25 February, 2016
As many animals cannot recognise themselves in a mirror, it’s extremely helpful to them if you tell them how great they look. Don’t just walk by and say nothing.
Say something reassuring like…
“Hey bird, you’re beautiful!”,
or…
“Way to go Mr. Rat. I like the look. Very edgy, very edgy.”
This is tremendously helpful to their self esteem and you’ll probably feel good just saying it too.
12 February, 2016
There’s much talk about the theory of how fire was harnessed,
And of the wheel, of who got killed first, and of Caan and Abel.
But what about laughter? How did all that get started?
Did something rise up out of the depths of endless time,
Having within it, already formed,
The seed of humour?
Like it was tickled into existence.
From what pool of primordial mirth did laughter emerge?
The eye was a blob that evolved to see, of course,
But when did it first twinkle with inner merriment?
Was the first laugh a howl or just a little chuckle, like a spark.
Did the first spark emit a giggle or a chortle?
Then, over millennia, did the little smirks and titters grow and spread.
Until they blazed into guffaws and cackles?
In the time of stones, what foolery ridded men of their ancient hours?
Long before the first civilization arose and fell,
What little tribe of wanderers collapsed
Into gales of laughter?
Before there was slave and master,
What hilarity first captured the people?
Until tears streamed down their rough-hewed cheeks
(now chiseled also with laugh lines).
Who first slapped a knee?
Who was the first joker?
The first clown?
The first wise guy?
Who first discovered the punchline?
Who first laughed at a fart or a funeral?
Who’s belly first ached from laughing?
And when were we first given over entirely to this great mirth?
Like we were tickled into existence.
Sigh.
4 February, 2016
Scientists speculate sometimes that an asteroid impact would be what it would take to throw us all back into the Stone Age. But no one ever imagined that the end of Modernity could actually turn out to be something much less dire.
In the end, it was a coronal mass ejection that took down our power grids—we lost all satellite communications, international travel, automated traffic systems, and Smart phones.
Lacking what we’d known as modernity, we could do nothing but gather with our friends about the piano…singing by candlelight.
So, it was not a bang, nor a whimper. Instead of the Stone Age, we’d been thrown into the Biedermeier.
11 August, 2013
I spent the month of July this year in Paris. In summer, Paris is very exciting with the Fête de la Bastille parade, the Bal des Pompiers, the Tour de France, and many other festivals all happening simultaneously. The city crackles with excitement. Yet with two thousand years of history, what is a little missing in the summer sun are Paris’s subtler sides.
I have a deep love for the quietude and timelessness of Medieval thought. I’ve always admired the multi-panel manuscript Les Très Riches Heures du Duc du Berry for its depiction of simple life…and that blue, blue sky that seems to bear witness to a timelessness now so rare. Part of the book depicts everyday life throughout the year (it’s a book of hours afterall). What I never knew was that in the October panel, the castle is a real one and that it still exists—in part. It is the original Louvre.
Over the centuries this old castle, with its many ardoise turrets, was gradually erased and replaced by successive regimes bent on modernizing it and putting their stamp on it. But in 1989 when excavations were made to build the Carrousel du Louvre (the pyramid), the original Louvre was rediscovered.
One bright and hot day, I followed the self-guided tour that takes you down to the foundations and origins of the Louvre. On the walking tour, you can now walk through the original moat and the substructure of the walls and donjon (keep). There’s nothing much else remaining, just simple stonework, yet my eyes set these stones high against that azure Medieval sky. And stared.
Upstairs, the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and a thousand other art treasures awaited, and yet I stood mesmerized by these unadorned stones. It’s not what you’re looking at so much as what it evokes.
20 December, 2011
There’s a kitchen party going on in my head these days. It could be the air here in the south of France where I’m otherwise churning out corporate blogging content for Vancouver clients, or it could be that I’m discovering that the kitchen party in my head is pretty effective for getting certain things done, I don’t know.
Recently, I read a story, which utilized the popular metaphor of the orchestra conductor to describe enlightened leadership in a corporate setting. I liked the comparison, but I had to look elsewhere for a metaphor that was more enlightened still.
In the old, OLD days, employees were seen merely as resources (sometimes costly ones). Like a slave galley, most everyone was chained to his post and the “employer” used negative motivation (usually whips and torture) to produce results (i.e., forward movement).
The orchestra conductor metaphor is considered more enlightened, because everyone brings together his or her best talents under the conductor’s light touch, (who of course brings it all together into beautiful music). The emphasis is on bringing out each person’s unique talents.
Having played in a symphony orchestra, I know firsthand that it is not always that enlightened. An orchestra is extremely hierarchical, music is programmed sometimes years in advance, and except for first-chair players, there’s very little freedom to interpret the music freely. Bluntly: Sometimes it’s much, much closer to a slave galley than what you might imagine.
In a kitchen party, everyone is draw there because he or she wants to be there. There is no obligation—it’s a party! Everyone participates and everybody shares equally in the creation. There may be a host, but no leader. If you don’t want to play, you can always sit out (or leave). Kitchen parties seldom have distinct rules and, being spontaneous, they tend to follow rules set out by those involved. It’s a viral happening.
I believe that if everyone who disliked his or her job were to quit, after the initial bumps and burps as the world reconfigured itself into one in which people only did what they were drawn to do, things would probably improve considerably. This is the kitchen-party metaphor: Love what you do or do something else.