I Officially Blew My Own Mind This Week

Gosh, where do I begin? Sometimes I think too much. Every now and again you start thinking about something and it just balloons out of control until very fabric of your reality is challenged. This week has been such a week.

First I started thinking about the orbit of the moon. No problem there - right? The moon spins around in a circle around the Earth about once a month. Well, actually it's kind of an ellipse because of inertia. But then I removed my vantage point from Earth and started to look at the moon's motion relative to the sun. What I found astounded me and led to even bigger discoveries. (I'm not the first to realize these thing - I found plenty of Internet data to support my findings). Picture this: a bicycle wheel at night with a reflector at the tire end of the spoke. The reflector is the moon and the hub of the wheel the Earth. Say the bicycle is travelling over a large arc, like a hill. This is the Earth's orbit around the sun (also elliptical). As the hub moves through space, the reflector is sometimes nearest the ground and sometimes highest above it. It's high position corresponds to a full moon, when the sun is shining on the face toward us. The low position would be a new moon, when its face is in shadow. If you were 100 feet away from the bicycle shining a light at it from the side, you would see the reflector appear to jump in a series of arcs because as the reflector orbited around the hub, it would hit its low point and then come up the back of the wheel as it went forward through space. So the moon, relative to the sun is jumping in similar arcs, not going around in circles but bulging out in a flower petal pattern. The effect is not that dramatic because of the largeness of the Earth's orbit. But it does not move the way we always imagined it did.

Still with me? I haven't got to the good part yet.

So this got me thinking about one of my favorite subjects - Relativity. Everything in the universe is in relative motion to everything else. There is no center from which all motion is measured - at least we haven't found it. Since we are always moving (we are never really still till death) and our planet is rotating and revolving around the sun (which it's not - but I'll get to that) And the sun is moving in a spiral galaxy that itself is moving, then at any given moment, the space we are taking up is different. You can look at an "unmoving" object like a rock and say that it is never at the same place twice because in spacetime it will always have new coordinates every time you measured it, if you had anything to measure spacetime against. So every moment, the universe is created anew.

The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead had an idea that actual entites, as he called them (the smallest bits of the stuff of reality), are alway in a state of becoming. And their becoming is also their demise as they pass on their qualities to the next actual entity. It's as if an atom does not exist through time, but passes on its qualities to a new atom with each move through spacetime.

So now the fun part. Since the sun is not just sitting still at the center of our solar system, but in actuality is also moving through space, then instead of having elliptical orbits and coming back to the same place every year (one revolution around the sun), the planets are actually following the sun in a helical motion, corkscrewing their way through spacetime. We see the sun in the same place every solstice, but it is not the same place at all, and we are many miles from where we started. Once you see the sun as being in motion, you start to get a little dizzy. Picture the solar system on its side, the planets spinning clockwise around the sun. This is the view you would have if you were to see it from Polaris, the north star. Now imagine that the sun is speeding away from you and the planets, while orbiting, are caught up in its gravity and are spiraling in a giant corkscrew through space, the moons in even tinier corkscrews.

So forget everything you thought you knew about planetary motion. It's not that what you were taught was wrong, per se, it's just that it doesn't take Relativity into account. The fabric of reality is dynamic and every moment everything changes. We have the illusion of constancy because our minds are only capable of registering images that are at least 1/24th of a second long. This is why movie frames (before digital) moved at the speed of 24 frames per second. Because that looks like reality to us. It is the illusion of motion. Who knows at what speed we would have to go to see reality as it really is instead of the illusion of motion that   we are used to seeing. Obviously we can examine a still frame from a film. Imagine a movie camera that could capture a billion frames a second. Would the still frames show us the pulses of matter moving through spacetime? Would we see the actual entites passing on their data to the next? What is the nature of reality? We think we are the same person from birth to death, but we are never the same in any two moments. Was it Zeno who said, "You can never step in the same river twice?" Life is like that. Constantly new.

Art or Craft?

