The quotation below "speaks directly to my soul", and so I stole it, as suggested, from Not Just the Minutiae.
It is a remark by the wonderful, totally original and dramatically silver-haired film-maker, Jim Jarmusch
Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows.
Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to”.”
Way back in October I discovered the possibility for my interaction with the internets (I KNOW, but better late than never), and I naively wrote this little number - How Pumped Am I about 2.0!
It was exactly the potential for all this thievery that I was excited about, but did not yet have the words to describe *smiles fondly at such childishness (not yet fully outgrown)*.
If you like this post, you may also like another little piece of theft: The Gift
I have never been to a musical by a mixed group of performers with and without disabilities, but I did last night: it was magic, and I'm totally bowled over.
Now, recently I have been engaging in some pathetic self-promotion lightly amusing self-deprecation by dropping a few celeb names here and there. In "It's True! I met Rihanna ..." I said that my life-time total number of brushes with celebrity is three.
Well, its actually four.
And this time I'm being serious.
I missed Richard Stilgoe from my list. He wrote the lyrics of Starlight Express, and chunks of Phantom of the Opera, and has done lots of other stuff on stage and radio. A very witty, very funny guy indeed, and totally brilliant musically. I do know him a bit, socially. I don't want to presume too much, but I do know him just a bit. I can add him to my list.
He's also the father of the brilliant jazz musician, the super-cool Joe Stilgoe. So I suppose in fact I have actually had five brushes with celebrity.
But enough of that. What I want to say is not about me, and it's actually important.
In the overall scale of things, the Orpheus Centre is the kind of thing that really matters.
Richard founded The Orpheus Centre, in his former family home in Godstone, Surrey, and he spends a great deal of time with the people who live and work there. It seems that its a really great place.
Named after Orpheus (the famous Greek musician), the Centre provides residential and domiciliary services and a fantastic learning programme for young adults with a range of disabilities.
It works with them to achieve personal progress through the performing arts. It supports them to gain confidence and self esteem and learn essential skills that will help the transition into fully independent living.
The Company performs all over the place (including last year at the Royal Opera House), and with other outfits like the Graeae Theatre Company and StopGAP Dance Company, also fabulous.
And they have put together this really wonderful, hilarious and uplifting show, on the theme of Orpheus' and Euridice's adventures in Hades.
Richard wrote the words and the music, and Joe helped with the musical arrangement. The Director is the very lovely spiky-haired Syd Ralph, and she's done an absolutely fabulous job. Its a really well-paced show. Also involved are some young actors from the Guildford School of Acting, who were brilliant, and looked as if they were having a total ball, which I learned afterwards that they were.
Seeing as its about the Argonauts, and Orpheus travelled with Jason, Hercules and Theseus, etc. etc. and Apollo, Caliope, Persephone, Mercury and all that crowd could always be put in there in the background, wreaking their havoc, Richard was able to cram almost every known myth into the story. There were lovely sheep, the three headed dog Cerberus, and a terrific dragon. There was humour, pathos, and really good dancing and singing, including really lovely wheelchair choreography.
I loved the testosterone-engulfed argonaut sailors, pretty thick the lot of them but filling the theatre with energy, and also the Sirens, softly singing "danger! danger! danger!" while dancing with the greatest possible allure.
It was also crammed with lovely Stilgoe-esque puns: e.g. the Argos being built with parts bought from a huge catalogue, and steered by some-one beating a tom-tom.
(For the non-Brits among you, "Argos" is the name of a chain of stores in UK where nothing is on display: you order from an immense catalogue, and our main GPS navigation system is called "Tom-Tom").
And the Golden Fleece was a traffic warden's yellow fleece jacket, of course.
Not to mention, obviously, the title of the thing.
Matt Lucas introduced it, and did a lovely job. He told us about his all-time worst heckle, and got the audience to do it en masse, to purge him of the horror, which was a lot of fun. Others during the week will be Michael Aspel, Penelope Keith, Tim Pigott-Smith and Jane Asher. And no less that HRH Prince Edward will be there for a Royal Gala one night.
