art and artists, Maker culture
Hands-on (often inept) fooling around with stuff has been called “tinkering.” The top definition for the word “tinkering” in the online collaborative Urban Dictionary is this: “to mess around with something and you don’t really have a clue what you are doing.” (The regular dictionary definitions are pretty boring.)
Another IPS (Inner Peace Symptom): an inclination to try and see whether you can pull something off. [Trying it for yourself can lead to some amazing discoveries.] I am watching a young friend who’s stuck in a major cycle of suck. He won’t try anything new. I don’t understand why it’s so hard for him, but there it is. He sits around moaning about how his life is not working, but he won’t try doing anything different.
The wise guys say Life is a balance. Physically that is a truth. You breathe in and you breathe out. Too much breathing in and you hyperventilate; too little and you turn blue. Eat too much and you gain weight; eat too little and you waste away. Balance is fascinating.
Starting is a series of events. You decide to walk to Cleveland and you aim to do it on your own two feet – no bike, no bus, no train, no plane or helicopter…not even a hot-air balloon. You’re going to walk to Cleveland. So you take a first step in the right direction. That’s starting. At the end of the day, however far you’ve gotten, you might stop at a hotel and rest. And what happens the next morning? …
Another IPS (Inner Peace Symptom): an understanding that past mistakes have consequences and what we have been and done does not just disappear because of good intentions now. [Sometimes it takes a long time to get back to pono.] It seems to be a given. We’re clumsy oafs, us humans. Often we break things without meaning to. Our words and our actions break hearts and shatter lives – our own and those of the ones we love.
“Follow your passion”…”take the path with a heart.” We hear that a lot, those of us who are looking for meaning and mana to add to our ordinary lives. Are they the same thing? Do they mean what we’ve been told they mean? Does this advice make sense?
Another IPS (Inner Peace Symptom): a growing awareness that all phenomena are empty and illusory and the only meaning and mana in any situation is what the people involved bring to it. [It’s a cool thing to realize that we humans are the arbiters of the meaning and mana in our own lives.] The search for meaning and mana is a very human thing. It’s been going on for centuries now. The words themselves are so nebulous that it’s hard…
Everybody’s heard about how putting in 10,000 hours working on a particular skill-set pretty much “guarantees” that you will be very good at using those skills. The number makes the “rule” easy to remember. It’s so nice and round. It’s also more than a little intimidating! Ten thousand hours apparently translates to about ten years, after all, and I’m not sure whether that includes time for eating, sleeping and doing all of the other stuff humans do.
When comedian Steve Martin was interviewed by radio host Charlie Rose, the funnyman was asked to answer the “how” question aspiring performers always ask those who have made a success of their career. Martin said nobody liked hearing this answer, but he did it anyway: “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
I don’t know if it’s just me or if it’s an artist thing to ponder frequently on the direction you want to head. (You tend to spend a lot of time making course-corrections when you’re flying by the seat of your pants, I find.) I have been musing on this a lot lately. I think I am trying, in all my work – in my art, my poetry, my writing and even in my property management gig — to incorporate…