Art is edited truth—edited to give it shape, rhythm, speed and punch…Art is skill in the service of passion.
Stephen Sondheim (via anthonyking)
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Author Archives: jeremyrbutler
In the Land of Sticks
When listening, I’m always on the lookout for words that are defined by being the opposite of something else.
Nice, is a prime example. What does it mean to be nice? Isn’t it just the explanation for the enjoyment of the bland? Someone is nice by default. They’re not offensive. Not mean. Not hurtful. If you mean generous, say generous. If you mean funny, say funny. If you simply mean non-offensive, then re-consider whether you’re saying anything at all. Or more importantly, can we even really like something without qualities?
Why does this have my hackles up today? Many reasons, but chief among them is life itself.
When listening, I often hear people speak aloud goals or ideas that sound to me like a tabulation of nots.
I want a good career. [Translation: I don’t want to work at McDonald’s]
I’m looking for a guy I can trust. [I don’t want to be cheated on again]
Be a good neighbor. [Don’t upset anyone around you]
So, from my all-knowing, all-seeing chair, I’m listening for the goal, the dream, the boon, the carrot. Carrots provide direction, they help make decisions, they infuse motivation. If there are no carrots (sexy, challenging boyfriends or CEOs) then there’s just trying to avoid the stick.
And there are always sticks.
I’m not a big self-help/cult of personality guy, but their collective advice usually boils down to this: setting out to avoid sticks is the single best strategy to find more sticks. Of course, the path to carrots is lined with sticks too, but at least there’s a possibility of a meal…
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All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
Carl Jung (via whateverthehellimfeeling)
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Our fears are more numerous than our dangers, and we suffer more in our imagination than in reality.
Seneca (via bbbbird)
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Time
In the past we defined time differently—by the sun, by our meals, by the harvest, by our leaders. Only since railroads have we lived by a standardized, objective sense of time.
Whereas once time was defined by event or change, with technology a new state was created: knowledge of a continuity of life with only the possibility of change.
Like refined sugar and sitting and typing, might time not be an unhealthy modern convenience?
We have three responses:
1. Anxiety. A state of focus on an approaching future and the acute awareness that it is uncontrolled, unpredictable.
2. Depression. A state in which the future offers no hope of change.
3. Enhancement. All addictions are to the present. Drugs (sex, caffeine, television and cutting included) increase awareness, duration and enjoyment of the present, or at least mindless unawareness of the passage of time.
There’s a call to arms somewhere in here, a manifesto to be written, for the Army of Time Reclamation.
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I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Albert Einstein (via 365daystovienna)
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Speeder bikes are cool.
Quarry Jumping
The summer after sophomore year I discovered the Quincy quarry.
It’s prominently featured in Gone Baby Gone, but if imagination is necessary, picture a thousand slabs of rocks, graffiti’d brightly, stacked a hundred and fifty feet high. The rocks surround a deep pit filled with water, and legend has it, there are hundreds of corpses at the bottom, so deep that divers can’t retrieve them.
A good friend broke his back that summer jumping. Not that that stopped us.
When jumping from a hundred feet here’s what happens:
1. Falling.
2. Panic. Why haven’t I hit the water?
3. More falling.
4. Greater panic. I still haven’t hit the water?!?
5. More falling.
6. Desperation. Please don’t let me hit the water!!!!
7. Hitting the water.
I remember three independent heart attacks with every jump. No broken backs, but enough adrenaline released to jumpstart a Toyota.
I recently made a big decision. It has not been dissimilar from jumping off a cliff—something I decided to do, while every fiber of my being begged me not to. Unlike quarry jumping, it wasn’t a bad decision, or a wrong decision, it was just one in which logic and love were in utter discord.
Also, unlike quarry jumping, I’m waiting to hit the water.