The only, only (tiny) shortcoming is that there was no encore - we had one thumping good tune to end on, but we needed another one even more so to send us off like jet-fueled rockets into the warm summer evening: I think they just didn't expect to hear the audience in very demanding mood at the end, and so we were frustrated, and left a little more quietly than we might have done, which was a pity.
Never mind. I still loved it.
So if you are anywhere near Guildford this week, hie ye over to the Yvonne Arnaud theatre. You won't be sorry you did.
Members of the Orpheus Centre
Performing at the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House
London 2009
By Jack Stilgoe Jackstil. Downloaded from Flickr under creative commons license
The death of Alexander Lee McQueen so shocked and upset and touched me that I left my deadlines to spend an hour or so that evening setting up a post, just a few pix, to express my feelings.
Next morning I took it down. "What am I thinking?" I thought. What exactly are my feelings?
You see, my formative years were spent in the women’s liberation movement, which still has a beating heart. We had then, and still have, concerns about the objectification of women. And here I am, wanting to comment on the death of someone who made his living by objectifying womanhood, if not women themselves, sometimes in the most extreme ways. I cannot let that go by me. I have to interrogate myself on that one, I thought.
He was at the pinnacle of a profession about which one must ask questions, and he seemed to be asking them. Nevertheless, he was hailed as a genius by even its silliest propagandists, sycophants and hangers-on, those one would most want to question, as well as by its serious and thoughtful adherents. Did they not see the questions, or where the questions not there? Did they not see the anger? I am quite perplexed.
So today I have to spend another hour thinking about that, sorting it out and re-posting.
Now (full disclosure), I am not a fashionista, or even minimally fashionable, come to that. Those who know me might chortle at the thought. I don’t read the magazines that peddle destructive fantasies to women, nor even flick through them in waiting rooms. All that stuff made me very unhappy once, and I totally reject the rampant consumerism that they promote. Today I dress for comfort not for speed.
But fashion is not simply clothing (and perhaps on the catwalk its not even clothing), its also art and creativity, and something about this guy's work got to me. There is social commentary, less widely noted than the brilliance and originality of his styling, but the fact that it reached me, about as far from the fashion world as it is possible to get, is evidence in itself of the power of the message, whatever it is.
His work is very, very edgy: teetering like his models at the boundaries of composure, terror, glamour, melancholia, sexuality, the macabre, the sweet and the terribly painful. This teetering is interesting in itself: he manages to convey so much contradiction and complexity, to use the extremes of his industry to criticize it, and to suggest, more than suggest, that things are not quite right, not as they aught to be.
He was part of Claire Wilcox' hugely successful exhibition on “Radical Fashion” at the Victoria and Albert Museum for the Decorative Arts, way back in 2002. His models were in glass cages, and thousands of moths were released Moths? *blinks rapidly*! Talk about a many-layered metaphor!
And take a look at this little number, that is so sweet and lovely in concept, and yet so strangely armoured and tense in execution, so threatening. There's a dissonance there: hard to define, but definitely there, I think. That is what he does - makes you feel uncertain. And yet a beautiful dress, beautifully made.
And then there are those astonishing shoes of his. So incredibly extreme and high and sexy, so odd, so puzzling, so outrageous and glamorous, but at the same time so downright ugly, and hinting at disablement: the club foot, the bound foot, limitations in mobility. And talk about teetering ….
.... hints of stilts, the circus, the illusion, the freak show....
This video is fascinating. I hope you have time to view it. Its of his last show, for Spring 2010. Maybe you saw it streamed live, in itself an innovation.
In stark contrast to the lovely, feminine and familiar McQueen silhouettes, the parallel (literally) between the models and the cameras (or are they machine tools?), different kinds of automata, each on their respective runways, endlessly mirrored in the backdrop, is shocking, isn't it? And perfectly clear. It's actually a terrifying image of the self-absorbed, self-referential elements of the fashion industry, isn't it?
