Side 1, track 1 from Green, 1988. A sonic ode to small talk. Maybe not an ode. Maybe just a statement. A socially awkward statement. I basically refuse to speak on the phone anymore, unless it's to one of two people: my gramma or my stepdad. And basically only because they don't text message.
Text messaging is a socially awkward introvert's dream come true.
From Green, 1988. When it's cold and dark outside, getting out of bed and showing up to life is one of the hardest things. The cats never seem to mind it. When you're a cat, lounging around dreamily is how you show up to life. Getting up is temporary and soon followed by another round of sleepy dealings.
I'm not saying I want that to be my life. I'm just saying that cats make sleeping into an art form. They show up to life dreaming.
I think I'll make this my show up to life song. Starting tomorrow morning.
*****
Update: I have been told by different people who are not connected to each other in any way that it looks like the cats in this sketch are humping.
I can assure you they are not. Not that I have a problem with cats humping, per se. That just wasn't my goal. And while you are free to see anything you want in a piece of art and interpret it how you see fit, I just want to put it out there that they're not humping, and the reason they're not humping is that they're just not humping. Can I use the word humping one more time? Here is the photo that I used for reference. Not humping, clearly. Laying about like cats do, clearly. Also, how cute are they? Right? Just what the internet needed... more cat pictures. Clearly.
It’s hard to be original in a world where it seems that everything has already been done. There’s nothing new under the sun. There is only how you perceive it, how you describe it, how you convey it to others, which is new.
Ask a classroom of 25 kids to draw a picture of something, you get 25 exceptionally unique pictures of that thing.
I think that everything that came before you helped to shape the things you create, whether you know it or not. Maybe you’ve never encountered the absolute original. Maybe it goes too far back. Maybe as far back as a cave painting, or a tribal drum beat. But its existence brought about the creation of many other things, and you’ve encountered some of those, and that means the thing you made is the next link in the chain of creativity.
It may not be the next big thing. It may seem to you like a drop in the ocean, something that doesn’t matter, wholly uninfluential. But I like to think that merely existing on the creativity continuum makes it important, whether it ends up on auction at Sotheby’s, or gets 100 views on YouTube, or gets tossed into a drawer, never to be seen or heard by anyone.
Because it exists, it has matter, and that means the make-up of the universe has been forever altered. Those quantum particles go swirling undetected by human eyes into the atmosphere and are carried away to other places as if on the wings of birds. And then someone somewhere is offered the ephemeral hand of inspiration, and it drives the creation of something new which has been made before, but not like this. Something which might be auctioned at Sotheby’s, or get 100 views on YouTube, or end up in a drawer, never to be seen or heard by anyone…
Once upon a time there was a little girl who did what she was told. She went to Sunday school and received her sacraments. She believed everything the grown ups told her, because why wouldn't she?
Then one day when she was no longer little, she realized that her understanding of the world conflicted with the things she had been told. She was okay with this. It didn't really challenge her to let go of the old ways of thinking. She let them go quite readily, in fact.
Except, she would still occasionally find herself thinking in the old way. That way of thinking was wrong, she rationalized. It didn't make any sense. So then who was she talking to when she wished out loud?
Some neural pathways are harder to rewire than others.
