Thinking

 Thinking is the way we penetrate things and expand understanding. It’s the way we keep ourselves from existing only on the surface of things. Thinking turns information into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom.

Thinking is communicated through language. This is why education should be seen primarily as the teaching of languages: mathematical, spoken, written, visual, musical and the language of the body. Learning to think critically is essential. Since we have access to such extensive knowledge, it’s not so much the information given but how well we learn to digest and use that information.

The world moves forward when free and critical thinkers exchange their ideas freely and critically.

Suggestion

 School districts differ from one another in size, location, administration, curricula and financial resources. But it does seem a trend that sports—extracurricular activities-- are getting increased funding, booster support, larger stadiums and corporate sponsorships while the arts—part of the curriculum--are getting funding cuts.

So here’s my suggestions for addressing the problem. Require that classical music be played on all school buses (kids have easy access to pop music all the time). Require that in each grade from second on each student must do a self-portrait (take a look at how they see themselves). Require that every athlete must take a dance class (to learn alternate ways to discover the language of their bodies).

You decide

 Since you live in a time when anything is art, then you get to decide what art is for you. The critics don’t agree with another. Nor do the gallery dealers, the art writers, the museums, the auction houses, the collectors or the artists themselves.

So you can decide what you want from art: comfort, color, tradition, challenge, memorability, pleasantness, something to fill the wall, the sublime, a political or social statement, figurative, abstract, something you’ll soon forget about, something you’ll never forget about.

It’s all up to you. And it’s never a problem to ask a lot from art.

God Stories

 Little God Story #1

He kept God in his coat pocket

Ready to show to others

Whenever the circumstance required it

Cramping the Omnipotence like that

Seemed of little concern

Oddly, he never took God out

At home

Little God Story #2

God never appeared to him when he was walking

Or swimming or bending down to pick a flower

Or even when a child was on his lap

But when he knelt beside the bed

There was lively conversation

God had a lot to say

Though God didn’t seem to respond a lot

To begging

Little God Story #3

The church doors were always kept closed

To keep an eye on God 

So God could appreciate 

All the gold and silver and painted statuary

It was dangerous out in the streets

The seven deadly sins were everywhere

Little God Story #4

How could an infinite God fit inside 

Such an ordinary person

And when he left church

Did God follow him out

Does God still do miracles

And, if so, could he have one

Little God Story #5

By 10:30 am on Sunday morning

All the ministers, pastors and priests 

Had preached out the word of God

To many pairs of ears

And some hearts as well

Would the pulpit messages

Last a week they wondered

Human

 We’re all human, though we struggle to know what that really means. That’s because being human is a moving target. Our arts and sciences constantly reveal new aspects of our bodies, brains, emotions, behaviors and yearnings. Our understanding of our relationship to the natural and living world changes. In our humanness we push the boundaries of the glorious and the brutal, still hopeful that there is something binding us all together.

Who gets

 Who gets more media attention…

The missing white girl or the missing black girl?

Britney Spears or the Pope?

The celebrity divorce or the couple married for 70 years?

The cost of a war or the cost of not feeding the hungry?

The bad cop or the good cop?

The conductor of the symphony or the pro quarterback?

The celebrity who misspoke or the author who spoke wisely?

The high school athlete who died on the field or the young kid who died in the street?

The wealthy entrepreneur who played the system or the official who cleaned up the system?

The Nobel Prize winner or the Oscar winner?

Mystery

 The universe goes about its business as it has for billions of years, unfurling under the laws given to it at the Big Bang. Making and colliding galaxies, forming worlds, popping out stars and black holes and letting life appear as it may, creating and destroying itself as it moves along in time.

Mystery, though, is the domain of humans. Any person serious about creativity knows that solutions to the problems that plague us are only transitional. The end of any deep search is always mystery. Life is a mystery. God is a mystery. Each of us is even a mystery to ourselves.

Mystery is a gift but not a place for the faint-hearted.

Romance

 Romance: When you tell her she is the one you want to spend the rest of your life with, but you don’t have a clue as to what that really means.

Love: When you tell her she is the one you want to spend the rest of your life with, and you know exactly what that means. 

Be a man

 Your dad says: Be a man.

Your buddies say: Be a man.

Your girlfriend says: Be a man.

Your wife says: Be a man.

The new baby girl says: Be a man.

Your kids say: Be a man.