And what about the lightly reptilian fabric, and the distinctly reptilian hair-dos, and the stalking gait of the models, forced on them by the shoes? Combine this with the predatory silhouette of the cameras, like a couple of praying mantis: and we all know what praying mantis do with their own, with those they "love".
And what about this one? The machine tools, this time spray guns, actually attack the model innocently pirouetting between them in her flouncy white dress. It's very beautiful and original, and got thunderous applause, but it looks like a gang rape, or at least an absolutely devastating hissy fit.
I know nothing of the theory of fashion, nor much about McQueen or his life, so I should not, but I do, dare to comment: there is something about his attention to both the beauty and the horror of fashion that is important, as well as arresting. He was angry, in fact I think he was deeply angry, and he was asking very big questions about his industry, from deep within it.
Not questions about the objectification of women, perhaps, more about the cruelty and rapaciousness of the fashion/entertainment world, and perhaps also, by implication, the society of which it is the expression. This last is perhaps not impossible, although the focus was clearly his love-hate relationship with the fashion world.
And now it is all in the past. And we are left with an enigma, and the awful tragedy of genius dying way too early.
And, sadly, yet another disturbing example of the fashion industry not looking after its own, even its greatest.
Am I alone in thinking that the sub-text of the rather fabulous BBC/British Museum radio series / media extravaganza "History of the World in 100 Objects" is actually the text?
I haven’t seen a single comment on its lightly argued position that the loot in the BM should stay there, and I’m feeling pretty lonely.
It’s a terrific programme. Fifteen minutes of un-missable delight every week-day, as one selected object from the past, and its historical implications, are described by the highly-regarded Director of the British Museum, the brilliant, unassuming and engaging, if hubristic, Dr. Neil MacGregor.
Go to the websites, both of them, (BBC and British Museum) see the objects, get the podcasts, upload your own historical object, be a part of emerging intellectual history. You can listen to the story while looking at the object, brush-stoke close if you want to. New technologies are yielding new insights from old objects, and the latest multi-media communications bring it all alive.
But there's a bit of a whiff in the air ....
For starters, under all this wonderfulness, its pretty weird, isn’t it, that all the objects in a programme about world history are in one place: London.
I mean, seriously, WTF??
And they’re not only in one place: they’re in one institution – the British Museum.
And we all know how all this stuff got there, some of it paid for, some of it not. That world historical process we call colonialism. Which denied people their own history.
It's almost too obvious to mention, but on the other hand, should we be dazzled into overlooking it? That's the point.
So even while I’m hearing all this terrific stuff about how multi-faceted history is, and how connected we all are, I can’t help remembering that much of the evidence got there through that kind of connectedness we call exploitation.
And precisely because they are there, Dr. MacGregor feels that: "a world narrative can only be told in a museum like this". Only? (emphasis mine) If we want to have "world" history, it seems, we have to overlook the rather mixed provenance of the objects: the other history embedded in them.
Here's how the argument goes. We can understand world history more easily if, for example , we check out the Elgin Parthenon Marbles and then pop down the corridor and see the Persian sculptures, because Greece and Persia were at war at the time, and we can make a comparison.
This is true, very true. And its certainly a very nice thing to be able to do, if you can, if you happen to be in London, and so much easier for the scholers than having to schlep around all over the place. But its not the only way to get a handle on world history. It's not necessary to an understanding of world history.
And how much better if we could look out from their beautiful new museum in Athens and see their original location in the Parthenon itself, and then stroll over and make a comparison with the footworn stones that were there when the marbles were first carved, and sit on the warm stones in the agora and think about the kind of society that produced both the marbles and democracy, right there where you are sitting. Feel the heat. Hear the cicadas, that were also here when the marbles were. Get a real sense of the place of these marblesin history.
Through all the multi-media glitz of this glamorous tour de force, the deep message is that it’s OK for us to have hijacked their history because (only) we can tell it as world history, and tell it better.
Bejabers, that’s hubris, if ever I heard it !!
Me, I think its time for the formerly colonized peoples to have their own damn things back, if they want them, and tell their own history.
