I managed to miss the first anniversary of the blog (3/26) and clearly I have been in absentia for some time. I made a pilgrimage to Cambodia which was eye opening. I was staggered to find such a disciplined people, largely very hopeful and generally very compassionate (95% are Buddhists). There are still landmines everywhere. The jungle is a constant threat both in terms of who lives there and its ability to grab back the land and all the temples. There is not enough money to fix most things and lots of foreign types are in residence as the leadership of the country is somewhat slow to act (new king and parliament, no real war crimes tribunal, too many Khmer Rouge still around). The foreign types can be restoring temples or they can be marrying poor and poorly educated Cambodian women for a fee. Soon they will be able to buy property.
With all that, the country maintains the rice loft of the world, literally the country floods and they get a special third harvest of superior rice. As the price of rice goes sky high, this may cause interesting affluence among a people who revere their land for reasons having nothing to do with interest in affluence. I was profoundly affected by my exposure to Cambodia and Cambodians and have found 2008 to be flooded with questions about happiness, fulfillment and artistic quality of life.
This reminded me of Daniel Kahneman and the aspiration treadmill (are you happier if you aspire to higher things) and lead me to Edge's on-line presence (http://www.edge.org, which is full of interesting thoughts by scientists and art types). This treadmill was a darling idea that he and his team had to abandon, yet it holds appeal.
As an artist on hiatus, off slogging it out in the money-world for awhile, I find that my happiness quotient is always higher when I am working on a new piece or project. Although I find fulfillment in being self-supporting, my work at ye old day job is never enough to sustain and nourish me thoroughly. But as soon as I pull out the vocal instrument, my camera or pencil, brush and paper, I am back on dry land feeling Csíkszentmihályi's famous flow.
Aspiring to create art helps to make me an artist. Producing quality work is another element. Just living an artistic life is not fulfilling. Is it what I expected in my 20's when I first chose to train and work as a singer? In part yes, because I had many mentors and heavy doses of realism helped keep me centered. Am I happy when seeing myself as only a part-time artist? Not as much, but it is a continuum. Performing too much commercial work wasn't great either. But taking a break to earn a different living from full-time performing has had some unexpected permutations. Not the least of which is that it turns out I learned a lot of good business practice managing my own vocal career and someone wants to pay me for that in a different field for awhile. Is it selling out? That will be determined by sticking to the path, getting back to full-time artistic practice in the timeframe I elected to create.
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Hello. This post is likeable, and your blog is very interesting, congratulations :-). I will add in my blogroll =). If possible gives a last there on my blog, it is about the Estabilizador e Nobreak, I hope you enjoy. The address is http://estabilizador-e-nobreak.blogspot.com. A hug.
Back in the old days when philosophy was still a vogue subject for many undergraduates, there was lots of talk about the word "being" and/or "human being." Such talk included discussions about human "nature"/human "essence" [that which lay behind human action at a fundamental level]. Some of this same material found its way into courses labeled "The Humanities." Literature, for example.
From the preceding angle it seems to me that the interests Gillian raises relate directly to the subject of being, that is, to who we are as humans and how we operate--special creatures embroiled in issues of aspiration, happiness, fulfillment, artistry, quality of life, risk, and flow. Sometimes we negotiate these things well, often we do not. How we put all this together goes to the heart of individual identity.
But where does all this activity come from? Where is it all situated/anchored? Is, in fact, the label human "being" a useful concept in today's world--something worth thinking about? Or are there related words that would serve the subject of "being" better? While I have no easy answers to these questions, I do think the concept of being however you name it remains an important/worthy subject. So I keep at it.
One of the challenges in using "being" as a working concept is its lack of cachet, that is, the word does not fit well with certain contemporary frames of reference, including frames steeped in secularism, relativism, and the postmodern. Nor does it fit with a number of today's popular undergraduate disciplines as they are currently practiced: sociology, anthropology, cultrual theory, political "science," business and economics. In fact, it is very hard to do necessary subterranean digging so that the concept of being has vitality and viability. Theologians try. As do some psychologists. And artists. But today most people prefer to think sociologically and horizontally, not metaphysically and vertically. Generally the former is easier. Why this is so is another question and/or subject for another post.
Moreover, it's my view that to get at many of Gillian's interests in a meaningful way, one needs to get behind the surface labels, do some digging, build a personal credo out of the discoveries, while at the same time becoming attentive to being as a living/breathing dynamic--all of which the better artists engage, often subliminally, within the immediacy of their own creative work. For them this endeavor/process is always exploratory and holistic.
Such activity will probably incorporate elements from the academic disciplines listed previously, but it will also demand that one move beyond these disciplines. Such action will most likely include movement that travels in a "religious" direction--whatever one's personal package of faith may be. For in the end, Gillian's interests are as much metaphysical as they are sociological and psychological--or so I believe. Of course, I could be wrong.
Thanks so much Gillian for opening up this area of exploration. As for my stuff, I really hope someone will poke holes in it, especially all the abstractions--my version of a jargon jungle.
Alas, insufficient sparkle and metaphor.
From David Mamet in this month's Vanity Fair: "My most marked characteristic is an all-inclusive, non-judgmental joy in the constantly diverting multipliticty of human beings. And foreigners."
Just a little wisdom from the theater....
In your second paragraph, I think theater is in the business of addressing what it means to 'be'. How many of us take up being, mess it up or get it right. So the topic is still good for today.
I want to take you up on your request for discussion on all the points you raise, but find that commenting to your comment is extraordinarily difficult because of the confines of this blog tool (I have to keep switching back and forth in very small windows).
Any chance you would attempt a post to which I can comment? I think you are getting somewhere important where you mention what is currently in vogue in the undergraduate curriculum. This is what Taleb's Black Swan is also ranting about. Not only do we bow to false experts in fields that don't really have experts (economics and the money arts), but we throw quite a lot of effort into fields that have nothing to do with 'being'.
And I would like to hear some of your thoughts on East v. West when it comes to being. This current anti-Islam stuff traipsing across the NYT is truly disturbing. Where does the Middle East fit...East? It seems in many ways to be of the West, even though Osama and co. would have it otherwise.
Let me pick up on a comment to be followed later by a post.
Can you give me a little more info on "Black Swan?"
I think we do bow to experts. For example, institutions are geared to to the "qualified." This can be seen in the way organizations pay people, scan resumes, hire people. It's all so top down, external and measurable (or so it is thought). In fact, the more expert you are, the more goodies you get. Whose calling the kettle black? To what end?
Along with notions of the expert come troubling dynamics that involve things like authority issues, power structures, status issues.
So I am coming to think that the notion of expertise has some earmarks of disease in our culture, that is, it easily destroys initiative, innovation, creativity, and self-worth. At least in certain people--often the "real" creative types. And it by nature pigeon-holes.
I am sure there is stuff to counter all this.
Finally, on the being and the East-West thing. I think Eastern as well as Western religion is full of it--starting with the wrings of the ever popular Dalai Lama.
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