The coach says: Be a man.

The teacher says: Be a man.

The sergeant says: Be a man.

The pastor says: Be a man.

Your hormones say: Be a man.

The NRA says: Be a man.

The society says: Be a man.

The magazine says: Be a man.

The movies say: Be a man.

The marketers say: Be a man.

The tears you hold back say: Be a man.

The beach body says: Be a man.

The stylish wardrobe says: Be a man.

The aging body says: Be a man.

So…Be a man.

Pornography

 

Our bodies

 We think of ourselves as owning our own bodies, and fundamentally we do. When exactly did we take full ownership of our bodies? Who taught us about our bodies, educating us about the complex physical, emotional, intellectual, sexual and spiritual elements that inhabit them?

This is an important question because while our bodies are ours to use, maintain and share, society has many expectations for our bodies. Our bodies are sexual, which has personal and social consequences. Our physical and emotional bodies can impinge on others. Unhealthy bodies can spread disease, as HIV and covid have taught us. Religious and moral directives seek to tell us how to use our bodies. Our brains try to make sense of our bodies and those of others. Society tries to tell us what it means to be beautiful, sexy, moral, masculine and feminine. Business tries to tell us what body norms we must achieve in order to fulfill their needs for us to consume.

So the bodies we own are not really the bodies we own. They are the bodies we use to navigate our way through life. How we negotiate the pleasure, pain, human engagement and health of our bodies will result from how smart and informed we are.

Citizenship

 There are serious cracks in the wall of American democracy. The litany of problems comes down to the failure of citizens to be vigilant. Do you vote? Do you give attention to the credentials of candidates? Do you research the issues? Do you write your representatives? Do you discuss issues with your friends to get perspective? Do you pay your taxes? Do you expect all kinds of government services which you are not willing to pay for? Do you understand the destructive nature of campaign financing on government?

American citizenship isn’t a privilege without obligations.  

NIL

 The quarterback for the Miami Hurricanes recently argued that it is only fair for college athletes to earn money on their NIL use since any college student can earn money with no restrictions. This is reasonable. What he didn’t acknowledge is that the typical college student does this on his/her own, often with little support from the college, with no extensive publicity and generally small financial rewards they have to generate themselves.

This quarterback, however, will get a stadium to play in, travel, extensive publicity, meals, medical care, full-time coaches, uniforms, dormitory and scholarships and often a carefully crafted academic schedule. He also gets a team to support him, a team of players who will not get the chance he has at money. Financial offers will just come to him.

Students in the arts, who practice long hours and perform for the public in the name of the college, will have few of the same rewards this quarterback has. Less exposure, but they have NILs too. And the arts, unlike football, are part of the college curriculum.

Your brain

 Your brain has a mind of its own. It thinks what it wants to think. It dreams what it wants to dream. It remembers what it wants to remember. It goes haywire when it wants to go haywire. Its consciousness is its own consciousness. 

Its neurons message and its chemicals slosh around beyond your control. It takes on the nutrients and the drugs you give it and does what it wants with them. You are both its victim and its beneficiary.

Wonder Pill

 Hello. I’m wearing a white lab coat so you think I’m a real doctor. But I want to tell you about a new medical breakthrough. It’s called Wonder Pill, and it has been clinically proven to ease the symptoms of TD, ED, VD, MS, LS, PS, PTSD, RSVP, MLNOP, restless leg syndrome, restless eye syndrome, toenail fungus, hemorrhoids, depression, regression and male pattern baldness.

Side effects include male pattern baldness, exploding lungs, swelling in the knees, hips, buttocks and shoulders, nausea, vomiting, uncontrolled anger, kicking your dog, fuzzy math and fainting.

Ask your doctor about Wonder Pill today.

Couples

 When you watch couples who have been successfully married for a long time and listen to them, you realize that love is grounded in the other. The husband and wife have penetrated the vain and selfish boundary of “me”and have become the other. In this way, they are one, which is no small accomplishment.