Then some-one could make a block-buster series about that, and how the objects transformed knowledge generation in their own communities. Now that would really be world knowledge.
And in case we forget, it’s not only the objects from places like Greece and Egypt that matter, where their governments have made a high-profile effort to get them back.
My friend Leone Ross, the brilliant Jamiacan/British novelist and short story writer, has reminded me that there are plenty of people who bitterly wish they could take back their things when they go into museums, even if their governments havn't made a big show about it, and I can well understand the sentiment.
That makes this particular representation of “world” history seem pretty much a masquerade, doesn’t it? Pretty darn hollow?
Here’s what I think should happen: there should be a world network of, say, 100 museums, big and small (especially small), that are collectively, jointly, presenting a holistic view of world history, with the originals where they belong, and copies elsewhere. We have the technology to make perfect copies now, and all the networking bells and whistles to bring it alive.
That would be world history. That would be context. I think the public would be delighted, and everyone's bottom lines would benefit. Terrific idea!
I'm hoping that someone more in the loop on these things than me can tell me its already in the works.
That’s the way to go. It would be hard to arrange, but would make a cosmic world-class multi-media blockbuster.
I'm still deep in deadline management (see last post), but can't resist this quotation, courtesy of the always interesting Diet Iced Me.
“ …The task of setting free one’s gifts was a recognized labor in the ancient world. The Romans called a person’s tutelar spirit his (sic) genius. In Greece it was called a daemon … "
"In Rome it was the custom on one’s birthday to offer a sacrifice to one’s own genius. People didn’t just receive gifts on their birthday, but would also give something to their guiding spirit. Respected in this way the genius made one “genial”: sexually potent, artistically creative, and spiritually fertile…"
"An abiding sense of gratitude moves a person to labor in the service of his or her daemon. The opposite is properly called narcissism. The narcissist feels his or her gifts come from himself/ herself. They work to display themselves, not to suffer change... The celebrity trades on his or her gifts, and does not sacrifice to them."
"And without that sacrifice, without the return gift, the spirit cannot be set free."
I've changed some of the nouns and pronouns to remove any implication that it is only men who have creative genius. Seems that's what they thought way back in 1983. I made about 10 changes, and left one. Anyway, it's still a great passage about self-respect and creativity.
Now I'm an Aries, so its not my birthday today, but I don't think we need wait for birthdays. I find it's fun to dish out gifts to my inner genius on a daily basis, in fact even more frequently. A walk? Some journaling? A little bit of chocolate? A few moments staring into the middle distance (one of her favourites)? a stretch?
I am also grateful to Diet Iced Me for reminding me of Kafka: "the purpose of a story (a book, surely?) is to be an axe for breaking up the ice (frozen sea) within us", or something like that. It's quite a free translation, but all the better for that, perhaps.
I prefer "frozen sea" to "ice" - deeper and fuller of mystery, but I prefer "story" to "book". Storytelling has a lot of power for inner healing and growth, more than books themselves, I would say, in general, with some exceptions.
It's difficult to read what Kafka's saying here, especially if you don't speak French. It says: "A person is not created from bottom to top but from the interior to the exterior." Or something like that. Its by an entity called "Street of the Death of Art". Not that Kafka actually ever wrote that gobbledygook, but its a nice piece of street art. Intellect in the midst of decay. Very kafkaesque.
I like Kafka actually, despite my (delightfully? nauseatingly?) bright and sunny take on life. As I have said elsewhere, positive thinking is my default mode. Thats how I deal with decay and decadence
And if you pay attention to your inner genius, as Lewis Hyde suggests, it tends to bring out the positive side. I mean I wouldn't have used Kafka's notion of and "axe", or even a "frozen sea" because that's not how it feels to me, but the message is pretty positive - break down inner barriers.
And there's nothing like a gift to yourself for breaking down barriers: depending on the barrier of course. Sometimes only an axe will do.
For nearly 40 years a very long time John Lennon has meant something really important to me. First as a teenage rebel, and then as a pretty serious social and political critic. Nowhere Boy is my one essential Christmas season film-going this year.
