Who are you? On a high school retreat, we paired off with a partner and were asked to write 1) how we perceive ourselves, 2) how we think others perceive us, and then our partner would write how they actually perceived us. Needless to say, these descriptions were not identical. It is safe to say that, though there are generalizations about us on which everyone would agree, we are perceived differently by each individual with whom we come in contact. So, in addition to working on our inner selves, we must also work on our public relations or no one will ever know who we really are.
When we meet someone, we size them up without thinking. We take in their clothing, their hairstyle, their general appearance and demeanor, their stance, their speech, their sexuality, even the shape of the muscles on their face which tells us what mood they're in and how their facial habits have affected their affect. We can sense if someone is an angry person, a joyous person, a serene person, an anxious person, and we approach them and treat them as such without any consciousness of it. There are people who draw us in and people who push us away.
I am reminded of this as I think about the way in which I think my co-workers would describe me. I think my boss would think that I am absent-minded and flighty. The people I used to supervise would see me as self-assured and implacable, even in the tensest situations. People in other departments might see me as quiet and thoughtful. My current co-workers would know me as creative and friendly.
I am all of these things, but if I were to write a description of myself, these are not the things on which I would focus. How do I want you to know me? I am a person who feels very intensely his own presence. I am living consciously and celebrating each moment I'm alive. Even when there's pain, I am thankful for being able to experience it, thankful of having the human experience of it. (Don't get me wrong - I'm thankful for pain relievers too!) I feel the connection between all things, and understand that all I know about matter is what I can perceive with my senses. I think there is more to reality than what we can sense. I feel that the arts are a way to transcend the prison that our mind and senses create. In making art, music, dance, writing, we are allowed to take what is otherwise un-sayable in our minds and give it manifest form. When we do this, we allow others into our minds and can more fully share our experience of being human.
If you were to listen to some of my songs, read some of my stories, or sit with some of my paintings, you might get a better sense of who I am than I could ever tell you. When we visit museums, we don't get descriptions of painters' day-to-day existences, we get the nuances of their souls. If a painting is good, it's because you know how the painter felt making it. And better still, how they felt about life - what it was like in their mind. If you looked through my oeuvre, you would see a mind that has never been at rest, a mind that has had explosions of energy and emotion, a mind that saw the world with new eyes every day. This is what I want you to know about me. That I am not a static, describable being - none of us are. I am a process that has continued for almost 49 years and continues to unfold every day. You can never know me, you can only know what I have affected.
So our identity is defined by what we affect. Like with the energy that we call light, we can't see it, we can only see its effect on matter. Our self-consciousness is built by the reactions we see in other people. We cannot judge any action good or bad without the reactions of others. We see negative reactions and we may change the way we act. We see positive reactions and we may repeat whatever action brought it about. From the time we are little, we are constantly seeing ourselves mirrored in other people's eyes and building the thing we call personality. We are an accumulation of all the reactions we've gotten. We think we can choose who we are, but we are largely a series of forks in the road - good reaction, one way; bad reaction, another way. It's why no two personalities are the same. They diverge as soon as we take our first action and then follow their own unrepeatable route.
I'm picturing an infinite game of Pachinko, where God drops a chip and it plinks and plunks its way down the pins of our lives, sometimes bouncing left, sometimes right, ending up making a path that is uniquely ours, and no other can follow it in the same way. Where our chip is dropped is our genetic predisposition for certain things, but where we go from there is a zillion decisions of right or left, yes or no, and random bounces based on where we've been so far.
Who am I? It is impossible to say. But you are invited to watch which way I bounce.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Discovering Color
A funny thing happened to me on the way to the canvas ...
Actually, my painting style has gone through so many changes (as have I) through the years that one can hardly keep track. As far as galleries are concerned this is artistic suicide. Most galleries want artists who have a signature style that they do well and can keep producing in the same vein. But I am a complex organism, not a machine, and so my output changes as I change in the world.
For our new CD, "Dreamtown," my co-writer, Bob Elliott, asked me to look through some old paintings to see if we could find any images to use. He talked about some figures I had done in trippy colors. I looked at what I had been doing recently and realized that I was not painting in trippy colors anymore. I was painting in perfectly sane colors - true to life colors. Colors that were appropriate to the color and intensity of the light from the sky. This had not always been the case.
When I started unrolling some of those old paintings, I was a little startled. They were done in my manic phases where the paintings weren't so much about subject as they were about paint! They were explosions of color - very expressionistic. I was obviously feeling intense feelings while I painted and exploring my emotional attachment to all the various colors. There was hardly a color that I did not use.
Then, I went through my MFA program and really learned to paint all over again. First, I limited my palette. Gone were the intense cadmiums and cobalts and quinacridones. I started looking at Rembrandt, and noticed the almost complete lack of any bright color. He used basically lead white, charcoal black, yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt umber and a few others. He always worked on a dark toned ground. I found this appealing at the time. I took my landscape palette down to chromium green, Van Dyke brown, yellow ochre, venetian red, titanium white and maybe a little cerulean for skies, though most of my skies were gray made from Vandyke brown and white. There was such a balanced consistency to the whole scene. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we do not have a lot of bright blue skies, and gray and dark green are pretty much the extent of our natural palette. I've been living here for about 11 years, and I'm sure the lack of color has influenced my painting. Look at painting from Cuba or Ghana, or Jamaica and you will see a different palette. Look at Van Gogh in Arles and compare to his paintings in Holland. The light we live in affects our painting.
I had learned to harness color to make it do what I wanted. I had learned to limit color by graying it out with its complement. I had learned to portray the light of the Pacific Northwest. But that was not what was in my secret heart. I used to intentionally place bright complements next to each other for their vivid effect. If I saw a little blue in a shadow, I would intensify it to a deep ultramarine. I might see straw-colored grasses on a bright day as stripes of cad yellow and dioxazine purple, strewn with dots of cad red light and cad orange flowers. Everything screamed colors. That is what I noticed when I unrolled those old paintings.
And so I looked at what I was currently working on - some small 8x10 landscapes which were all very proper and unremarkable. I suddenly realized that no one needed to see these places I was painting. Who would care? It was just another tree among billions, another road, another mountain. My painting had become pedestrian. I exerted so much control over the light that they had lost the intense emotion that made me love paint in the first place. So the first thing I did was get rid of the blue sky. We've all seen enough blue skies in our life - I wanted to paint the sky vivid yellow - not just a sunset glow, but a happy yellow that had nothing to do with a color the sky could actually ever be. The light of the sky changes everything. So if this was the light from the sky, how did that affect the trees? The path? The meadow? So, just that suddenly, my painting style changed. I looked at everything as containing the colors of my emotions instead of the color of my eyes.
