When You Destroy the Tools of Creativity

Thanks for the note and for the many great observations and pointers.

I loved the Merton quote and I think that it brings up the heart of the matter regarding agency:

Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives … They wear our their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else’s experience or write somebody else’s poems.

One way or another, agency is inextricably intertwined with God - i.e., that there is something within each of us that is utterly unique and omnipresent. How do we develop a relationship with that?!

You mentioned the “bifurcated economy” but I think the deeper underlying issue is our bifurcated consciousness that imagines that there are “things out there that we can manipulate and control” and that places subjectivity as inherently inferior to objectivity. We actually believe today that our own subjectivity is a hallucination.

Attention … ah, yes … raw attention - without classification, without judgement, with wonder. We need more of that. That is the source of Connection.

Lately I’ve been aware of how driving in my car is such a disconnected experience. I regularly drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway and so get to watch all the beautiful nature go whizzing by my window. It’s not exactly the same thing as walking amidst it.

Localism involves all the senses. It involves time and energy. A friend from church asked if I could bring my tractor over and grade his driveway. It will take half a day or more of my time and will bring me no obvious economic benefits. I will do it.

Here’s a nice reminder from Prince to not be fooled by the internet

Yes, yes.

Here’s one poet’s attempt to explain it to me.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.
-Rumi - 13th century Persian poet.

And when I try to articulate that connection, words completely fail me.

I believe it was Marshall McLuhan who pointed out the meaning of Rumpelstiltskin, was that when you put a name on something, the magic, the wonder disappears.

This. This times 100.
In the last couple weeks I’ve helped build a wheelchair ramp and just finished weatherproofing a mobile home roof for Habitat clients. There is a gift to yourself, something that absolutely transcends satisfaction, that comes from doing something positive and unrequited. (The church source code is probably Ecclesiastes 11:1,2 and Matthew 6:3, so there’s that. )

Thanks for the Prince link too, btw.

I am grateful for this thoughtfully written piece of art.

A few things came to mind, one of them an “old story” imbued with Truth (I am surprised how difficult it is for me to write that word - how programmed I have become) and prompted by Kyla’s comments about attention. “For where your treasure is, their your heart will be also”. It is also True in the physical world; I have reclaimed my adolescent hobby of riding dirt bikes. The bike and I go WHERE I AM LOOKING. almost effortlessly and without conscious “doing” when I focus on where I want to go.

Which leads me to the other thing that came to mind, a simple question that is enormously difficult to answer. “What do I really, really want?”. Answering this question has, for me, opened a clearing for agency in my own life.

This is something that has really started to finally dawn on me too Ed. There is a gift to oneself just in being productive for the sake of another living being - be it a plant, animal or person.

True! It’s almost like we can create our own future. Maybe we’re all kind of terrified of the creative power we have within us?

Thanks gents!

The implication is that doing these tasks we “don’t enjoy doing” for others is nevertheless rewarding. Where did the idea come from that work isn’t fun? Is that just another narrative? Maybe from the European Middle Ages, when the nobility set the narratives, and doing nothing useful was a sign of nobility?

I like work. I do it for me. All kinds of work. The fact that someone else benefits is a bonus.

I followed the link to the Defector article about actress Sydney Sweeney, among many other great links (thanks!). Here’s a contrasting view: Why Creatives Will Win by Thinking Small - by Ted Gioia

TV streaming definitely tossed a monkey wrench in to the benefit of actor residuals. Ted Gioia’s ideas probably help musicians more than actors - but then then Ms. Sweeney’s side hustles (ads, Instagram feeds) are part of what Gioia defines as gaining control the distribution of her creative output.

Beautiful sentiment Richard. “Localism involves all the senses”. Surely this is part of the antidote to atomization and loneliness that seems to pervade the landscape around us. To feel connected to a place and the people in it seems like what defines any fulfilling journey. All the more for the journey through the place we call home.
I seem to remember my economics courses had a category for this. Believe they called it intangible goods. My grandmother just called it your good name and reputation.

Thank you for the reminder to pay attention. Enjoy your tractor day.