His main message - speak your own truth and hold them accountable - is still right bang on the nail.
And here we are at end of the noughties: Christmas 2009. Lennon would have had a LOT to say about everything that has been going down. One of his catchy lyrics comes to mind:
"And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?"
Indeed Ms. Sarah Louise, what have you done, in 2009, to make a difference?
Including, given the sub-text of Lennon's Christmas Song, what have you done about the knotty problem of war?
With failing heart I set to work to list what I have done, and I find I've done better than I thought. I set the list out below for those who care to read further.
Meanwhile, let's just say that its all messy, and we all have to do our bit. The main thing is to stay clear, pay close attention, and hold our so-called leaders accountable. And I still love John Lennon. to say the least. Here's how he put it:
Still true, still fabulous and still important!
And from the genuinely influential to my little part -
First of all, what's still to do, for next year.
Join an organisation that is working actively to charge Tony Blair as a war criminal.
Join some effective mechanism on energy reduction, or a composite of organisations. This is such an important issue, and we are being held hostage mainly by the US congress of capitalists and their chinese equivalent. Some very drastic kind of Greenpeace-type action is needed. Copenhagen was such a farce: how can we get these wankers to take it seriously?.
Grow my own veggies
Cut down on my airmiles
Get my finances sorted, by which I mean properly planned, organised and recorded (this is the main one. If I get this done I'll be way pleased. Why am I so finance phobic? see I'm Looking for a Financial Adviser).
Keep learning more on web 2.0, and come to grips with html
Keep working on my fitness.
Here is my list of eight good things in 2009.
Family: I provided part of a framework for my daughter to climb out of the mapless pit of trauma, depression and chaos into which she had fallen. Using this framework, a huge amount of effort and a strong network of friends that she has built up, she has turned her life around. I am very proud of her and all she has done, and the threshold of a new life that she has carved out for herself, and I am proud of myself for my small part in this. For me, this is the single most important thing that I have done this year
Family: I was able to spend several weeks with my father while he was dying over the summer, an incredible privilege which we both loved, and also to share information and pictures with our somewhat fractured family, which helped us all get through this difficult time together.
Work: I have participated in facilitating a really innovative and effective leadership training programme for United Nations senior staff, which will continue next year.
Work: I have been able to help the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) clarify their strategic priorities on women's and girls' rights, and in the case of UNDP work quite a lot on ways to prevent and provide recourse for violence against women.
War: As a great deal of UNDP's work on violence against women takes place in war-torn and post-conflict situations, in a sense I have made a small contribution to mitigating the effects of war. This also will continue next year.
War: I participated in several demonstrations against the Israeli invasion of Gaza earlier in the year, and threw a shoe at the Embassy here in London, specially carried thence for the purpose. I tweeted madly about the war criminal status of Tzipi Livni, and the distinction of Palestinian and Israeli origin for consumer items. A very important step in my view, and I will certainly be boycotting Israeli goods.
Carbon Footprint: I have worked quite hard on my carbon footprint this year. First off I have become a vegetarian, pretty much. I never buy meat for myself now. This is because of the extreme carbon costs of producing meat relative to veggies, and also, for me, the difficulty of knowing whether it has been reared and killed humanely. That's about 25% off by carbon footprint right there. Secondly I have stopped using my dryer and hair dryer, and have changed all my light-bulbs and turn them off more diligently. Small beer, but still, that's what I have done. I have joined the 10/10 campaign (10 % reduction in energy use by 2010). Third, I have cut back on my car use considerably. I did an audit on my average mileage for the autumn. It was 68 miles a week! Don't laugh, I travel a lot (air miles, oh dear), and I live alone, and I was sick for part of the time. So, I will do another audit in 2010, what ever, and I will make sure to reduce it by at least 10% less next year, and, much, much more importantly, cut down on my air miles.
Personal: I changed my life with Web 2.0. Still enjoying tweeting and blogging
So all in all, not bad Sarah Louise. Room for improvement, but on the right track. Keep up the struggle my dear.