I went back in to several of the small works I'd been making and completely painted over everything, keeping the good compositions, but cranking the color knob to 11. Shadows were once again deep ultramarine and grasses, cadmium yellow. There were no more gray rocks, but blue or lavender ones. The ground was not longer neutral - it jumped out at you with a pink soil stabbed with ultramarine shadows and flecked with color. I realized that I had been a reporter, when I longed to be F. Scott Fitzgerald.
But now, I had left my manic tendencies behind and was in control of my painting again. Painting is manipulation, in a good way. I can not only force your mind to think of a tree where no tree exists, but I can force you to feel the feelings I want you to feel about that tree. Think of it - You can't look at a good picture of a tree and see it for what it really is - molecules of pigment which reflect certain wavelengths of light, arranged by the artist in a more-or-less two dimensional pattern - you see a tree! And yet there is no tree. You could see it on the moon, in the Sahara Desert or in the Antarctic and you would still think of a tree. The artist forces your mind. He creates thought patterns based on our life's experience of a tree.
And now, in addition to this manipulation of thought patterns, I am playing on all your life's associations with color. The tree can be red and blue and still you accept it as a tree. Yellow and red and blue light can play in the leaves and you may still see them as green. I don't have to report that leaves are green - we all know that. And I have learned my own color-connected emotional language. I know how an alizarin crimson is going to affect you as opposed to a naphthol red. I know when to use chromium green and when to use cadmium green. I know what emotions I connect with colors. It's like knowing when to use a minor chord to convey a slight sadness and when to use a minor 7th for a more serious color of sadness. Or a major 7 for dreaminess. Or a diminished chord for uncertainty. So a cadmium green is happy and optimistic, where an olive green (which is different mixes by different color makers) is subdued and sleepy. A chromium green is a strong adult, no-nonsense color, and a phthalo green is bossy. You can't just use every green in every painting or your head will explode with emotion. This is what I used to do. And that's what my head did.
Now I hope that I've learned enough about light, paint and color to manipulate the viewer in exactly the way I intend. I hope when you see a painted tree now, you will not only think of a tree, but you will understand exactly how I feel about that tree. You will understand why I had to paint that particular tree in a world full of trees. It's never really about a tree, it's about connecting what is inside of the artist to what is inside of the viewer. You can use a tree to do it, or you can use a figure to do it or you can just arrange color on a canvas to do it.
That is why abstract painting is hard for some people to do and hard for some people to look at. Amateurs think they can just splash paint around and call it an abstract painting, and they think this is what abstract painters do. But that is not unlike making a bunch of random utterances and calling it a language. Or making a bunch of unconnected noises and calling it music. Color is a language that has to be studied. The more you study, the more fluent you will be. You can write like a reporter, but you can also write like Marcel Proust. But you cannot write and you cannot read anything unless you know at least some of the language.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
On Disappointment
A friend asked for a few words about disappointment and my first thought was - what an odd word that is. "dis" is obviously a negative, but "appointment?" So, of course, I had to look up the etymology. And oddly enough, the original meaning of the word was to remove from appointed office. One was appointed, and then, presumably from doing a poor job, one was disappointed. My friend holds no public office, so I know he has no fear of disappointment in this way.
So, obviously, we are talking about the frustration of expectation. There are three kinds of disappointment: disappointment in one's self; disappointment in others; and disappointment in the way things are. If you never expect anything, you cannot experience any of these disappointments. But our brains are conditioned to expect things. That is how we plan.
Let's look at them one at a time. If we are disappointed in the way things are, irrespective of what anyone has done, then it is likely that we are experiencing a form of depression. If the universe just doesn't seem fair, if it has rained too many days, if you are not as tall as you'd like to be and somehow you are disappointed by this, then your brain chemicals may be imbalanced. The universe is not fair - it is a very neutral place where things are not set out just for you to be happy. You can find happiness in acceptance of this. Someone told me a Buddhist saying the other day: When things are good, they are good. And when things are bad, they are also good. We cannot expect anything from the universe or from God. We make life what it is. Accept the bad. Strive for the good. Another saying: To have more, desire less.
But somehow I don't think my friend was alluding to this kind of disappointment.
So, what about disappointment in others? We like to think that we are all on an equal playing field and that others will do what is best for everyone. But we all have unique brains built by our own experiences - so every one is different. Every brain has its own best interest at heart, or the best interest of its offspring. I experience disappointment when I see selfish actions which do harm to other people, but the brain always thinks it is taking care of itself. We have all gone through emotional injury in our lives, and our brains have all built defense mechanisms to prevent the injuries from occurring again. So, sometimes our brain works without our consent and does what it thinks is best for the individual without ever consulting us. So what can we expect from other people's brains? Unless we're talking about your mom's brain, we can't expect other people to try and make you happy. If you expect someone else to make you happy, you very well may be disappointed.
But I think what really matters is that which we can do something about: disappointment in ourselves. We want to be the best we can be. We want happiness. We want to achieve this and that. We want love. We want acceptance from others. We want recognition. Some want money. Some want fame. Some just want to please their parents. Let's look at that.
When you are an infant, you are a blank slate. You have never done anything to either please or displease anyone. But as you grow, you start making choices based on whatever feedback you get from your actions. Since no one but your parents chastises you, you at first only please or disappoint your parents. They want you to be a certain way and this is based on their own childhoods and the childhoods of their parents and so on back down the line. No parents come to Earth wholly made, unaffected by their own upbringing. We are all products of a long line of human evolution and things that may have happened generations ago are still affecting your relationship with your parents. They are deep and mostly unconscious things. We transfer what our parents expect of us to what we think we expect of ourselves.
And what can we expect of ourselves? We are in competition with everyone in our society. We mostly enter the world in a weak position. Most people do not come into the world with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths. Those people probably are raised to expect a lot - and they get it. But the rest of us have to work our way upstream in life, against a torrent of limitations. We should first expect only that we will live, that we have the drive to continue eating and taking care not to get injured. In this, we are usually not disappointed. But then, we expect ourselves to do something called succeeding.