Above is a recently begun work of cut paper. I wanted to show my working method, which is just to cut without any prescibed lines. It looks easy if you're just looking at what's left. But what I'm really doing is cutting away negative space leaving what look like lines behind. Sometimes I have to cut triangles that are no bigger than a millimeter. It takes an intense concentration to see where everything's going.  But I have to ask myself, "Is this an art, or is it merely a craft?" Many artists, especially those with big egos, look down on craft as somehow not intellectual enough. My idea of what separates art from craft comprises two things: Art has an emotional element that craft usually doesn't. And Art cannot be replicated whereas craft can be made again and again. So, yes, with great effort this piece could be replicated, but so could the Mona Lisa. And does this piece have an emotional element? That's a bit harder. I'm not thinking emotionally when I make these cuttings. It is purely intellectual. But the idea of beauty is ever-present, so in that sense, I guess it is emotional. Is it more than just a decoration? Again, I'm not sure it has to be. But it is not merely made for the eye - if that were the case I would certainly draw things out first and make sure I had a beautiful composition. But these pieces go straight from my gut to the paper - it's about the beauty I feel in living. It's about the joy of being a thinking, sentient being. It's a celebration of all the years I've spent studying art and art history. It's funny, when I paint, I have the whole of art history to carry on my shoulders. It informs every stroke I make. But when I cut, I am free of that yoke. It is a totally new means of expression for me. Sure, people have cut paper as long as there has been paper. But no one's ever done this quite like I'm doing it. In that it is unique and not reproduceable. So, though I don't know where to place it in the annals of art history, I suppose it is art.

 

Obligations?

Way back before we were human, whatever that is, we developed social groups because we found it easier to protect ourselves - safety in numbers - and to hunt and gather food. It was also easier to find mates if you were kind to them (sharing food and protection). Much like modern day non-human primates, our packs, or tribes, or whatever you want to call them, consisted of a restricted number of individuals, all somehow related. You could call them families. These families needed every member to fulfill a role - raising the young, finding the food, fending off predators, etc. It wasn't a very complicated life. From this sharing of basic values, we started to develop what eventually became love.

In Greek, their are five words I know that speak of different aspects of love. Mania is the first. It is a love of lustful want, a desire to possess. Eros is the kind of love that can be sexual or emotional passion. Philos is brotherly love (Philadelphia - the city of brotherly love. You think it was an accident that the Tom Hanks movie was set there?). It is the love that we have for our fellow humans. Storgy is the kind of love a parent feels for her offspring. It speaks of dependency and affection. Finally there is Agapeo, which is a total, openness to everything the loved one is. It is acceptance without judgment. It is love because we choose to love and has nothing to do with what the lover is getting in return.

As love developed in our early human stages, we first went through Eros and Mania, being sexual, needful creatures, to storgy, feeling for those we were dependent on and who depended on us. Then we developed  Philos as we started to see others like ourselves. The one remaining, Agapeo, is one which is still seldom practiced and which we still may be on the verge of developing.

I asked myself why this is: Why can't human beings simply love each other for the sake of love? Why can't we take care of one another simply because it is the right thing to do? And I found a startling answer: because we don't have to. In modern day America, family members do not depend on each other for survival. We still have Storgy love with our young, and Eros is alive and well. Mania has become a disease. But even Philos is getting rarer, not to speak of Agapeo. We see Philos when natural disasters strike. We see it on a small scale when neighbors and friends get together. But Agapeo seems to be the love of the Buddha, or of Jesus, or Gandhi. They loved totally because they wanted to - they felt it was the right thing to do.

Our motivations are so often about what we will get in return. Reward or punishment? It is how a child learns to behave. If we could only teach our children to love without any return. If only we could all practice Agapeo we would all be taken care of where we need it the most - our sense of self-worth. But we don't have to. We think that our material needs are more important, and those needs are met by the sweat of our brow. We no longer have packs to protect us or help us get food or mates. We are all individuals, and we are more or less alone. If we're lucky we have a life-partner, but that's as much as most people get. We might feel Agapeo love for them, but our motivations are still often childlike - we want something in return.

So what is our obligation to love? We really have none. We don't have to help anyone or be kind to anyone. It will not help us to survive as individuals. And we are just not that concerned about the survival of our species, being as there are now seven billion of us. And why should we do something that does not help us survive as individuals or as a species? There is the concept of the Right - the Good. We don't know where it originated, but we have a general idea of what it means. We say that growing up is learning the difference between Right and Wrong. But it can be so much more than that. Doing Right makes us feel good. Agapeo makes us feel good. So all actions can be said to be self-motivated. We do what we feel is Right. Even martyrs do what they do because it makes them feel part of the Right. Some do Right for a supposed eternal reward. I say we should all strive to do right because we all need to feel better about ourselves.

I don't see a lot of happy people in the world. They were not taught Agapeo and so they cannot know how good it feels. And you can't practice something that you were never taught. Work on Philos, and you may feel spikes of Agapeo. Practice all the many kinds of love. They all feel good. Do it because it is right, as abstract as that is. Now that we're successful as animals, let's work on being successful as sentient beings. Let's stress the oneness of all life. All of life is perceived by your mind and your experience of life is happening inside you. Don't leave it up to others to love. No one has to. Do it because you want to. Agapeo. It's acceptance of all that is.

