How to live forever and change the world

Here's inspiration from a young man who once portrayed my character's son in an indie film....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHNALcttrQo

What Storytellers Do

The following I adapted from a speech by Tom Hanks' character in the film Saving Mr. Banks:

Forgiveness is what we learn from art, from books, from plays.  The author forgives himself.  Because life is a harsh sentence to impose on one’s self, and authors redeem themselves through writing.

The author must trust himself, must not disappoint himself.  Where there is blindness, the author gives sight, reveals truth.

The author’s characters, especially the main character, are precious to him.  If he trusts himself, he won’t be disappointed.  And every time anyone reads his words, they will witness characters revealed, understood, saved, honored.  They will love these characters with the guileless trust of children.  They will weep for their cares, they will wring their hands when they lose, and in the story’s final moments, they will rejoice in the humanity of these characters, they will sing.  For generations to come, the author’s characters will be honored, and they, as well as the author, as well as his audience, will be redeemed.  All these characters stand for will be saved—along with the author and his audience—not in life perhaps, but certainly in imagination. 

This is what we storytellers do.  We restore order with imagination.  We instill hope, again and again and again. 

Artists, authors, playwrights, all, trust yourselves.  Prove it to yourselves, and you will prove it for everyone for all time.  Your work is the meaning of your life, the fulfillment of your promise to the universe.

Keeping Up with Oneself

I am naturally inclined to having a “big picture” mentality—witness this blog.  I seem to have countless projects running in my head, countless more untethered ideas, vignettes of possibilities that bubble up in my awareness which I often scramble to write down before they pop into extinction, leaving a filmy trace of their promise.

Over time I have come to feel like I am not simply pursuing my dreams, but am racing breathlessly after them as they recede.  I’ve accomplished much, but so much more I only imagine I complete.

I had a friend when I was in my twenties who wanted to be an artist, a sculptor.  He spent some of his artistic energy collecting barrels of objects he imagined he’d one day make into works of art.  The rest of his time he spent planning, specifically drafting plans, like an architect designing structures.  These two efforts left virtually no time for building things, and when he’d occasionally attempt to do so he was at once dissatisfied with the result and taken aback by the amount of time making things actually required.  He decided, quite courageously I felt at the time, to stop attempting to make art.  He got rid of his barrels of stuff and just drew his plans for all the pieces he’d never complete, arguably never begin.

Our society emphasizes results and winning competitions, over process and thought.  We need things done, of course, but we need to improve how we do them and, more importantly, more fully consider what we’re doing in the first place and at milestones along the way.  A good software developer knows that time spent in analysis reduces time spent in coding and testing.  But we’re pushed to meet deadlines and have become inured to continually returning to the drawing board to come up with the next best thing, to produce new versions of everything from the latest couture to the latest weaponry.

But I digress, as I so often do when related ideas burst in my brain.  My point, my original point, was not to lament how our society stresses us to achieve, but to consider my friend the (former?) artist and his solution to his dilemma, and how I find myself barely able to keep up with my own plans, especially those plans which I have not yet given up on completing.

So, considering my own dilemma, here are a few thoughts for now:

I am losing the race to finish the things I’ve started.  I am old enough to have physical file folders the contents of which are yellow with age, and which I examine as if they were gathered, written, composed by some ancestor of mine, not myself. 

Instead of a “bucket list”—I have that in spades—I have a list of projects I know I will never complete.  In the manner of my friend, I’m calling them done before they’re even fully developed.  I have made peace with myself that I can’t do everything I propose to do.

I am considering exit strategies, ways to respect my ideas, my accomplishments, my failures, my best intentions, so that the chaos of my attempts at living well has more form to it—a theme, perhaps.  Some of my impulse here is leaving a legacy, I’m sure.  But more immediately, I need a better coping mechanism than chasing after illusions.  I need to more realistically manage my expectations, and this means continuing to improve on how I get things done, when I can expect to complete projects, and whether I want to follow some paths at all or not.

Maybe in simply writing this I’ve solved my dilemma, solving it by identifying it as a meta-project, a project of projects, and admitting to myself that catching up with myself is a task I’ll never complete.

Responsible Art

There's currently an allegation of racism in an upcoming staging of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.  I’ve not investigated the matter sufficiently to form an opinion one way or another.  

But I have an opinion about Kipling’s original collection of stories.   When I was a teenager, The Jungle Book was alternately inspiring and comforting to me.  I didn’t care who or what Kipling was.

I've always believed that art should stand on its own merits.  Politics—or political correctness—or how a writer’s life may inform his or her art, only interfere with one’s appreciation of it.  And to analyze works from a different era through the prism of today is a distraction. 

To the extent socially responsible writers self-consciously avoid offending people, they offend their muses.  Responsible art is responsible only to art.  Art has no cause but the honest expression of itself.

A priest once told me he needed an operation, and confided to me that his surgeon could be an atheist for all he’d know or care.  He just wanted the best surgeon available.  That’s how I feel about art.  I want it to be the best available, not the most high-minded. 

Question Authority

We rarely consider the ways we lend authority to others, don’t always perceive we do.  

Certainly there are authorities, governments, churches, team leaders, chairpersons, parents, who command authority.  All derive it ultimately from the consent and acquiescence of the governed.  This is inherently neither good nor bad, but we should consider any authority’s validity.   

Often we grant authority without realizing we are, obey perceived requirements which are no more than someone else’s agenda, authorized only by our submission to it.

When we hesitate to do things on account of what others think, question their authority to prevent us.

“Creative Specialist”: An Oxymoron

Specialist credentials are acquired by repeated masterful performance in a specific area.  Specialists are by nature focused, driven, single-minded.

Creative persons are by nature distracted, craving the next novel experience.  They are by nature generalists, facilitators, able to make connections.  They may have specialized skills, but they’re always looking for new things to do, and however skilled they may be, they invariably aren’t more experienced in a given area than someone who’s devoted their career to that particular specialization.
Creatives thrive in the nether-world of crossover skills.

Typical job posting qualifications call for specialists.  The text of these qualifications will state that they want creative people, willing to turn on a dime with changing circumstances, who are not satisfied with routine assignments.

We live in an era of specialization.  Human Resource departments don't recognize crossover skills.  Regardless what they proclaim, they neither want nor believe they need creative types.

An Insight into Inaction

Identity

In 2009, author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) recorded a TED talk on nurturing creativity. It amounts to a surprising piece of practical advice for my fellow artists. Unlike her, I doubt there’s much of me outside of myself, but like her, I feel an elemental force within me, almost a separate entity.

My “genius”looks like Alec Guiness. When I was a boy, his name was Gopy (pronounced “Go pee”—which suggests his moniker’s etymology) , which became more formally “Alpha” when I became an adult. Alpha resides somewhere deep behind my eyes. Unlike Ms. Gilbert, I feel quite whole and self-contained, just not entirely of one mind.