Another interesting etymology: to come after, or take the place of another. e.g. If Queen Elizabeth II should die, Prince Charles would succeed. Gosh, you'd think he was pretty successful already. But, again, back to our parents - to succeed in our parents eyes is to do better than they did. Our parents want this for us and so we think we want it for ourselves. In olden times, where your ancestors might have been peasant farmers, you might literally just follow after them, and that would be your success. But in modern times, our paths so often diverge from our parents' and how then do we measure success? How do I relate as a writer, musician, and artist to my fireman father? If I can take care of a family like he did, does that make me a success? I have no wife and no family - does that make me a failure? Not in my eyes. I have had to redefine success in my own terms, because the things I have come to value are different than the things my parents valued.
If we can divorce our own notion of success from our parents', we will more seldom be disappointed with ourselves. Of course, we can try things and fail, but if we tried our best, there's no reason for disappointment. If we did not try our best, we must look at the reasons why we were trying in the first place. Was it to please others? And disappointment is inextricably tied to the past. We cannot be disappointed with the present moment. In the present moment, everything just is. We can only be disappointed with the past, and the past is unchangeable. When we accept that fact, we learn a lesson about the past that can be applied to the future. There is always a lesson in disappointment. Take it with you or the disappointment will be without value. Be grateful for the failures as well as the successes. Be grateful that you are having the full range of human experience. It is a miracle that we think and feel at all.
Let us take a moment to step outside of our brains and look at them as observers. Our brain is an amazing machine, but much of what it does is automatic. Right now it is sending electric impulses to you heart to constrict and relax, pumping blood throughout your body. It is doing the same to your lungs to infuse that blood with oxygen which nourishes every cell. It is turning food into energy. It is making certain muscles and tendons constrict to hold your body in the position it's in. It is also storing nearly all of your life's experience. And it is making sense of some of the stimulus it collects through our senses. But somehow we think we are in control of it. For the most part, we do not use our brains - our brains use us. We can learn to control this amazing machine better by getting to know it.
When we experience a disappointment, we have to look at how our brain is processing that information. Disappointment makes us feel bad chemically based on experiences that we have had in the past which were negative. Our brains have pleasure centers which are stimulated chemically when things happen which are life affirming. These pleasure centers, when the brain is functioning properly, are constantly fed by neurotransmitters and our normal, waking state should be one of happiness and well-being. Of course, we do not always feel this. Some things threaten our sense of well-being. Our pleasure centers shut down and toxins from our environment and adrenaline are free to flood our bodies. We sometimes get rid of toxins by tears or vomit or sweat or urination or defecation. Sometimes we feel so threatened that our body goes into "fight, flight, or freeze" mode. Our automatic brain does the driving and we react "without thinking."
Awareness of the present moment and the miracle of consciousness can put all things in perspective. Before an event occurs is the time to think about disappointment. What will I feel like if I don't get that job? What will it feel like if I am rejected? What will it feel like to be laughed at? And why will I feel this way? How is this coming experience like that of my childhood? What do I expect of myself? If you act consciously instead of reacting unconsciously, you will seldom feel disappointment in yourself. That is the only disappointment that you have any control of. If you're disappointed with others or with the universe - get medicated and seek therapy. Focus on your expectations. Remember, to have more, desire less. Accept what is. Not just take, but embrace the bad with the good. You are insignificant to the universe, yet the whole universe dwells inside of you. Is the raindrop disappointed that it has to fall? That is its nature.
So, obviously, we are talking about the frustration of expectation. There are three kinds of disappointment: disappointment in one's self; disappointment in others; and disappointment in the way things are. If you never expect anything, you cannot experience any of these disappointments. But our brains are conditioned to expect things. That is how we plan.
Let's look at them one at a time. If we are disappointed in the way things are, irrespective of what anyone has done, then it is likely that we are experiencing a form of depression. If the universe just doesn't seem fair, if it has rained too many days, if you are not as tall as you'd like to be and somehow you are disappointed by this, then your brain chemicals may be imbalanced. The universe is not fair - it is a very neutral place where things are not set out just for you to be happy. You can find happiness in acceptance of this. Someone told me a Buddhist saying the other day: When things are good, they are good. And when things are bad, they are also good. We cannot expect anything from the universe or from God. We make life what it is. Accept the bad. Strive for the good. Another saying: To have more, desire less.
But somehow I don't think my friend was alluding to this kind of disappointment.
So, what about disappointment in others? We like to think that we are all on an equal playing field and that others will do what is best for everyone. But we all have unique brains built by our own experiences - so every one is different. Every brain has its own best interest at heart, or the best interest of its offspring. I experience disappointment when I see selfish actions which do harm to other people, but the brain always thinks it is taking care of itself. We have all gone through emotional injury in our lives, and our brains have all built defense mechanisms to prevent the injuries from occurring again. So, sometimes our brain works without our consent and does what it thinks is best for the individual without ever consulting us. So what can we expect from other people's brains? Unless we're talking about your mom's brain, we can't expect other people to try and make you happy. If you expect someone else to make you happy, you very well may be disappointed.
But I think what really matters is that which we can do something about: disappointment in ourselves. We want to be the best we can be. We want happiness. We want to achieve this and that. We want love. We want acceptance from others. We want recognition. Some want money. Some want fame. Some just want to please their parents. Let's look at that.
When you are an infant, you are a blank slate. You have never done anything to either please or displease anyone. But as you grow, you start making choices based on whatever feedback you get from your actions. Since no one but your parents chastises you, you at first only please or disappoint your parents. They want you to be a certain way and this is based on their own childhoods and the childhoods of their parents and so on back down the line. No parents come to Earth wholly made, unaffected by their own upbringing. We are all products of a long line of human evolution and things that may have happened generations ago are still affecting your relationship with your parents. They are deep and mostly unconscious things. We transfer what our parents expect of us to what we think we expect of ourselves.
And what can we expect of ourselves? We are in competition with everyone in our society. We mostly enter the world in a weak position. Most people do not come into the world with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths. Those people probably are raised to expect a lot - and they get it. But the rest of us have to work our way upstream in life, against a torrent of limitations. We should first expect only that we will live, that we have the drive to continue eating and taking care not to get injured. In this, we are usually not disappointed. But then, we expect ourselves to do something called succeeding.
