Vain Verisimilitude 7/14/09

What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.

Friedrich Von Schlegel
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Leave your pistols at the door.
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One of the advantages or hindrances, depending on your point of view, of being an actor is a developed sensitivity to honest behavior. A good actor can spot phoniness within minutes. At that point the actor has to decide whether or not he is going to play the game. Since I really dislike phoniness I'm neither comfortable nor acceptable in what's known as "polite society" simply because I don't want to join in the masquerade of verisimilitude and "polished caricature."

It has caused a lot of criticism to float my way on the gossamer wings of patronizing dismissal. "He just doesn't fit in, poor fellow." Good. I don't want to "fit in." I'd rather be alone than to be a phoney. I guess that's why I'm a vagabond.

Then there's the self-appointed couturier "My dear, you should never wear that shirt with those pants." As if the devil is going drag me down to hell if I don't appear in the latest fashion. Let him try it.

I was once attending a reception for a couple who were getting married. After trying to mix in with the other people around the cocktail lounge and not doing it very well, we were invited into the dining room. There was a string quartet playing in the corner and all the waiters were in full livery. When I went to the table assigned to me and found there was no seat for me I said silently "Oh, thank you." I left, bought a hot dog and a can of beer, went back to my apartment and dined royally. Social graces are not my forte. Bill can attest to that.

I did a recording session one day in New York for a client I had been working for for several years. On this day there was a new director. She came on strong with hardness and an insulting manner with everyone. There is a protocol for working in a recording studio which is in place because it allows the work to be done efficiently and up to the best quality. Anyone who works in the business knows that. It soon became obvious to me that this woman didn't know what she was doing. But instead of leaving it up to those who did she barked nasty at everyone, trying to indicate her superiority. She didn't fool any of us. After she left we all agreed not to take up that contract again.

Phoniness is by no means confined to the upper classes. It exists on the street, though in different forms. The guy who shakes your hand and calls you "bro" might be reaching for your wallet.

Watch out for the politician, the pastor, the salesman, the lawyer and the teacher. The best thing to do is to develop a sense of the phoney, be alert to caricature instead of character, check for it in others and yourself and don't be fooled.

DB - The Vagabond
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Pick a happy thing and think about it.
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SUMMER QUIZ

This is not a contest.



A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.



Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars, or the equivalent of whatever your currency is, what are the first three things you would do with it?



You have all summer to answer if you wish.

12 responses so far.



DB

Unreliable Understanding 7/13/09

Don't believe everything you think.

Unknown
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Hello again.
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There are too many questions. I think I know answers. But I don't believe it because every now and then I have to throw out one of those answers.

It becomes a very frustrating thing to face infinite ambiguity as one's mind opens up to realize how much we don't know. Even the most courageous thinker will give in to that frustration sometimes and decide something is true without challenging it. We all come into any level of consciousness with a bag of ideas from the past; opinions, prejudices, simplicities, rules for this and that activity and behavior confuse us and hold us in tethers.

One of the things about the mind is that, like the heart and lungs, it never stops working as long as we're alive. But how much control do we actually have over what it does, especially now that we know that some if its activity is unconscious.

If you commit a crime, if you kill, wound, rob, rape, damage property, slander, a court will decide if you did it and what your punishment is. But the court has no jusridiction over your thoughts. If you have thoughts of rage, hate, revenge, lust and other negatives you may never carry them out, because of you own sense of ethics. And you may say "Oh, I would never do anything like that." But you are having the same thoughts as the felon who did. So what, after all, is the difference?

Then these questions arise. Where do these thoughts come from? Do I own them? Do they come from me? Are they from my imagination, from some collective unconsciousness or from some diabolical mental swamp? Those are questions that have been puzzling philosophers, psychiatrists and theologians for a long time. And have they come up with any solid answers that they all agree on? Not as far as I know. I know what I think. But I don't believe what I think. What do you think?

DB
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Let the sun on you, or the rain, whatever nature gives.
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Tomorrow's Trust 7/12/09

Every person should believe they are reborn each day.

Baal Shem Tov
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Draw up a chair.
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One of the things we can be sure of in life is that, except under extraordinary circumstances, when we wake up we will be in exactly the same place we were when we went to sleep, physically and mentally. We may travel far, see wonders or do them in our dreams, but we'll make it back in time for the waking up process. We may even have realizations in our dreams and a solution to a problem, but when the eyes open the problem is still there to be solved. So how can we believe that we are born again?

Being born is a chance at life. We are born with life and not much else. The rest we have to grow into. And then we have the opportunity to make something out of this life we have. It's a trust, in a way, an obligation, a responsibility. Some of us do a better job of it than others, but we all do something. And everyday offers the chance to take a step toward making it right or, at least, better.

