Troy-Albany Trance-Formations

I have been wanting to post… something.  Anything?  Well, maybe not.  Perhaps this will end up being a “useless” post that says nothing.  I don’t know.

Lately, the thought and the observation has made itself known:  The word “I” looms large these days in my consciousness.  On my way to an appointment today, I was musing about the notion of self-indulgent writing.  I’m as guilty of that as anyone.  And in my quest to know myself in all my parts, I see that today I can get past my embarrassment about it.  (Just for today.  Tomorrw, I might retreat to the cave of “Did I really write that? Guh!”)

It occurred to me that self-indulgence and pretense do have a function in our lives.  As does cleverness.  Things that are something less than full presence, and seek to mimic it.  When one sees these things pop up, and when someone perhaps not-so-gently points out that a passage or a chapter or an entire play even is self-indulgent, it might help the writer to hear it in the context of their inner weakness.  Meaning that the self-indulgence needs compassion rather than punishment or flagellation. 

I have frequently been hurt by well-meaning people with my writing as the fulcrum for that uninvited pain. (Know your audiences and readers, dear writers.  Fair warning.)  Because things get put on the page, there is a tendency to think it’s all for grabs and that what a person says (or writes, which can be worse because then one has it in print as if it were a prison sentence), somehow gets to be like toilet-paper.  It often is forgotten that a person created the text and is fragile.  At least at a certain point.  At another point in the process, sometimes harshness IS what is required.  I’ve experienced that too, on both sides of it.  There is a relentlessness in life, and it can be a lot to deal with.

In Feri, we don’t coddle weakness, but neither do we discard it.  We transform it.  Hence the nnecessary notion to confront self-indulgence and pretence with identification rather than judgment.  Perceptiveness rather than prescription.  It may be ironically that a person has not gone self-indulgent enough.  Part of the reason I was musing on the topic was because I realized how much I like the movies of Quentin Tarantino.  He has FUN, he creates BEAUTY.  One of my favorite film images comes from Kill Bill, Vol. 1 I think–when Uma Thurman is on the plane and there is this brilliant golden light suffusing the seating area.  And there’s another equally haunting image in Inglorious Basterds when Shoshana is getting ready for the night of death looming ahead.  It’s so well-composed.  Yet there’s gruesomeness and over-the-top stuff and delicious and wild play.  And yes, there might be quite a bit of self-indulgence and pretense IN THE PROCESS of its creation.  I’m not saying Tarantino’s final products are pretense.  They are what they are.  But I do sense that he’s not afraid to go into that “God, am I full of it or what?” area that artists tread all the time.

Again, I’m not really sure why I went into this area.  I did draw the 6 of Wands today.  In the Cosmic Tribe deck, it’s the card of Realization.  In the Rider-Waite, it’s a fellow on horseback coming home after a victory of some sort.    Just some randome thoughts on a blustery-warm October day.