Another interesting etymology: to come after, or take the place of another. e.g. If Queen Elizabeth II should die, Prince Charles would succeed. Gosh, you'd think he was pretty successful already. But, again, back to our parents - to succeed in our parents eyes is to do better than they did. Our parents want this for us and so we think we want it for ourselves. In olden times, where your ancestors might have been peasant farmers, you might literally just follow after them, and that would be your success. But in modern times, our paths so often diverge from our parents' and how then do we measure success? How do I relate as a writer, musician, and artist to my fireman father? If I can take care of a family like he did, does that make me a success? I have no wife and no family - does that make me a failure? Not in my eyes. I have had to redefine success in my own terms, because the things I have come to value are different than the things my parents valued.
If we can divorce our own notion of success from our parents', we will more seldom be disappointed with ourselves. Of course, we can try things and fail, but if we tried our best, there's no reason for disappointment. If we did not try our best, we must look at the reasons why we were trying in the first place. Was it to please others? And disappointment is inextricably tied to the past. We cannot be disappointed with the present moment. In the present moment, everything just is. We can only be disappointed with the past, and the past is unchangeable. When we accept that fact, we learn a lesson about the past that can be applied to the future. There is always a lesson in disappointment. Take it with you or the disappointment will be without value. Be grateful for the failures as well as the successes. Be grateful that you are having the full range of human experience. It is a miracle that we think and feel at all.
Let us take a moment to step outside of our brains and look at them as observers. Our brain is an amazing machine, but much of what it does is automatic. Right now it is sending electric impulses to you heart to constrict and relax, pumping blood throughout your body. It is doing the same to your lungs to infuse that blood with oxygen which nourishes every cell. It is turning food into energy. It is making certain muscles and tendons constrict to hold your body in the position it's in. It is also storing nearly all of your life's experience. And it is making sense of some of the stimulus it collects through our senses. But somehow we think we are in control of it. For the most part, we do not use our brains - our brains use us. We can learn to control this amazing machine better by getting to know it.
When we experience a disappointment, we have to look at how our brain is processing that information. Disappointment makes us feel bad chemically based on experiences that we have had in the past which were negative. Our brains have pleasure centers which are stimulated chemically when things happen which are life affirming. These pleasure centers, when the brain is functioning properly, are constantly fed by neurotransmitters and our normal, waking state should be one of happiness and well-being. Of course, we do not always feel this. Some things threaten our sense of well-being. Our pleasure centers shut down and toxins from our environment and adrenaline are free to flood our bodies. We sometimes get rid of toxins by tears or vomit or sweat or urination or defecation. Sometimes we feel so threatened that our body goes into "fight, flight, or freeze" mode. Our automatic brain does the driving and we react "without thinking."
Awareness of the present moment and the miracle of consciousness can put all things in perspective. Before an event occurs is the time to think about disappointment. What will I feel like if I don't get that job? What will it feel like if I am rejected? What will it feel like to be laughed at? And why will I feel this way? How is this coming experience like that of my childhood? What do I expect of myself? If you act consciously instead of reacting unconsciously, you will seldom feel disappointment in yourself. That is the only disappointment that you have any control of. If you're disappointed with others or with the universe - get medicated and seek therapy. Focus on your expectations. Remember, to have more, desire less. Accept what is. Not just take, but embrace the bad with the good. You are insignificant to the universe, yet the whole universe dwells inside of you. Is the raindrop disappointed that it has to fall? That is its nature.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Monkey Mind
I first read the phrase Monkey Mind in a column by Herb Caen, the late celebrated columnist for the S.F. Chronicle. His first sentence was ... Monkey mind, leaping from limb to limbo. He then went on to fill a whole column with leaps of thought that were truly acrobatic. Stream of consciousness is a great thing for an artist to possess. Monkey mind is a Buddhist idea of a person who can't stop his mind from going on its merry way, a restless, preoccupied person. It is the exact opposite of the ideal of a quiet mind.
The phrase enters my consciousness now because I watched a documentary about Jane Goodall, the chimp behavior expert and activist. I must declare that chimps are not monkeys. They are in the family of great apes, which includes the gorilla, the orangutan, the bonobo and man. The great apes are just a stone's throw away from us genetically. And watching the chimps easily makes one feel related. Are humans really the smartest of the bunch? This is not such a facetious question. We are, without a doubt, the most accomplished and have the most complex brains. But what do we do with our complex brains?
This idea occurred to me the other day when friends were engaging in idle chatter and I was noticing that it made me tense. It took a few hours of contemplation to figure out why. It turned out to be a justice issue. Here was someone saying nothing intelligent, cementing the idea in my head that she wasn't very intelligent overall, and yet I happened to know that she was thriving in her life - she had a good marriage, had plenty of money, supportive parents, a life she apparently enjoyed. And here I am making very little money, living a forced frugal life, renting instead of owning, not able to afford new shoes, but using my old shoes which were second-hand when I bought them, wearing second-hand clothes not because they're stylish, but because that's all I can afford. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person. I value intelligence in others. Yet I am by no means thriving. I'm happy, but I don't have the kind of life that affords me a lot of choices.
So who is the intelligent one, really? We don't really value intelligence in our society any more. I feel as if I have become a master candle maker in an age of electric light.
And then there are the gorillas. Gorillas are monstrously strong, but they are vegetarians. I've been thinking lately that they might be a good model animal for the U.S. military. They don't have a very large territory and don't stray far on a typical day. They don't need to kill to survive. They hold their great strength in reserve in case they are attacked by a leopard, which is their only known possible enemy. And even then, the silverback male will put on a display of power before ever engaging, with the idea of scaring the possible predator away. They live a life of peace and ease. If that is not intelligence, what is?
Very few humans live such lives. Our lives are full of monkey mind.
Let me tell you another instance of monkeys in my consciousness. I am a songwriter and musician. I've been doing this for over 30 years. But my job is to buy art supplies, to check invoices to make sure we got what we ordered at the right price, to place new orders, to sell more art supplies. All day long I'm supposed to do this, and all day long there is Muzak playing in the supposed background. Sometimes there are good songs by classic artists. Sometimes there are terribly painfully bad songs which no one in their right mind would ever ask to hear.
