To My Poets, Artists, Romantics

05Jun09

Think with me.

From the warm little universe where we used to float, through the mystical jet black darkness of the birth canal and out into this world, we entered life. As strangers. Brought into it suddenly, and without a say in the matter.

We’re cold, and terrified.

Our cries, separation anxiety from the sacred womb of our mother, echo through delivery rooms and ring out into the air, tingling with energy. We hear the distant cries of  the other babies in the other rooms who have just had the same bizarre and traumatic experience. What a curious, terrifying and awe-inspiring world around us! It is insanity. Alien. Intimidating.

Like dying and going to Heaven to find that upon opening your eyes it’s an infinitely nightmarish circus of surrealism. Rampant with unconcieved creatures, colours and bewildering noises.

The giants surround you with their masks. These towering strangers. You’ve never seen a human being before. You’ve never even seen yourself in a mirror. If you were, you’d probably be just as terrified and confused. All you want is to be back in the place you know. That warm bodily cocoon.

More are born. Cries fill the delivery rooms, villages, houses, huts and tents the world over. Future Kings, Queens, garbage collectors, doctors, fashion critics, philosophers, data entry operators, weapons fanatics, musicians, Popes, gardeners and Presidents. Naked and screaming. Just wanting their mother.

Then time zips by, and you’re 2 years old. You sit and watch a catepillar crawl up the wall. For three hours. You’re amazed. Its microscopic hairy legs…the seemingly infinate array of incredible colours…it’s mysterious movement. Your pupils study it, and follow it on its magical journey up The Bedroom Wall. Your tiny but super-absorbent brain is joyously exploding with millions of wonderful and brilliant fantasies about what universe this arcane creature is from.

Now some of us staple documents for a living.

The portal of time throws you unexpectedly into age 15. You sit at your desk in class and watch a tired middle-aged teacher scrawl words on a blackboard. Today you’re learning how to divide 2/3 by 3/4. Your mind, drained by the mountain of homework from last night, doesn’t want to think. Day in and day out you’re being made to stare at strange algorithms and chaotic equations. Your art and music classes nourish the more beautiful parts of your mind, but they feel fatigued and isolated. They sit in their damp little corner and murmur about how things used to be. When the innocence of childhood flourished and danced in harmony with nature.

You look up from your bland wooden desk. You’re not 15 anymore, you’re 25. You look around yourself but you’re not at school anymore either. You’re in a large lecture room at university, and you’re learning about economics. The atmosphere is so clinical it could be mistaken for a hospital (you feel a bit of deja’vu). Your lecturer is rambling something about “competition and market structures.” Between his quoting Samuel Johnston and the sound of rustling research papers you find yourself lost in nothingness. No catepillar on the wall. Even if there was, you wouldn’t care less.

Again, you’re a fish out of water. Quite literally in a way. You’re traveling through a surreal world that has structured itself around status and materialism. There burns a small flame that represents the amount of faith for the world that you preserve within you, but it seems to be dimming. When you walk the streets to observe society, or observe it as you sit quietly, you feel very alone. There’s you, and there’s the entire hostile world, or so it seems.

It’s not that you consider yourself superior to anyone (or anything for that matter), nor is that you think the rest of the world is wasting its time. You appreciate that your primary school teacher, the university lecturer and the government are doing what they’re doing because they want to help. What you don‘t get is why there’s so little left of what is truly beautiful.

And so you reflect.

The warm little universe of the womb. The magic. The birth. The bewilderment. The strangers, monsters and overwhelming surroundings. The assimilation process into the world. Blocks. Puzzles. Learning. Growth.  Clouds. Flowers. Trees. Animals. The freedom and wonder of innocence. Everything is new and exciting. This is the untamed mind, free and sacred. Like a colourful and blooming patch of untouched flora in an exotic jungle on a tropical island.

What is your mind like now?

From birth, to age 2, to age 15, to age 25, the pattern becomes obvious. The brain, like a sponge, absorbs so much and then begins to wear out with time. But upon reflection you realize that the vast majority of information that manufactured society has insisted your brain should absorb are, quite literally, irrelevant. And wasteful.

Only with the human experience do you truly live. Only with the human experience do we become nourished with inspiration and wonder. Experiences like love, spontaneous laughter, happiness, even the simple joy of appreciating a sunrise or sunset.

And so we think together…this life, this experience. Is it only we poets, artists and romantics who are happy to avoid the shackles of modern society and live freely, smiling warmly among the ruins?

-BJH

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