And the hardest thing I had to do? Find a new new home for my cats. And I succeeded in that too, painful as it was.
Oh, and another thing for 2010 - don't turn into one of those people who brings their cats into every damn conversation.
Downloaded from Flickr under Creative Commons Licence
Regular visitors to these musings will know that I have a very low opinion of Mr. Silvio Berlusconi, much in the news in recent days. Indeed, to paraphrase Alexander Pope:
"I find it hard to know where lies the Fault / For BERLUSCONI's well-deserv'd ASSAULT..."
My only comment is "wrong pecker, Sr. Tartaglia, but thanks anyway".
In throwing the tourist trinket, Sr. Tartaglia has achieved something that no amount of demonstrations or arguments could do. He has humiliated Berlusconi. He has unmanned him in his own eyes.
Berlusconi has taken to a highly successful extreme the applied sexism on which so much political power rests. It seems that the language of male hierarchy is the only language that this bottom feeder understands, and I am deeply happy that one who trades in degradation has been brought so low by male-form humiliation.
The BBC reports today that his doctor says "his morale is still a matter of concern". This is a promising snippet of information.
And fellow deep-chested male self-promotionist Vladimir Putin seems to have understood precisely what is affecting his Latin co-attitudinist. "Berlusconi", he said on Tuesday "behaved in a manly way in an extreme situation". A gross exaggeration, of course, but balm to the wounded soul, no doubt.
Only moments before the assault Berusconi had un-buttoned his shirt and asserted his masculine health and vigor to thousands of his delighted supporters. Now he is depressed, and his departure from hospital twice postponed. Let's hope he cowers from the press for many days to come. I am not holding my breath, but I'm not entirely without hope either.
Berlusconi has successfully blurred the boundaries of entertainment and politics by including a former topless dancer in his cabinet and nominating starlets for the European Parliamentary elections. He's running Italy like a cheap bordello.
But if that were the only problem, we would be in a better position to do something about it. In fact the starlet effect is more pernicious and devastating than that. An interesting article in a recent edition of Time magazine How Silvio Berlusconi Uses Women on TV. showed how this reptile has “shaped” his electorate by using his media empire to numb their intellect through mindless TV game shows that are exceptionally demeaning of women. I think "groomed" his electorate comes closer to the mark, expressing the perverse and degrading sexuality that is involved. These shows are nothing but pole-dancing in prime-time, for family viewing (e.g Sunday lunch-time, after church). It's like total immersion in Zoo Magazine, if you can imagine such a thing.
If you speak Italian, check out Lorella Zanardo's award-winning video on YouTube "The Body of Women" (Il Corpo delle Donne). It provides a powerful feminist critique of these shows. Even if you don't have the language, the correlations with food and butchery make the argument visually clear.
This kind of perspective reaches me, and maybe a micro-percentage of those men and women who already understand that the man is a total shit.
But it just doesn't reach the man himself, or those who repeatedly vote for him. What do they care about humiliating women? It's what they deal in.
Only one thing has any weight.
I hate to say it, but violent humiliation by another man, especially a socially outcast and highly subordinated man (if the accounts of Sr. Tartaglia's isolation and mental illness are true), seems to be the only thing that has cut through Berlusconi's politico-virility, and if that's what it takes, I am very glad its happened.
Although his other pecker would have been even more appropriate, soft-tissue damage would not have been so comprehensively evident and demeaning as the crunch we are getting from his broken nose and teeth. So that's OK too.
Or to paraphrase Pope again (but this time penned by me);
"The weighty TRINKET, seized from nearby shelf / expos'd th'Achilles' heal: a fragile (but inflated) sense of SELF".
And at least he won't be a distraction in Copenhagen.
Or am I? Seriously, this jerk represents majority opinion about women and girls.
Most men have their Id under better control than Berlusconi, but millions don't. We need absolute prevention of this nonsense, because the logical conclusion of tolerating harassment is rape and violence against women.