But say I were not a music expert. Say I was a monkey expert. Say I'd been studying monkeys all my life. I knew everything there was to know about monkeys. I was an expert on monkey behavior. And the one day, someone unleashes a truckload of monkeys into the store. The monkeys are breaking things and biting people's ankles and scratching at their eyes. Some of them apparently have fleas. I know exactly how to handle these monkeys, how to make them behave - even how to rid them of fleas. But my job has nothing to do with monkeys. I'm supposed to ignore the monkeys and pretend they aren't even there. I'm supposed to go on checking my invoices while what I'd rather be doing is attending to the monkeys. It makes a job seem very mundane when there are monkeys about. Can you imagine Jane Goodall in the wild with the chimps trying to check an invoice? This is how out of place I feel at my job.
And yet the chimps live in large social groups, and have all they need. They are not perfect - they do kill, even their own kind and they do wage wars. But it seems the farther you go away from the human brain, the "happier" the animal becomes. Ignorance is bliss. Maybe monkey mind is the wrong phrase. Maybe monkeys don't do much thinking at all. Maybe they are like Zen masters who simply exist. Maybe it is the human's curse to have developed such a brain as ours, that worries and dreads and plots and schemes and is jealous and insecure and afraid and angry. Maybe Man Mind is the problem. I'll settle for Monkey Mind any day.
The phrase enters my consciousness now because I watched a documentary about Jane Goodall, the chimp behavior expert and activist. I must declare that chimps are not monkeys. They are in the family of great apes, which includes the gorilla, the orangutan, the bonobo and man. The great apes are just a stone's throw away from us genetically. And watching the chimps easily makes one feel related. Are humans really the smartest of the bunch? This is not such a facetious question. We are, without a doubt, the most accomplished and have the most complex brains. But what do we do with our complex brains?
This idea occurred to me the other day when friends were engaging in idle chatter and I was noticing that it made me tense. It took a few hours of contemplation to figure out why. It turned out to be a justice issue. Here was someone saying nothing intelligent, cementing the idea in my head that she wasn't very intelligent overall, and yet I happened to know that she was thriving in her life - she had a good marriage, had plenty of money, supportive parents, a life she apparently enjoyed. And here I am making very little money, living a forced frugal life, renting instead of owning, not able to afford new shoes, but using my old shoes which were second-hand when I bought them, wearing second-hand clothes not because they're stylish, but because that's all I can afford. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person. I value intelligence in others. Yet I am by no means thriving. I'm happy, but I don't have the kind of life that affords me a lot of choices.
So who is the intelligent one, really? We don't really value intelligence in our society any more. I feel as if I have become a master candle maker in an age of electric light.
And then there are the gorillas. Gorillas are monstrously strong, but they are vegetarians. I've been thinking lately that they might be a good model animal for the U.S. military. They don't have a very large territory and don't stray far on a typical day. They don't need to kill to survive. They hold their great strength in reserve in case they are attacked by a leopard, which is their only known possible enemy. And even then, the silverback male will put on a display of power before ever engaging, with the idea of scaring the possible predator away. They live a life of peace and ease. If that is not intelligence, what is?
Very few humans live such lives. Our lives are full of monkey mind.
Let me tell you another instance of monkeys in my consciousness. I am a songwriter and musician. I've been doing this for over 30 years. But my job is to buy art supplies, to check invoices to make sure we got what we ordered at the right price, to place new orders, to sell more art supplies. All day long I'm supposed to do this, and all day long there is Muzak playing in the supposed background. Sometimes there are good songs by classic artists. Sometimes there are terribly painfully bad songs which no one in their right mind would ever ask to hear.
But say I were not a music expert. Say I was a monkey expert. Say I'd been studying monkeys all my life. I knew everything there was to know about monkeys. I was an expert on monkey behavior. And the one day, someone unleashes a truckload of monkeys into the store. The monkeys are breaking things and biting people's ankles and scratching at their eyes. Some of them apparently have fleas. I know exactly how to handle these monkeys, how to make them behave - even how to rid them of fleas. But my job has nothing to do with monkeys. I'm supposed to ignore the monkeys and pretend they aren't even there. I'm supposed to go on checking my invoices while what I'd rather be doing is attending to the monkeys. It makes a job seem very mundane when there are monkeys about. Can you imagine Jane Goodall in the wild with the chimps trying to check an invoice? This is how out of place I feel at my job.
And yet the chimps live in large social groups, and have all they need. They are not perfect - they do kill, even their own kind and they do wage wars. But it seems the farther you go away from the human brain, the "happier" the animal becomes. Ignorance is bliss. Maybe monkey mind is the wrong phrase. Maybe monkeys don't do much thinking at all. Maybe they are like Zen masters who simply exist. Maybe it is the human's curse to have developed such a brain as ours, that worries and dreads and plots and schemes and is jealous and insecure and afraid and angry. Maybe Man Mind is the problem. I'll settle for Monkey Mind any day.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Truth and the Mind
Just finished reading an article about a severely burned Iraq veteran who found pain relief from a virtual reality game called "Snow World" in which he shot penguins and snowmen and mammoths with snowballs. Brain scans of the area called the pain matrix showed much less activity while he was playing. He rated his own pain a 6 out of 10 while on other days it had been 9's an 10's constantly. The hell that the pain caused him was alleviated by giving the mind something else to focus on.
Our brains are equipped with chemicals which regulate our physical feelings as well as emotional states. I'm no brain expert, but am moderately aware of things called endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. Certain drugs, like opioids, affect the production of these chemicals and alleviate pain and promote feelings of well-being. I've heard that endorphins are three times as powerful as morphine. So our brains are equipped to manage pain, but unfortunately, most of us do not know how to manage our brains. If we did, pain would be a trivial message that something was wrong with our body that needs attention, and that's all.
Last year I had a weird, severe back injury while tying a shoe! Fear was my first emotion, because I had gone through years of back pain when I was younger that I now feel was tied in to my depressive/manic states. This time around, my bipolar disorder had been under control for about ten years with meds and therapy. The pain reached down through my nerves to the entire right side of my leg, feeling like a knitting needle were being jabbed into my joints. The trigger for the injury may have been a bulged disc pressing on the nerve that ran down that leg, but the pain, though severe, now did not affect my sense of well-being.
Like in the virtual reality game, I found a way to minimalize the pain using the power of distraction. Instead of focusing on the leg that hurt, I tried intensely concentrating on how good my other leg felt. Amazingly, the more I focused on the good leg, the less pain I felt. This told me that I was controlling the way my brain was processing its chemicals. I was able to produce endorphins enough to fill my body with a sense of well-being.