Couples

 Couples conversing in bed

Should be saying what needs to be said

About kids and the ex

About money and sex

But they’re talking trivia instead

“I love you,” is what they should hear

Before all the lights disappear

A peck on the lips

A pat on the hips

A warm loving body so near

Snuggling before falling asleep

Makes dreams come softly and deep

In the morning you wake

With a memory to take

That’s so sweet that you just want to weep

Her body lies withered and old

It’s a body you still want to hold

For beauty may fade

But the love time has made

Is a thing more precious than gold

The poor

 We need a grand, glorious, soaring monument—maybe many of them--to the working poor. All of world’s slaves, serfs, tenant farmers, indentured servants, starving immigrants, railroad builders, sweatshop workers, ditch diggers, coal miners and all of them I’ve forgotten or never knew about. From the pyramids on, they built the great monuments, made agriculture profitable, made manufacturing work, carried the economy on their broken backs, created great fortunes for the few.

The sublime beauty of these accomplishments is not complete without recognizing the sweat, pain, sacrifice and death that went into them. Build the monument(s).

Afghanistan

 The war in Afghanistan, like all wars and terrorist attacks, is covered with diligence and professionalism by the media. These conflicts are presented to us in helpful, but often predictable ways. We learn about casualties, ideologies, government responses and key players.

We rarely get coverage of how these groups acquire their weapons and how they are trained to use them. We are rarely given insight into the sources of the weapons, the wealth that comes from their sales and the connection to the drug trade. None of these small countries or terrorist groups make their own weapons. And no war can be waged without them.

To do?

 In the contemporary first world, wealth, social media and technology have given us amazing personal possibilities. Instagram is small-time media celebrity. Tiktok is small-time spectacle. Sexting is small-time pornography. We can become small-time Rothschilds, create our own rides into space or even raise a small army. We have our estates and castles and hire people to take care of them. We can even live out, in our own lives, the comedy and drama of the British Royal Family.

Is there something we should do about this?

Let them

 Let them live under the overpass.

We have a stadium to build.

Let their stomachs groan with hunger.

My filet mignon is getting cold.

Let them be targets of AK-47’s.

Doesn’t everybody need an assault weapon?

Let them live on minimum wage.

The profit margin is the bottom line.

Let them write Congress.

It’s the campaign donations that make the difference.

Let’s feed them lies.

They want to believe what they want to believe.

Sell them vanity.

Distractions are always helpful.

Let them pray to Jesus.

As long as they don’t act like Jesus expected.

Sex

 Sex, in any of its physical forms, is a gift of evolution. Sexuality, in all of its human manifestations, is a result of culture. Vices are rooted in urges which humans act on with all kinds of consequences, some of which show them not to be vices at all. Humans attempt to control their vices for the sake of society. But sometimes the controls themselves are not reasonable or workable.

Over time, for example, societies have tried to curb the sexual expression of women and homosexuals. Prostitution is prosecuted for women but rarely for men. LGBTQ sexuality has only recently been given attention. Yet we live in a society where advertising, marketing, TV and movies spin out all forms of distorted and destructive messages about sexuality.

What we are not good at is talking openly and honestly about sexuality, healthy sexual behavior, sexual responsibility and sexual choice. Honest dialogue scares us while unhealthy messages swamp us. In the end, it’s not sex, but the ability to be informed and attuned to our partner’s needs and to be willing to take the consequences of our choices. Sex can be emotional, intimate, pleasurable and loving, but it should never be an act of anger, violence, will or force.

Some men

 Some men live a conventional life

Two kids, a dog and a wife

A two-story house

Some sex with the spouse

And never on the edge of the knife

Some men live a life full of chance

No love, but lots of romance

Their living is brisk 

With adventure and risk

And they never stop doing their dance

Some men seem like regular guys

But that is just a disguise

They intensely create

Make the new is their fate

They give birth to our cultural highs

Little Blips

 Most of us artists are lesser blips of light in the art heaven. We know that the big stars can produce repetitive works of art to acclaim while we little blips can crank out a masterpiece once in a while to little notice. As a little blip myself, I know I have. The mundane works by the “masters” too often push aside the masterpieces of the little blips. Therefore, I propose ongoing exhibitions: Masterpieces of the Little Blips.

I’ve said before and I’ll say again that every serious artist who’s put in their time in the trenches deserves a retrospective before they die. Therefore, I propose the Museum of Retrospectives.

Limerick

 Performance art will provoke

Giving the audience a poke

It lives on the edge

On the cliff or the ledge

And its message is never a joke

Though confusion it may often evoke

If you are a conservative bloke

Limerick

 A sculptor was chiseling away

At 4 or 5 square feet a day

The result was a nude

In a pose that was rude

So the buyer was happy to pay