And for that we need accountability. The social and political equivalent of the Eagle Owl Grab is progressive law, actively enforced. And for that we need a well-informed public.
Some very wonderful and principled people are working to change the whole mind-set.
And here's one man's moving journey away from bystander-ness on the question of male violence, developing the courage to step towards what he really cares about, away from his socialisation.
And here is a good explanation of the social pressures behind the mind-set. The extraordinary view of masculinity, male sexuality and male violence that we pretty-much all grow up with.
There are many organizations actively working on these themes;
In South Africa the Sonke Gender Justice Network have a "One Man Can" campaign, and have also taken Julius Malema, General Secretary of the ANC Youth League to the Equality Court for his sexist and homophobic language.
MenEngage, a global alliance of NGOs and UN agencies that seeks to engage boys and men to achieve gender equality. It includes Sonke, Promundo, The White Ribbon Campaign and many others.
But the main thing is to get rid of disgusting role models like the astonishingly teflon-coated Mr. Sylvio Berlusconi. Sadly I'm not holding my breath on that one.
I read a poem one Sunday morning in late 1999, and realised that I no longer needed my toxic commute to a toxic workplace, and third, no fourth, toxic boss in a row.
Several months of mulling, of back-burner pondering, resolved instantly to clear certainty.
In less than four short months I was outta there, with my own little biz and never a single regret. I'm still in contact with the wonderful friends I made there and I'm still doing the same kind of work, but co-creating it now. And no more brutal, stumbling, neanderthal "leadership".
Thousands love this poem: for me it was life-changing.
Here it is:
Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver from her collection Dream Work
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
The most totally liberating part for me? The first line.
.
And here's my own little wildgoose.
From her I have learned and am learning almost every other thing I have ever needed to know about loving what I love. The harshest and most exciting lessons of all, totally wild and wonderful.
Now flying strongly in the clean blue air herself, finding her own place in the family of things.
And as every graduate of business school knows full well, Wild Geese almost never fly alone, unless they are really sick, and even then another goose accompanies as long as possible. They fly in formation to benefit from each other's up-draft, and the leadership rotates, so that they all share responsibility. And, almost best of all, they honk to support each other in flight.
Now, there's a life agenda. To co-create that kind of community.
The follower kind of leadership - that's what I like. Not only in the sense that leaders pay attention to their followers, but that leaders are also followers, and vice versa (and its so social networking).
"Real leadership always takes place through collective, systemic, and distributed action".
Regular visitors to these pages will know that "financial cruise control" is what I'm after, and its about way more than money. I find, not surprisingly, that it has three parts:
Financial - the money part;
Cruise - the fun and happiness part, and:
Control - the strategic, conceptual part, the dialectics of life.
And why am I doing this? I want loads of boodle? No, actually. I'm a control freak? Not at all.
I'm doing this because I want to be happy in this, the springtime of my senescence (Gore Vidal). So the middle part is, naturally enough, central to the whole project.
The best way to find out exactly what it is that makes you happy, so you can get more of it? Journaling, without question, or as we say today, blogging.
(Actually I still like the old kind, the blank book and pencil kind, and you just have to search "journaling" on Amazon to see how popular it is. And as for googling or twitter-searching "happiness", oh boy! We are all getting desperate. And its not surprising when you think how much shopping we are all doing. But I'm coming to that).
It turns out that journaling can not only help us find out what makes us happy, the very process of journaling itself produces happiness.
Read on:
If there is one thing you should do, its refresh your memory (or in my case, find out for the first time, can you believe?) what Epicurus had to say about happiness. He's is my man, and he lived in a commune, dude. Way back then in 350 BC, or thereabouts.
He was the first (as far as we know), and he said it all, set the framework. Everything since has just been details.
Photo downloaded from Flickr under Creative Commons License. Snastopoulos
Epicurus believed we could all be happy, but are looking in the wrong place. Contrary to popular belief he did not advocate self-indulgence. He was more interested in frugality and quality: knowing what we really need. Simple pleasures that really satisfy. Or, to put it another way, financial cruise control.