Lately, I think I've gotten better at producing these sensations at will. I have a sense of being high and my body feels wonderful. I feel lighter and a little less connected to what Eckhardt Tolle calls "the pain body." I also feel anchored to the present, and any baggage of all that I have been through in my life disappears. It is an amazing feeling. It doesn't last forever - life somehow always intrudes eventually, but it's a great skill to learn.
Meditation quiets the mind. When the mind is quiet, everything is perfect. In the present moment, everything is perfect. It is only the fear and anxiety of our expectations which are based on our past experience that take us out of the present moment. Some people say, you can't just meditate all your life, but they don't realize that you can quiet your mind during any activity. You don't have to be in a lotus posture, you don't have to close your eyes, you don't have to focus on your breathing. These are all things that might help you get there - they let you take control of your brain chemicals - but they are not the only way. If you are fully in the present, no matter what you are doing, you become the experience. You are no longer a person doing something, you are the entire world as your mind understands it. You exist in harmony with all of creation. Sounds nice, right?
You can be there right now. When we look for it, like the Tao, we will never find it. As soon as you stop trying to attain, you attain. You are the Buddha right now - you just have to stop trying to be the Buddha. But this is like the old story of the master saying that to attain enlightenment, you must not think of an elephant. The student then, of course, can only think of what he is trying not to think of. Stop seeking, and be the Buddha.
So the truth of reality is not what the mind tells us. Like in Plato's allegory of the caves, we only see shadows of reality and make our best guesses as to what it is. We are limited by our five senses. Reality is what we see, touch, hear, smell and taste. Could it be that there are other qualities of reality that we don't have the sense organs to perceive? Bats understand spatial reality by echolocation. Insects, birds and tropical fish see ultraviolet patterns that we can't see. Suppose we could sense magnetism, or density, or see gamma rays or electrical fields. There must be so many other aspects of reality that we cannot even measure.
So what is the truth? When your mind stops perceiving with its senses, it feels like truth. Truth is acceptance of all that is. Not judging, not comparing, not reacting, just accepting. Our brains are amazing machines that are built for judging, comparing and reacting, so that the organism of the body can successfully continue and help life on Earth continue. But we can control our brains, instead of our brains controlling us. We have the power to quiet our brains any time we want. And in doing so, we can experience the truth.
Our brains are equipped with chemicals which regulate our physical feelings as well as emotional states. I'm no brain expert, but am moderately aware of things called endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. Certain drugs, like opioids, affect the production of these chemicals and alleviate pain and promote feelings of well-being. I've heard that endorphins are three times as powerful as morphine. So our brains are equipped to manage pain, but unfortunately, most of us do not know how to manage our brains. If we did, pain would be a trivial message that something was wrong with our body that needs attention, and that's all.
Last year I had a weird, severe back injury while tying a shoe! Fear was my first emotion, because I had gone through years of back pain when I was younger that I now feel was tied in to my depressive/manic states. This time around, my bipolar disorder had been under control for about ten years with meds and therapy. The pain reached down through my nerves to the entire right side of my leg, feeling like a knitting needle were being jabbed into my joints. The trigger for the injury may have been a bulged disc pressing on the nerve that ran down that leg, but the pain, though severe, now did not affect my sense of well-being.
Like in the virtual reality game, I found a way to minimalize the pain using the power of distraction. Instead of focusing on the leg that hurt, I tried intensely concentrating on how good my other leg felt. Amazingly, the more I focused on the good leg, the less pain I felt. This told me that I was controlling the way my brain was processing its chemicals. I was able to produce endorphins enough to fill my body with a sense of well-being.
Lately, I think I've gotten better at producing these sensations at will. I have a sense of being high and my body feels wonderful. I feel lighter and a little less connected to what Eckhardt Tolle calls "the pain body." I also feel anchored to the present, and any baggage of all that I have been through in my life disappears. It is an amazing feeling. It doesn't last forever - life somehow always intrudes eventually, but it's a great skill to learn.
Meditation quiets the mind. When the mind is quiet, everything is perfect. In the present moment, everything is perfect. It is only the fear and anxiety of our expectations which are based on our past experience that take us out of the present moment. Some people say, you can't just meditate all your life, but they don't realize that you can quiet your mind during any activity. You don't have to be in a lotus posture, you don't have to close your eyes, you don't have to focus on your breathing. These are all things that might help you get there - they let you take control of your brain chemicals - but they are not the only way. If you are fully in the present, no matter what you are doing, you become the experience. You are no longer a person doing something, you are the entire world as your mind understands it. You exist in harmony with all of creation. Sounds nice, right?
You can be there right now. When we look for it, like the Tao, we will never find it. As soon as you stop trying to attain, you attain. You are the Buddha right now - you just have to stop trying to be the Buddha. But this is like the old story of the master saying that to attain enlightenment, you must not think of an elephant. The student then, of course, can only think of what he is trying not to think of. Stop seeking, and be the Buddha.
So the truth of reality is not what the mind tells us. Like in Plato's allegory of the caves, we only see shadows of reality and make our best guesses as to what it is. We are limited by our five senses. Reality is what we see, touch, hear, smell and taste. Could it be that there are other qualities of reality that we don't have the sense organs to perceive? Bats understand spatial reality by echolocation. Insects, birds and tropical fish see ultraviolet patterns that we can't see. Suppose we could sense magnetism, or density, or see gamma rays or electrical fields. There must be so many other aspects of reality that we cannot even measure.
So what is the truth? When your mind stops perceiving with its senses, it feels like truth. Truth is acceptance of all that is. Not judging, not comparing, not reacting, just accepting. Our brains are amazing machines that are built for judging, comparing and reacting, so that the organism of the body can successfully continue and help life on Earth continue. But we can control our brains, instead of our brains controlling us. We have the power to quiet our brains any time we want. And in doing so, we can experience the truth.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
The Big Idea
I've always been a dreamer. Does that mean I'm not a doer? Not necessarily. Sometimes my dreams are grand, the kind that will change everything. Sometimes my dreams are modest, the kind that will change me. I suppose I've fulfilled many of my dreams. I'm an artist, a writer, a composer, a musician. But it's always the things I am not yet that drive me.
I've never been motivated by money, but lately I've found myself dreaming of having some. So several schemes are popping into my head to that end. I don't see my paintings as ever achieving star status - they'll probably just sell sparsely throughout my life, and that's a nice thing.
