Thursday, February 18, 2010

ON A CANOPY OF STARS SITS THE VAULTS OF HEAVEN

You know all their stories but none of their stories know you.And you've felt all their pain but their pain has never bothered feeling you.So you take their medicine. Even though you've had too much medicine.


Your shoulder hurts but you continue to let them lean,leaving less time to find your own prescription.

That is a post from one of the super coolest blogs around, "I Wrote This For You". The cat, Iain Thomas of South Africa who does the writing with his partner John Ellis providing photographs, have created something that resounds in the chambers of the soul.

Watching him do a TEDx talk on the You Tube a few weeks ago, he described what he does as writing 'ambiguous micro-stories'. He takes out much of what people use to shape a normal story, to allow the reader to insert themselves in and around those words. "There is no story that I can tell you, that is more powerful than the story you can tell yourself." And that is only partly true. People don't always tell themselves the truth and I think that diminishes whatever mythology that someone creates around the words.

That people are taking in information in smaller 'chunks' as he says in his talk, doesn't mean the way to go is cater to something that I feel is the 'lowest common denominator'. Instead of full and expanded characterizations, we have these thumbnail capsules of not only 'them' but of 'ourselves'. As a cat who likes to believe in abstract thought, I feel that we as human beings lose too much between the gaps of perception and our own actuality. We don't personalize with the person that we actually are, anymore. Somehow the journey within ourselves to find what is worthwhile has become too difficult and dangerous. We'd rather be told what we think, what we feel.

One example is the identity amplification that happens with music. The associative powers of music isn't new. It has been used to create images in the minds of men for time immemorial . But increasingly in the latter half of the past century music has been used as way to increase profit as well as the expansion of our artistic expression. The songs are themselves 'ambigous micro-stories' that have ulterior motives behind them.

I think the same thing will happen if the idea of micro-stories takes off. For me, there seems to be a 'settling' for the words of others to take up the space in their lives that is there because it is empty. And more often than not, that emptiness is a result of something that they did or did not do. I feel that a lot of people are taking the feelings that are in them and attaching them without exception, and believing that they are 'living the words and emotions' that are being given to them.

People want explinations for why they are in the straits that they are in. Overall, I felt that Iain spoke on several good points, especially when he talks about "You and I, we are the same." Like him, I too find a lot of comfort in the fact that we all share a lot of the same feelings and emotions. Some of us share enough of them that we feel an attachment to one another. Or so I want to believe.

LOVE & ROCKETS

Since being unique is something we all share as we sit at the table of life, I can hardly believe that I am the only person who saw the usefulness of that phrase in the signature of my letters. In fact, I am not the only person who saw the utility of the words! Not only is it the name of a band but a comic book (y'all tired of hearing about that? Too bad!! I am not tired of writing about it! Tell you why in a second!!) that I used to read in the 80's. So I can't claim it as anything, especially since I didn't do anything with it. Now had I put it in some teen angst novel or something, I would have a greater claim. As it is, all I can do is ask people who have moved me into the moldy and dusty corners of their lives if they remember when I would write them or insert those words in a conversation.

Would have been nice if I had. But that isn't what happened. What happened is what I think all the lost souls who live in the kind of anguish that folks in the bowge's of Hell are experiencing. Maybe I am overreaching, but I think I have made my arguement as far as why I think this way.

Missing my daughters always brings me back to when I was fresh faced and RFTW. And it also makes me come back to why I have rationialzed 'being lucky' as a substitute for not believing a world had collapsed when it really did. Although Pecan Sandie isn't quite as abrasive with me as my ex-wife, she has her moments as well. Lexxie had not acknowledged recieve her gift this week (Happy Birthday was the 11th), so I called to find out if it made it to her.

I don't know what was on Sandie's mind or what popped into it when I heard her voice. The timbre of it was so hollow but it was the change that it made to get there. Why did it have to change? From being enthused about whatever, to the enthusiam of Ben Stein in 'Ferris Bueller'... really, is that necessary?

Perhaps it is. I bring this up because of what I heard in those tones. And it took me back to high school... and recognizing that for me, the kind of party it was going to be.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

"You and I, we are the same". You're right. As men. As fathers. As people who must, in some way, relate to those around us, yes, we are the same. The things we say, feel and experience have much in common. But your life has taken a much different path than mine. Your life is full of experiences I will never get to - and vice versa. It's the willingness to understand that - the desire to explore that - the need to integrate that within the larger experience either one of us enjoys, that allows us to develop an 'attachment' to one another.

Ken Riches said...

I think there are a lot of people who are not honest with themselves, and will do anything to avoid looking inward. It is much easier to put on the victim glasses, take a drink from the glass of outrage, and bathe in the bath of dispair then look in the mirror and be honest.