When I was the morning disc jockey for a radio station I would always say at one point, usually around sunrise, "Thank goodness we have another day on our hands." I got a lot of very favorable response from people over that remark. They said it made them feel more in charge of their lives. They said it gave them confidence and courage, a fresh start to their lives.

What is a fresh start but being reborn? None of us really knows what's going to happen during any of our days, but to begin the day with a fresh start by claiming for ourselves joy, success, harmony, right activity and appreciation for life, as our rights for living, though it may sound too rosy in the face of our troubles, has the power of a new birth behind, under and in front of it.

DB - Vagabond
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Send out some happy signals to someone today.
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Synergetic Solidarity 7/11/09

It is not the one branch that has strength but the many branches bound together in a bundle that cannot be broken.

Chief Sitting Bull
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How do you do?
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I could speak of armies. But I don't know armies.
I could speak of ball teams. But I don't know ball teams.
I could speak of construction crews. But I don't know construction crews.
I could speak of theatre companies. And I will, because I know theatre companies.
I could speak of orchestras. And I know something about orchestras.

One of the most interesting and exciting things to me about working in the theatre most of my life was the sense of the ensemble. Everyone involved in a performance is important, from the leading player to the stage manager's second assistant. Everyone is requited to be at a specific place at every point in the play and perform a specific function, whether it's to speak a line or change a piece of scenery. A theatre company consists of a cast and a crew and they are equally important even though the audience never sees the crew. I once did a play in which I had to go off stage, get a sword and bring it back on. I had no time to go looking for it. It had to be done almost instantly. At every performance the was a young man, a member of the crew, waiting to hand me the sword.

When the cast and crew are working together as a well trained team, even emergencies can be quickly solved. In another play I had to make some drinks at an upstage bar. I had very little time to do it and one night I broke one of the glasses. Shortly after that my character left the stage for a minute. When I got off stage I told the crew member stationed there that I broke a glass, She immediately said "Okay, I'll take care of it." When the lights went up for the next scene the broken glass was gone.

On the stage the actors depend on each other to be where they are supposed to be and say what they are supposed to say so that the other actor gets the right cues for his own speech and actions. If you see a fight scene in a play it has been carefully choreographed and rehearsed so that all the actors involved know exactly what they are going to do. They depend on each other. No one gets hurt.

Ask a musician in a great orchestra and he will talk about the other musicians. They are interdependent. They have to be. The violinist listen to the flute, the flutist listens to the horn and the horn player listens to the drum. They play together. It doesn't happen by accident.

When that synergy is absent it's obvious in both theatre and music. There are some actors who are not team players. We call them "prima donnas." Some of them are well known. They will grab attention and focus, and they will not care about cooperation in the process of the performance. They will frequently get a lot of applause because of it. But what the audience doesn't see is the compensation and adaptation the rest of the company has to make, which they can do because they are a company of people working together. But with a prima donna on stage that sense of ensemble is missing and the chain is broken. A prima donna in an orchestra would not last another day.

I love the theatre because of the wonderful coming together and team forming of a bunch of different people with different lives, deffernt personalities, histories and experience, for the successful creation of a work of art.

DB - The Vagabond
__________________
Good sailing.
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Rich Revealing 7/10/09

Art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision.

Herbert Read
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Hail.
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Imagine if one day you had a beautiful vision and you wrote it down as a poem upon an arrow and signed it, then strung a bow and shot that arrow into the sky so high and so far that it didn't fall to the earth for a hundred years in some far off remote place. And imagine that, after many years, someone was passing by that remote place, saw the arrow, picked it up and read the poem. And then suppose that he took the arrow home and copied out the poem. Then suppose he got the poem published so that other people could read it. And suppose some of those people memorized the poem and went around reciting it to other people. And suppose the poem was included in collections of poetry and college textbooks on poetry so that you and the poem became famous.

One of the most frustrating ironies of life is that works of art not only struggle to be born but then have to struggle to survive. The world has already prepared a large collection of blocks and holes for the genius of an artist to fall into or stumble over. The easiest thing for an artist to do is to give up. And many do. And when they do a special vision is lost to the world.

It takes an army to protect poetry from the unconscionable hatred of the limited, mortal world for anything that challenges it's supposed dominance over our lives.

A poet is one who sees beyond the observable, which holds it's ugly head up in arrogance, to the unobservable. Unobservable that is except by vision and inspiration. And as soon as he articulates what he sees the claws come out. The very heart, soul and spirit of a artist can be shredded by ignorance, arrogance, disrespect and dismissal.

So why do it? Why is there art? An artist is an artist because he has to be. It is a singular, solitary encampment against an indifferent enemy, It is a desperate love affair with the gossamer zephyrs. It is an agreement with an invisible partner who may be angelic or diabolic, the artist doesn't know nor care. But what he does know is that if the invisible partner ever leaves him he takes the meaning of the artist's life with him.