Just that there are some of my paintings out in the world makes me feel as if I am more engaged with other people's lives. There are those that are living with my paintings every day. They might never give them a thought, but they color the atmosphere a certain way. I'm in bedrooms where people make love. I'm in living rooms where people meet friends. I'm in offices where business deals are made.
But that is not about money. Lately, I've had the idea of helping other artists sell their paintings online. I know so many young artists who make small work, show it at coffee house galleries and occasionally sell a small work for a few dollars. This is the modest kind of purchase that anyone can make. It's not about the elite coming into a gallery with a checkbook and buying a painting by reputation. It's about the connection between makers of art and lovers of art. It's a small, humble kind of thing - not intellectual. It's outside of the ART WORLD, which has all gone kind of crazy. I want the outsiders who still do quality work to get their work into people's homes. There is no current system for this. I want to create one. An online gallery (I've registered he domain name galleryschmallery.com) that would sell work for no more than a few hundred dollars and even offer work for $25 and $50. I want to reach the kind of people who would never set foot in a gallery and when they want art for their home or for a gift, they end up buying cheap reproductions or posters. I want them to know that they can afford original artwork made by people who care about their art, and are not trying to be superstars.
I probably won't make much money at this, at least not at first. Who knows if this will catch on. But it will be a service that I am glad to offer my fellow up and coming artists. It feels important to me. It's a dream. But it's one I'm going to realize.
Some artists dream of being in galleries, having people actively selling their work which increases with value as it sells and their reputation grows. But what a gallery wants is a product they can rely on, someone who has a "mature" style, which is their way of saying someone who does pretty much the same thing over and over. That might sell paintings, but it doesn't help an artist's soul grow. Art is about introspection. It's about finding out who you are in the world and how you relate to life and then making that realization manifest. That is what a mature artist does. It's a skill that some people can practice with just a few strokes, while others do it with obsessive realism. But the mature artist is fully present in his work. It is imbued with his spirit. Making a picture can be easy and can be learned. But making it art takes a degree of self-actualization. The more an artist understands himself, the more powerful his art.
Most of my own output would not be on galleryschmallery.com. I would be very discerning about what I sold. Beauty doesn't seem to matter in the art world anymore, and there are many, many very ugly works that have great success. We shouldn't have to live with ugliness. Beauty is different for everyone, but there are universal truths that can't be denied. When someone is passionate about beauty, it shows in their art. Young artists are taught to avoid beauty, the idea being that if it pleases the eye, it cannot convey the greater idea. The idea is king in the art world today. One day, people will go to a gallery just to hear artists talk about the work they would make if they had any skill. There are artists who almost do this now. Artists who I won't name because I don't want to dignify their work by talking about it, but who just come up with ideas and then have other people make the work. This drives me bananas. Make the damn work yourself or don't call yourself an artist.
I'm getting off track. The kind of artist I want to feature is intimately involved with the making of the work. They are in the work. And they want to get back the energy they put into their work in the form of money. Sure, they have put a lifetime's energy into each piece, but it's better to get paid a little at a time than to wait for that big payday that comes with being an art superstar. I want to be a successful online winebar, coffeehouse, or bar, those places which show art, but are not in the business of selling art. Not a lot of art sells at these places, and you only get to see a small show each month. My site would enable you to visit hundreds of these places at the click of a mouse and to find just that little piece of art that moves you just so.
Maybe someday this would be a successful business and I could actually make a living from the small commission I would take (10% as opposed to a gallery's 50%). Then I could pursue other dreams of teaching college art, being a successful recording artist and songwriter, having a successful career as a published novelist. I find that if I put my dreams into words instead of just letting them play in my head, they tend more often to become realities. There's always room for more dreams.
I've never been motivated by money, but lately I've found myself dreaming of having some. So several schemes are popping into my head to that end. I don't see my paintings as ever achieving star status - they'll probably just sell sparsely throughout my life, and that's a nice thing.
Just that there are some of my paintings out in the world makes me feel as if I am more engaged with other people's lives. There are those that are living with my paintings every day. They might never give them a thought, but they color the atmosphere a certain way. I'm in bedrooms where people make love. I'm in living rooms where people meet friends. I'm in offices where business deals are made.
But that is not about money. Lately, I've had the idea of helping other artists sell their paintings online. I know so many young artists who make small work, show it at coffee house galleries and occasionally sell a small work for a few dollars. This is the modest kind of purchase that anyone can make. It's not about the elite coming into a gallery with a checkbook and buying a painting by reputation. It's about the connection between makers of art and lovers of art. It's a small, humble kind of thing - not intellectual. It's outside of the ART WORLD, which has all gone kind of crazy. I want the outsiders who still do quality work to get their work into people's homes. There is no current system for this. I want to create one. An online gallery (I've registered he domain name galleryschmallery.com) that would sell work for no more than a few hundred dollars and even offer work for $25 and $50. I want to reach the kind of people who would never set foot in a gallery and when they want art for their home or for a gift, they end up buying cheap reproductions or posters. I want them to know that they can afford original artwork made by people who care about their art, and are not trying to be superstars.
I probably won't make much money at this, at least not at first. Who knows if this will catch on. But it will be a service that I am glad to offer my fellow up and coming artists. It feels important to me. It's a dream. But it's one I'm going to realize.
Some artists dream of being in galleries, having people actively selling their work which increases with value as it sells and their reputation grows. But what a gallery wants is a product they can rely on, someone who has a "mature" style, which is their way of saying someone who does pretty much the same thing over and over. That might sell paintings, but it doesn't help an artist's soul grow. Art is about introspection. It's about finding out who you are in the world and how you relate to life and then making that realization manifest. That is what a mature artist does. It's a skill that some people can practice with just a few strokes, while others do it with obsessive realism. But the mature artist is fully present in his work. It is imbued with his spirit. Making a picture can be easy and can be learned. But making it art takes a degree of self-actualization. The more an artist understands himself, the more powerful his art.
Most of my own output would not be on galleryschmallery.com. I would be very discerning about what I sold. Beauty doesn't seem to matter in the art world anymore, and there are many, many very ugly works that have great success. We shouldn't have to live with ugliness. Beauty is different for everyone, but there are universal truths that can't be denied. When someone is passionate about beauty, it shows in their art. Young artists are taught to avoid beauty, the idea being that if it pleases the eye, it cannot convey the greater idea. The idea is king in the art world today. One day, people will go to a gallery just to hear artists talk about the work they would make if they had any skill. There are artists who almost do this now. Artists who I won't name because I don't want to dignify their work by talking about it, but who just come up with ideas and then have other people make the work. This drives me bananas. Make the damn work yourself or don't call yourself an artist.