That's the whole thing wrapped up, right there.
Epicurus felt that there are three requirements for happiness:-
1. Friends: good companions, constant communication and interaction among people who like and support each other. Absolutely.
2. Freedom. Don't worry, not the eagle and gun kind: it means not keeping up with the Jones's, which gives you freedom from financial worries. Doing your own thing. Modest pleasures. Simple pleasures, Affordable luxuries. Self-sufficiency even. This is actually the hardest one of the three to achieve, thanks to recreational shopping and the advertising that drives it.
And finally, get this ....
3. An Analysed Life. In other words, journaling, blogging, the lovely process of stepping back, taking stock, reflecting on what matters, thinking about "your place in the family of things" (Mary Oliver). What a brilliant guy.
So the first thing you gotta do, as soon as you have about 10 minutes to spare, is click right here and watch this totally brilliant vid. about Epicurus and his ideas about financial cruise control.
And I'm going to keep right on trucking with this little blog of mine, which led me to Epicurus (better late than never), and I have to say is making me very .......... happy.
And I'm also working on all that other stuff. Definitely.
So come back soon to see what I find out, but while your here, why not subscribe or share this blog, or become a follower (right there in the side-bar) ?
And meanwhile, here are some simple epicurean pleasures to enjoy, from Epicurus' birthplace in Samos, Greece:
A simple pleasure
Downloaded from Flickr under Creative Commons License Vtveen.
Another simple pleasure
Downloaded from Flickr under Creative Commons License Vtveen
I was amazed at the collapse of Waterford Wedgewood in January of this year. It was part of the wallpaper. It went into receivership, and is now distinctly faded.
A conglomerate company with some subsidiaries going back 250 years, Wedgewood Waterford included household names like Wedgewood pottery, Royal Doulton bone china, Rosenthal Porcelain, and, of course Waterford Crystal.
Stoke-on-Trent was pretty devastated. Factories were demolished, workers sacked and secondary businesses closed.
But the industry is dealing with some of the very things I'm mulling here, like how to turn that freefall feeling into a revenue stream. How to adjust and get through the difficult times with flair not fear. Using traditional skills and experience in new ways.
In its week-long radio show "Whatever Happened to the Teapots?" the Beeb (with the wonderful Roger Law) is getting the word out to the rest of us via its I-player, its totally amazing website and all the usual sharing widgets.
Roger Law, of Spitting Image fame (together with Peter Fluck), now works entirely in drawing and especially ceramics, making really lovely porcelain. I mean seriously gorgeous. Check it out. Remember their Mrs Thatcher teapot (and dog chews)? Roger's moved on from all that now.
But to jog your memory here's a book cover from back then designed by Law and Fluck, using one of their kinder satirical puppets, on a topic close to my heart, as it happens
I don't want to presume, but Roger was probably cash poor once, but not any more, not for a long time actually. He has done his own thing, reinvented himself several times and found, I imagine, financial cruise control. Just the chap to talk to the good people of Stoke with understanding of the creativity, courage and risk-taking that will keep ceramics alive in the Six Towns.
Roger writes for the BBC that "despite the gloomy conditions for the big players, there are signs of hope to be found on the streets of Stoke. Look into the alleyways and lanes around the big factories and you'll come across small businesses finding a market for their specialised products, and it seems that some of them are doing very nicely."
He is visiting Stoke to find out exactly what the industry is doing, and for 15 minutes each day this week the BBC is broadcasting his conversations with people at all branches and levels of the industry..
I am listening at teatime (of course) every afternoon (15.45 GMT) to see what I can learn about adjusting in really strategic ways to what life brings you, good and bad, to stay on the path to financial cruise control. I'll report back.
And anyone can listen to Whatever happened to the Teapots?on the fabulous but controversial BBC I-player whenever they want to over the next 10 days (until Saturday 21 October). Or read and share indefinitely in an article by Roger Law for the BBC here. Enjoy.
The Largest Vase Ever Made by Wedgewood. DodoPappa
