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Ask Dr. Druid . Day 36
<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Paris, France
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Druids have always believed in an absolute democracy of knowledge – or more important of knowing. (Not so much the stuff, but the process.) The treasure, the golden, the untarnishable joy is knowing and sharing it with abandon and glee, with reverence, reverie, and revelry.
I imagine it would be levitatingly fine to go to Paris, France. But not everyone gets to see the Seine. Yet they must not have lives of regret. The druid point is to be jolly and amazed wherever you are. Not some ‘positive thinking’ abstraction, but honed & honeyed perception. Besides, think of how well that’ll serve you if you get to Paris, France.
It is the eternal birthright of consciousness to bloom. A fine and dandy and handy curiosity. Rhapsodic outsight & insight, a woven song. Freedom of knowledge/knowing is the 1st freedom or the zero freedom, the foundation and the vault, the out-of-which all incandescence.
I taught in Adult Education for twenty-five years and I saw people not value their band because they weren’t Mick Jagger. Not value their vacation because it was never Paris, France. Not value their painting because they didn’t make a living at it. How rotten is that? Where did we get so knee-jerk in welding money or fame and value?
When I started doing stained glass, I thought I would die with the beauty of the colors and the chickadee/small bird glee in making a box or mirror or clock where I had cut all the shimmering glass and laid all the solder. I learned to do both the lead and Tiffany styles. I learned it well enough to exhilaratedly teach it in Adult Education. Then I fell into the terrible trap of thinking that I had to validate my stained glass by selling it. I came to hate doing it. I had to make the same or similar items over and over for economies of time and scale. I never got to experiment with bizarre but instructive failures.
I met this guy who had made cool and eccentric bird houses. He sold a few now & again at a local flea market for grins but his mother talked him into trying to ‘Get Serious and organized and really sell a line of bird houses.’ It all but broke his heart. He had loved and crafted his unique bird houses and now the zigzagging originality, the quixotic fun had gone out of it. Think how Mick Jagger feels that all anyone really wants to hear is ‘Satisfaction.’ Nobody gives a damn about his new ballad, ‘Buried in Ostrich Feathers.’
You may get to go to Paris, France. You may get to be Mick Jagger. That’ll take care of itself. I’m interested in the hours when you aren’t in Paris, France and aren’t Mick Jagger. Druidry has to do with the kind of cooking chefs do for themselves and their friends at home. Expert but daily.
The Brits have this concept of the gifted amateur. Someone good enough to be a professional, but who does something else for the rent and pursues the craft or the game or the art for its own exact and quirky sake. Remember, someone is going to be fixing the car, washing the dishes in the restaurant, digging the ditches, washing the windows. All this hurrah about everybody following their bliss for money is blindered codswallop. Billions of people on this VuraEarthGoo have beastly or not so grand jobs. Those jobs exist. Those jobs are going to be done by some body. Those folks have the right to as much bliss as the next doodette or dood. Bliss what you follow. The art and the job for rent. Myself, I wash windows for the rent. It’s honest work. And proves my point. That we could share the grottier jobs around and still all get grokked out with mirthmost merriment.
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Notes:
I haven't put my mind to the distribution scheme of the necessary work, but guess it'll be something like a fab Russian sci fi story I read once where every six months in the mail you got a note about your job for the next six months. (If you know the author of this story, I adore to find it out again. Pls leave in Comment.) Neurosurgeon three weeks a month and dishwasher at the Ritz for one week a month, or somesuch. I'm not wed to any scheme yet — just to the principle that all bipeds are actually created equal. What a novel idea to mean it.
I've long felt we should require all elected public officials to live on minimum wage and take public transportation for one week of every month, they're in office. See oh see how quickly minimum wage would Rise and how much oftener clean buses would show up.
.. VuraEarthGoo .. Vuravura, Earth, & Jeegoo are all names for our Home Planet.
Ask Dr. Druid, 66 Days from Lead to Gold, Secrets of Alchemy You Can Use, a druid shaman’s playbook .. Intro; Prologue; Day 1; Days 2 & 3; Day 4; Day 5; Day 6; Day 7; Day 8; Day 9; Day 10; Day 11; Day 12; Day 13; Day 14; day 15 Review 2; Day 16; Day 17; Day 18; Day 19; Day 20; Day 21; Day 22; Day 23; Day 24; Day 25; Day 26; Day 27; Day 28; Day 29; Day 30; Day 31; Day 32; Day 33; Day 34; Day 35; Day 36;
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If you know or are an agent, aspiring agent, editor, or publisher person who would handle this kind of druid material, please let me know at .. askdrdruid@gmail.com. Please put ‘agent’ in the subject line.
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.. keep your heart bright. beauty is rising.
.for bombadilobo & diablobo.
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the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..
.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military-Corporate Budget on education instead ..
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I absolutely agree that we've lost an appreciation for doing or learning to do things well on our own terms. I often think about baseball. Because of television and radio, we see it played at near super-human levels (even without performance enhancers) constantly as if that's the only form of the sport. We not only forget that there are thousands of others who are extremely skilled playing the game, but we lose interest in playing any kind of sport ourselves because it's not what we see on tv.
I think it's worse with music.
In the process, it becomes something for the talented or worse the recognized.
I also agree that the matter of learning one's art can be antithetical to the business of promoting one's art or skill. That's even true though in the window washing business though.
I think you do see the problem of not playing ourselves (sports, music, painting) because the superb freaks are lauded so absurdly even obscenely and the 'process of learning and doing your own best,' that ruby beyond price — indeed the only ruby is diminished or disappeared. The learning anxiety I saw among adults was utterly intense — and that was among the folks who managed to get there. The fear of losing face. 90% of my task wasn't teaching the material, but cajoling and conning them out of this harshest Inner Judgmentalness.
As I told another dear friend recenty a key is to make achievable art-goals [art, sport, music, etc] and add to them rather than grandiose goals & disappoint yourself inevitably. And remember to send the Inner Perfectionist to Fiji for grog and hire on an Inner Cheerleader to whisper sweet somethings into your ear while the Inner Perf is on vacation. (If one's Inner Perfectionist was Really Perfect, s/he would cheerfully arrange for you to have a relaxed & delightful time doing all the projects + the dishes.) Ah, “the recognized” as you so pithily put it, cl.
I am touched by your reminding us that so many people never get to “see the Seine” yet have the same right to joyous lives as the Seine seeers.
I agree with Mr. Lucky (Ms. Lucky? I'm guessing Mr. because I've not met many women who would say “I often think about baseball.”) that TV and other influences make us passive in creativity. I think probably few people ever think Creative means them. Do the Rich really want a bunch of creative people possibly threatening their easy booty? Creative people might be awake and see that they're being taken for suckers.
I really like the idea of “chickadee glee.” I'm intrigued by the hopefulness of the small present delights.
temps, I'm a recovering sucker who's for art and honed eyes rather than guillotines, in fact, tho I'm clearly not against some verbal rabble rousing.
Mr. Lucky is always perspicacious.
esfera, fascinatingly not only my Beloved Cat Frolic, but also my new adorable finch visitors can detect attention. I've noticed that when 8-12 of them are nibbling on the thistle seed in their finch sock feeder, if I stare too intently at them, they fly away. I may gaze in short bursts of gazing at them, but if I 'harden' my look into a stare, swoosh, they're off. Apparently there is a degree of attention that alarms them. *I* only mean intense interest, but they feel potential predator interest, apparently.