Anticipation

It is said that we get just as much, if not more, pleasure anticipating something as we do when we get it. So much of our life is spent waiting. We are time-driven animals, always looking for the next good thing to come along. Do you think a spider really waits for a fly to come along into its web? I think, rather, that it just exists in a state of non-waiting, perfectly content just to exist. Then, when the fly comes, he deals with it. You might think by its excited behavior when you come home that your pet has been waiting for you all day. But if you secretly videotaped him will you were out, you would probably see a very peaceful animal, content just to be.

But we humans are in a constant state of waiting. Right now in my life, I'm waiting for about a dozen things to happen. I am under the delusion that when these things happen, I will be somehow happier. In truth, I will gain some happiness, but will already be looking for the next big thing to come along. Then I will be happier still.

I have submitted two pieces of art to a juried competition, and am waiting to see if I will get in. If I do, I will then wait to see if I've won any prize, and wait to see if my work sells. If it sells, I will wait to see if one particular piece, an intricately cut piece of paper, will help me get into a gallery that has expressed interest in these pieces. This will put me in the state of waiting to see if my work gains any attention, and if so, if I can parlay that into a broader part of my art career, enabling me to make more income and possibly leave my current job, which is not very fulfilling, and take part-time work somewhere. Then I will wait for my career to blossom so that I can get more recognition and apply for a teaching position somewhere. So much waiting.

In music, I am waiting for my good friend and musical partner, Bob Elliott, to finish one particular song which will be on our next album, "Dreamtown." Most of the recording had been finished a while ago, but Bob had some remodeling to do on their house, plus he had to go back to his teaching job, plus plan his mom's 75th birthday party and some other pressures. So I had to wait. He rewrote a complete lyric (for the better) and now I'm waiting for him to send me the data so I can record my harmony vocals. Then I'll send it back to him and he'll do the mixing and mastering, which I'll wait for some more. Then when he sends the completed CD, I'll take it in to get it duplicated and have the artwork printed and the jewel cases put together. More waiting. Then we have to distribute it. We have no real plan for this, but we want to get it out to as many people as possible, because it's the best music we've ever done, and we've done a lot of music. Then we'll have to wait for people's responses.

I've also been sending in a lot of music to publishers, and people who license music for TV, film, and advertising. Still waiting for responses. Some of them say to wait four to six months before they'll get back to you. By then, I will have forgotten what I'm waiting for. I've also recently signed with Renegade Music Marketing, who will plug my songs for the same industry. They guarantee 50 solicited plugs - that is, people have to request music from them - a year. Something's bound to come from all this waiting.

I've also been waiting for an editor to read and make notes on one of my stories. Finally that waiting is over. She got back to me, loved the story, and made a lot of very poignant notes on how to make things better. Now I'm waiting for a workshop that I'm taking with author Nancy Kress in November. I'm waiting to see if she likes what I wrote and provides any connections or ideas that would help me publish.

I'm waiting for so many things to happen so that I can build a different kind of scaffold on which to hang my life's work. I'm waiting to be out of my unfulfilling job and spending more of my energy creating art - visual art, music, and writing. While I wait, I'm doing what I can. I'm painting, I'm writing, I'm composing and recording. I guess like the farmers of old, you wait for your crops to grow - you can't do otherwise. You pull the weeds and water. You do the work you have to. Hopefully come harvest time, you can celebrate the bounty.

I have so much more to say - but you'll just have to wait.

Turning a Corner

That's an interesting phrase, "Turning a corner." Because corners are angular, not round. And you have to go around them in a squarish fashion. And turning denotes a circular function. Maybe it comes from furniture making, where you would turn a square piece of wood on a lathe to make it round. But that's not why I'm writing today. Today I want to tell you the story of a painting which was being stubborn, because I would not allow it to be what it wanted. The painting above, "High Rock Lake," was made from a recent memory of a trip to North Carolina. My girlfriend's sister lives on this lake with her husband. This is the view that we had as we sat in the summer heat drinking cool drinks and watching the dozens of hummingbirds that would come to their three feeders.