I'm getting off track. The kind of artist I want to feature is intimately involved with the making of the work. They are in the work. And they want to get back the energy they put into their work in the form of money. Sure, they have put a lifetime's energy into each piece, but it's better to get paid a little at a time than to wait for that big payday that comes with being an art superstar. I want to be a successful online winebar, coffeehouse, or bar, those places which show art, but are not in the business of selling art. Not a lot of art sells at these places, and you only get to see a small show each month. My site would enable you to visit hundreds of these places at the click of a mouse and to find just that little piece of art that moves you just so.
Maybe someday this would be a successful business and I could actually make a living from the small commission I would take (10% as opposed to a gallery's 50%). Then I could pursue other dreams of teaching college art, being a successful recording artist and songwriter, having a successful career as a published novelist. I find that if I put my dreams into words instead of just letting them play in my head, they tend more often to become realities. There's always room for more dreams.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Thoughts on Dying
Bill is dead. It was a sudden onset of brain cancer which was only detected a week ago. I barely knew him - he was the husband of a woman I worked with, and he would stop by the office occasionally to say hi, or bring her something. He had a long life and a mercifully short illness.
I don't feel sadness at his death - I've thought a lot about death in the last few years. My dad is going to be 87 in March and my mom will be 82. I don't know how I'll react when the time actually comes, but I know it could happen at any time. I like to think I'm at peace with the idea. Accepting death is key to living peacefully. Even accepting my own mortality, and knowing that I could also die at any moment, for any number of reasons. I am ready. We tend not to think about death in our culture and so when it happens, we are usually not ready. If we are told we have a terminal illness, the rug is often pulled out from under us and it is then that we fully know that we are alive. And then, for some people, it is often too late to do all the things we wanted to do.
I don't want to do anything but have a deep connection with life, which I feel I have. I want to live as a loving person, which I feel I do. Every day is happier and more profound than the last for me. If I were told I was going to die soon, I would not be altered internally.
Dying is a state in which I will never be as long as I am conscious. I feel you are either 100% alive or 100% dead. I choose to remain 100% alive until I'm 100% dead. There is no dying.
I had a great aunt, whose name escapes me, who I was told was dying once when I was young. She turned out to hang around for quite a while. My joke got to be, "Is Great Aunt so-and-so still dying?" I would ask my mother this occasionally, and she would respond, a little miffed, "Yes, she is." I don't intend to die like that. I intend only to live. If I am irretrievably unconscious, then you can say I'm dying, because that's not really living. But other than that, I will never "die."
Death is also on my mind because of two stories - one of which I'm reading and one of which I'm writing. The one I'm reading is called "Life Work" by poet Don Hall, and is not so much a story, but a meditation on life as a writer, one who finds out he has cancer right in the middle of writing this very book. He thinks there is a good possibility that he will die, which adds a literary suspense, but having read the forward, I know that he did not die, but has lived for ten years after the publication of this book. It turns out that after publishing the book it is his young wife who gets cancer and dies at 47.
Any of us can go at any time. Our lives are the equivalent of a raindrop which falls quickly only to join the great water cycle again. I'm not saying I believe in reincarnation - I don't - but it's a nice belief. That we are part of something greater. That God is the storm.
The book I'm working on currently is called "The Cure," and deals with a group of terminal cancer patients who are cured by an experimental process just as humanity is wiped out by a plague that affects a supplemental element called lunarium, which people have been taking for centuries after its discovery on the moon because it promotes emotional well-being. They are spared because they are lunarium-free. They go from thinking they are going to die eminently to wondering about how to go about the rest of their lives, as others, who thought they would live forever, die all around them.
I think that we all need to meditate on our own mortality. Once you truly accept it, your life will begin.
I don't feel sadness at his death - I've thought a lot about death in the last few years. My dad is going to be 87 in March and my mom will be 82. I don't know how I'll react when the time actually comes, but I know it could happen at any time. I like to think I'm at peace with the idea. Accepting death is key to living peacefully. Even accepting my own mortality, and knowing that I could also die at any moment, for any number of reasons. I am ready. We tend not to think about death in our culture and so when it happens, we are usually not ready. If we are told we have a terminal illness, the rug is often pulled out from under us and it is then that we fully know that we are alive. And then, for some people, it is often too late to do all the things we wanted to do.
I don't want to do anything but have a deep connection with life, which I feel I have. I want to live as a loving person, which I feel I do. Every day is happier and more profound than the last for me. If I were told I was going to die soon, I would not be altered internally.
Dying is a state in which I will never be as long as I am conscious. I feel you are either 100% alive or 100% dead. I choose to remain 100% alive until I'm 100% dead. There is no dying.
I had a great aunt, whose name escapes me, who I was told was dying once when I was young. She turned out to hang around for quite a while. My joke got to be, "Is Great Aunt so-and-so still dying?" I would ask my mother this occasionally, and she would respond, a little miffed, "Yes, she is." I don't intend to die like that. I intend only to live. If I am irretrievably unconscious, then you can say I'm dying, because that's not really living. But other than that, I will never "die."
Death is also on my mind because of two stories - one of which I'm reading and one of which I'm writing. The one I'm reading is called "Life Work" by poet Don Hall, and is not so much a story, but a meditation on life as a writer, one who finds out he has cancer right in the middle of writing this very book. He thinks there is a good possibility that he will die, which adds a literary suspense, but having read the forward, I know that he did not die, but has lived for ten years after the publication of this book. It turns out that after publishing the book it is his young wife who gets cancer and dies at 47.
Any of us can go at any time. Our lives are the equivalent of a raindrop which falls quickly only to join the great water cycle again. I'm not saying I believe in reincarnation - I don't - but it's a nice belief. That we are part of something greater. That God is the storm.
The book I'm working on currently is called "The Cure," and deals with a group of terminal cancer patients who are cured by an experimental process just as humanity is wiped out by a plague that affects a supplemental element called lunarium, which people have been taking for centuries after its discovery on the moon because it promotes emotional well-being. They are spared because they are lunarium-free. They go from thinking they are going to die eminently to wondering about how to go about the rest of their lives, as others, who thought they would live forever, die all around them.
I think that we all need to meditate on our own mortality. Once you truly accept it, your life will begin.
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