The future and the past are inextricably linked. The future and the past are dependant upon each other. The past becomes the future once it squeezes through the tight fisted grasp of the present, with its fads and prejudices. Every work of art is an arrow that has been shot, some near, some far, and thus became the future. Today is the day for the artist to string his bow.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
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Applaud the good stuff.
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SUMMER QUIZ

This is not a contest.


A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.


Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars, or the equivalent of whatever your currency is, what are the first three things you would do with it?


You have all summer to answer if you wish.

11 responses so far.


DB

Quantity Quest 7/09/09

Healthy is the conflict between the limits of our understanding and the need to gain more.

DB - The Vagabond
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Come with me.
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One day, some years ago, I went into the Museum of Natural History on West 79th Street in New York City, a place I enjoyed visiting frequently since I was a boy. On that day, just inside the door, there was a table draped in black cloth with two armed guards next to it. On the table was a box made out of bullet proof glass on all four sides and the top. Inside the box there was a pedestal. On the pedestal was a small tripod. And sitting on the tripod was an object about the size of the end of your thumb. It was well lit from all directions. It sparkled innocently.

What was it? A fabulously valuable diamond? The key to paradise? A winning lottery ticket?

It was none of those, or all of those. It was a gift to the Museum from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It was a piece of the precious cargo brought back to earth by the Apollo 11 astronauts.

MOON ROCK

I stared at that wee pebble for quite a while. "It's just a rock. What's the big deal?" Imagine what Socrates, Copernicus or Galileo would say if they could have looked that stone in the eye. They could tell you what the big deal is.

NASA has a TV program about the Apollo 11 mission which they show occasionally on their TV channel. In it there's a picture of a scientist studying a moon rock. Is he a geologist, a chemist, a physicist? Seeing that picture I hear the rumblings of centuries of scientific curiosity, investigation and discovery. I hear the silent high tide waves of everything that scientist knows as he peers in awe at a bit of the universe he has never seen before and ponders it's secrets.

We can never understand enough. How exciting it is to discover some new knowledge, to have the freedom to discover. There are those who would clamp down a lid on investigation and innovation. We may even do that ourselves. What a shame.

But as long as we exist we will walk on the starscapes of the mind, pick up the rocks and discover their secrets. We have only just begun.

DB
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May joy fall on your head.
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Purposeful Persuasion 7/08/09

Knowing what must be done does away with fear.

Rosa Parks
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Good day. I hope you can read this posting, because I still can't.
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This is a true story, told to me by the two people involved. I will try faithfully to reconstruct as much of it as I can remember.

Many years ago I was visiting my Aunt Emily at her place in upstate New York. While I was there Emily had invited this couple over for dinner. She told me the woman had been crippled for about 25 years, but that her husband would take her out in her wheelchair during the nice weather, they still went places and they had a fascinating story to tell. When they arrived I could see that she was indeed in a wheelchair and he was pushing her into Emily's house. I also noted that they were an elderly couple. After dinner Emily coaxed them to tell me the story of the burning house.

They had been living in a remote place down a country road. He drove home one afternoon to find that the house was on fire. He rushed inside and everything was burning, hot cinders were flying everywhere, pieces of the wall were braking off and the place was think with smoke, He rushed through the flames into the bedroom where his wife was lying unconscious in the bed, The room was full of smoke. It was painfully hot. A burning cinder had landed on the bed and a sheet was burning, He threw the sheet off, picked up his wife and carried her through the flaming house to a field across the road, where he stretched her out on the ground. Then he drove three miles to the nearest neighbor to ask them to call the fire department and an ambulance, which they did. He then drove back to be with his wife who was still unconscious. Soon fire trucks arrived and went to work on the fire. After that came an ambulance. When he saw the ambulance he picked up his wife and took her over to it, explained to the attendants what had happened. They put her on a stretcher and took her to the hospital,

He stayed until the fire was out but the house was destroyed. Then he went to the hospital where his wife was sitting up in bed wide awake.

She told me that when the bedroom was filling up with smoke she called for him but he wasn't there. She said she knew he would be back sooner or later. She said she must have passed out, when she woke up in the hospital she didn't now where she was. She was dizzy.and had a headache. She was glad to see him come into the hospital room. She was relieved that he was okay.

They had lost everything. A neighbor took them in and very soon he had found another place for them to live.

I asked him if he was frightened of the fire when he went into the house. He said no he was only thinking about getting his wife out of there.

It's an amazing story. But here's the most remarkable part. I asked him when all this happened. He said "Just last year." He was 78. His wife was 74.

Vagabond Journeys
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Look up. Things are looking up.
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SUMMER QUIZ

This is not a contest.



A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.



Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars, or the equivalent of whatever your currency is, what are the first three things you would do with it?



You have all summer to answer if you wish.

7 responses so far.



DB