A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 06/21/22

THE STORY OF JOHNNY WHOOPER SWAN We go to school trusting our parents. We meet a teacher there who stands up front with a big desk, and a pointer. She or he trains us in an authoritative manner. We attach mentally to a life long need for authority in order to live lives successfully. Right so far? In my case, at the age of 25 I was ready to enter the practice of law where I hoped for success and a happy life finally. Very shortly, very shortly, I became anxious. There was a foreboding. I was made more uncomfortable with each experience. Law work is nothing like what I was told it would be. The system is corrupt. But I still cling to my expectation that career success is necessary to my happiness as a man. Each day my grasp of what the fuck success amounts to after all becomes more clouded, murkier. I hear songs on the airwaves and at concerts which describe my life as the life of a fool. What am I becoming? I want to rip off my business suit to run naked in the street with my hair on fire! But I am too afraid. In strange, weird (weird comes from a word meaning wise), fragmented steps I go about a journey of my own believing myself to be the first man to have failed in such a total way which journey works so as to break up my career, end a marriage, and start an entirely new way of relating with my two children whom I love deeply. Almost magically I meet a woman who is a career counselor who asserts a beautiful message that I am made to be joyful in my work everyday and at all levels. This understanding sets me on a completely new course. It is no longer a world of systems to me but an undivided one of unlimited beauty. It reminds me of a painting. A true masterpiece. I am drawn from within to learn the truth about my identity and nobody else can teach me that. From this point onward I will use thinking capacity for mastering mechanical processes and follow my heart, which includes my whole nature, which includes your whole nature and that of every human being for all the rest. I’ll go by the name Johnny Whooper Swan who does not explain itself to anyone. By my fruits shall I be known. Watch me soar!

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

A Mystery of Creativity

Does anyone suppose for a minute even that the commercial system for making use of creative works of art was the design of an author of such a work? Of course not. An artist is an artist only because he or she cannot help finding beauty from time to time. The happening is not planned…must not be…and all artists know that an essential requirement is that there be nobody, and I mean nobody, present when it happens. So, who is the owner of such a work?

The distribution of art commercially is the invention of business. They smelled money. That is why. The artist is bound to be trivialized by the sale of the work the ultimate source of it all dishonored. To the business operator that means nothing. To the artist it is critical. The author of any work of art knows that the art is a gift from something holy and so much is not holy. The author sought no following, was not even present, and will shudder at the proposal that he or she be singled out as a leader who needs followers. Knowing the act of following him or her to be absurd, and twisted, the author of a holy work must refuse such a designation and encourage any who see the value of the work to make their own art. Only in this manner can humanity awaken to really be what we are and bring forth together a beautiful interaction as a way of living and love each other for it. Does anybody care? Anybody listening?

Finally, let me add that the fact an artist likes to eat like we all do is no reason to think creativity must be treated as being for sale. The Universe is not a store. Fuck that. It is a house of wonder. Anything that is good must come from a universal understanding and not be dictated by the few. The very existence of a creative work of art shouts to the heavens “we are more than we are pretending to be!” Imagine for a moment a flying formation of wild, free swans soaring across a sky and take notice that all will be given a swan’s rich life complete with food and shelter just because and for no other reason. It was designed so. Were you not so well designed as a swan?

I watched a documentary recently on the life of Mister Rogers of public television fame and heard comments from angry political activists and those who criticize our fears that he was an evil man for giving his life to telling as many children as he could, “I love you just the way you are”. They told it that he made a generation of lazy loafers who do not think they must work hard to earn such respect. I cried. Every swan who cracks out from an egg is given just that. I do not think for you, you must decide, but for me that is what I count on to be my inalienable birthright.

I sit now in a comfortable, friendly coffee shop somewhere as I enjoy this writing I do naturally where I am treated as worthy and even more than that though I have in dollars far less than is going to provide me with anything but poverty they say and I do not feel poor. To the contrary, I feel rich beyond all counting and comparing.

The creative is where It’s at, Man.