphor

"You like it under the trees in autumn,
Because everything is half dead.
The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves
And repeats words without meaning...."(The Motive For Metaphor, Wallace Stevens)

In my opinion, there are two motives for metaphor. One reason is to imbue a taste of the aesthetic sublime into one's art in order to elevate another's awareness of sense, of how something felt (be it horrid or wonderful), and to enrich meaning beyond the ordinary of realism.

But the other motive for metaphor is as highly important, for it serves its purpose during times of repression and regression. When dictators, despots, and social movements control even the air one breathes; it is metaphor that serves as a kind of secret code or underground for the few who are able to understand. This is why certain types of art and creativity are feared by repressive governments. They are always afraid of the hidden message within the art and of how it may encourage and inspire its audience.

Most choose not to see the metaphor, but those who do, live in an even more real world. A world more harsh, more beautiful, more intricate and unexplainable to those who only see the surface.

Metaphor shows one that there is more than the rote "A B C of being" (Stevens). When we can see beyond those symbols we see that often words repeated by our society are like cripples "among the leaves," and "without meaning."

"....The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of red and blue, the hard sound -
Steel against intimation - the sharp flash,
The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X" (Motive For Metaphor)

image: David and Goliath, Caravaggio

Is The Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

The past week I have been reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Stacy Schiff's Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), and Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful Mind. I have not finished Solzhenitsyn. I was overwhelmed by the interrogation techniques used by the Russians due to the fact that many of these are being used by the local law enforcement upon my fellows. Sometimes, the truth is too dark and breathtaking when it removes the shiny curtain of imagined freedom to reveal the very evil one thinks cannot possibly exist in their own community.

Interestingly, these three books go together quite well and I cannot help but think that it was ordained by some greater will that they should have been brought together for my pleasure. Schiff's Vera shows us how to overcome evil, slipping through like water in the hand of Russian and German hatred; and live quietly, yet brightly in the persistent pursuit of one's love. If I could rename Schiff's Vera it would be And Then She Typed, Then She Transcribed, Then She Took Dictation, Then She Translated. Vera was not written how I would have written her, but it sure makes one think about typewriters, vehicles, and words, drive and fingers.

Nasar's biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr. tied the trio together nicely. Nash makes a perfect metaphor for our current society and how it has become sick with schizophrenia. Everything that Nash suffered as an individual schizophrenic describes modern culture, except there is no sanitarium for the masses, and there won't be a Nobel Prize.

And now, I'm looking into propaganda, which is fairly dry when one has learned most of this information from reading good literature. Great writers expose their readers to the world of lies, truth, and ways of thinking critically. A great reader doesn't always believe the narrator if they know what's good for them.

Here is a quote on how propagandists play with numbers:

"'2 out of 5 fatal automobile accidents was due to drinking. 33% of the drivers involved in fatal accidents had been drinking. 24% of the pedestrians involved in fatal accidents had been drinking. Therefore, alcohol intoxication is a major cause of automobile accidents and drunk driving must be dealt with harshly'

That logic sounds impressive, but it's completely wrong. Consider the reverse logic:

'3 out of 5 fatal automobile accidents did not involve drinking. 67% of the drivers involved in fatal accidents had not been drinking. And 76% of the pedestrians involved in accidents had not been drinking. Therefore, sobriety is undoubtedly the major cause of fatal automobile accidents, and sober driving must be outlawed immediately, and punished harshly'" ("Propaganda and Debating Techniques," A. Orange).

I don't know if we should be bandying those sober numbers about. A mother of a child who died at the hands of a sober driver may get ideas and form M.A.S.S. (Mothers Against Sober Sinners). We are at such a precarious point in our schizophrenic world that people would actually support banning sober drivers.

This is why we need to stop feeding our emotions and listening to those nasty adverts featuring the sobbing wife of a drunk husband who killed a father of a small and darling child with his car. It's pure emotion designed to pass a law which will eventually lead to another law and another until everyone is a criminal, and made to pay penance for farting and belching, or simply looking odd while driving.

I wish that those, especially the women, convicted of DUI and put through the illegal and humiliating treatment at the local gulag would put out an advert exposing the inhumane treatment they were subjected to.

At Least We'll Be Elegantly Destitute

"[T]he spirits of Americans are hitting record lows. People are becoming desperate to find something--anything--that will make them feel better, to do something to pick themselves up........We forecast that something will be 'Elegance' in its many manifestations. The trend will begin with fashion............a move toward quality and individuality--and will spread through all the creative arts, as the need for beauty trumps the thrill of the thuggish. A strong, do-it-yourself aspect will make up for reduced discretionary income, as personal effort provides the means for affordable sophistication" (Gerald Celente, "Breaking Point: Top Trends 2010").

I'm forecasting that big, bulky, top heavy and scruffy scarves will give way to trim and neat neck gear of finer fabrics.

Moccasins and ballet flats will give way to the penny loafer, and middle-aged men in the entertainment industry will stop with that affected froufy frousle-tousle hair do.

Plaid is in and will continue for several years because it is colorful in a drab world, classic, versatile, individual, and unpretentious. Some may choose plaid for its counterculture connotations and others may choose it for the association with that rebel William Wallace.

Will women return to skirts as every day wear, and men to ties? No. Women will not give up the pants, and men will not don the tie as an every day piece of clothing. It won't happen. Carhartt will happen.

And as a warning, even in the midst of the revival of elegance, poshlost will still thrive, and as usual, those who believe they are being elegant will only exhibit poshlost at its pinnacle. It may take a full body scan to expose who is elegant and who is carrying the element of poshlost. Of course, the truly elegant will not submit to a full body scan.

Poshlost:(Russian) vulgarity, triviality, banality, promiscuity, etc. "[T]he falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever..." (Vladimir Nabokov). "[O]ver concern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know" (Nabokov). "[C]omplacent mediocrity and moral degeneration" (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn).

"Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" (Bogart to Rains, Casablanca)