As I painted this months later, I naively and hopefully thought that Jan's sister would buy it when it was finished. I mentioned it to her and she gave it some thought. But there was something about this tranquil scene that I just couldn't capture - my memory was of sunlight on olive green water interrupted by the tall, straight poles of trees. Those were all the elements I was working with. It seemed that it should've been easy. But night after night I changed this and that and still the painting just was not working. Then Lisa, the sister, emailed me to say she was just not interested. That very night I felt freed up to make, not HER painting, but mine. I had been trying to see through someone else's eyes, and alas, I could not. I was trying to please her instead of pleasing myself. As soon as I realized what I had been doing, I painted out all the sacred cows that I had been unable to touch. I added trees where there were no trees, I changed the kinds of trees and covered up most of the sky I had fought so hard to preserve. I put in a great blue heron, an osprey, and even a snowy egret that is just a spec on the opposite shore. I painted new light on the water, going right over the trees, which I then wiped clean with a rag.

In short, I took my painting back. Not selling it was the best thing that could've happened. It helped me turn the corner.

What's wrong with communism?

I know that title sounds flippant, but notice that I spelled communism with a small "c." The big "C" Communism has plenty wrong with it, and so much has been written about it that I would just be echoing voices of the past to say anything against it. As a political ideology, it proposes violent revolution - the workers must forcefully take power and wealth from the Bourgoisie, because they'll never give it up voluntarily. I'm a devout pacifist, and would never back the violent overthrow of anything. I'd rather try the non-violent overthrow - it worked for Gandhi.

The main gist of Communism is something like: From each according to his ability; to each according to his need. Of that much, Jesus and the Buddha and many others, including myself, would approve. That's almost like saying, "Love your neighbor as yourself." What we have we should give to those who are in need. We are born with certain talents and develop many others. We gain knowledge and wisdom and wealth as we pass through life. There are many people in need of your knowledge, your skills your wealth, and your talents. So it sounds easy enough to just help people in need with the resources at hand. Why, then, don't we do it?

Well, I'll tell you. It has to do with Evolution. It is thought that a male mockingbird's skill at mimicry might be a way to show a female that he has been more than around the block a few times. He has ranged far afield, facing who-knows-what dangers and perils - and he has survived and thrived. The more bird songs he collects (and car horns and other sounds) the more he can demonstrate to a potential mate what a strong. swift and clever bird he is. Good genes means offspring who are more likely to thrive as well. And all life has but one aim - to continue. It continues by adapting to its environment. The better suited a species is to its environment, the more likely it will continue. If it is not well suited, it either evolves new adaptations, moves to a new environment, or dies out.

We sometimes forget that we are animals, evolving along with the rest of the world. We are one of the most highly adaptable organisms on the planet. We change our environment to suit us. When we came out of the trees and went bipedal our feet might have thickened over the years to support us on hard ground. Instead we made shoes. The climate changed. It got colder. Instead of getting furrier, we made clothes and tamed fire. We adapt pretty quickly compared to other large organisms.

So as animals, we want to pass on DNA. It's our prime objective. Not every individual will do so, but we all act like we want to. We all want to be liked, admired and respected. We all want to look good to a potential mate, even if we're not thinking in terms of progeny. We accumulate things like a mockingbird acquires songs. We are all about display. We want status. Even the most humble among us values humility and does so because he thinks it will look good to a potential mate. There are obviously exceptions. Many priests and nuns take vows of poverty - what would they need a display of worldly goods for if they weren't looking for a mate?

Wealthy people (who were not born that way) usually value wealth and all its trappings. (I've always loved that phrase - "the trappings of wealth"). They often work hard to gain the status that they have because they think they will be of more value as a potential mate. So to ask them to give up the things they value is asking them to go against their Evolutionary instincts. The "have-nots" want more things in order to be better potential mates. Communism says we should all have the same things - all be of equal value. This is not how Evolution has made us. The Thompson's gazelle with the bad leg is going to be lion meat. That's how things are with animals.

We humans take care of our old, and infirm, and mentally unstable. That goes against the way most animals behave. But then most things humans do are against how most animals behave. But most animals are blissfully ignorant. They don't have the fears and worries and emotional baggage that we carry around with us. They are usually in a zen-like trance of eating, sleeping, and having sex. Sounds pretty good to me. Maybe we're not the smartest animal after all.

So communism is a wonderful ideal. But it'll never work. We have many kinds of greed - not all about material possessions. We are greedy for attributes that will make us better fathers and mothers, or at least make us look like the kind of people who would be good fathers and mothers. You may not have children. You may not ever want children, or be too old to have children. But we are wired to have children, so we act like we want that.

Cheers to those who overcome their greed in any measure! It can be done. We can share what we have with those in need. Even if it's a small donation to a food bank or a Goodwill store or any charity. Even if you share with your neighbor - we are all in need.

So, no, I am not, nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party. But I definitely am a communist.