Wisdom

“If wisdom comes with age when is mine coming?”
- Chase March “Just Don’t Know”

This is one of my favourite lines because it just rings so true. I feel like that all the time. I am a teacher and my students look up to me like I know everything. I don’t. I know that I am older and a bit wiser but I would never claim to have wisdom. I’m still waiting for it to come myself.

Beauty is All Around

“Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison. And the crime is how much we hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up once in a while. And admit the truth: that when you really look closely? People are so strange and so complicated that they're actually... beautiful. Possibly even me.”
- Angela on My So-Called Life

Dreams Aren’t Impossible

"Only one thing makes a dream impossible: the fear of failure."
- Coelho, Paulo The Alchemist

Fear can be debilitating. It can stop people dead in their tracks. It can make people sit on the sidelines of life instead of jumping into the game and participating. Don’t be afraid of failure. Be afraid of not trying, and then give it your all.

Happy Monday Everyone!

The Whole Picture

“Unless you see figure and ground simultaneously,” he’s fond of saying, “you don’t have the whole picture.”
- Fitzgerald, Judith. Marshall McLuhan: Wise Guy. XYZ Publishing: Montreal, 2001. pg 105

Dreaming is Story

“A great deal of dreaming is an attempt by our minds to make sense of information that is chaos as it happens to us. . . .We make stories in our dreams; there we are all writers, of amazing skill.”
- Gold, Joseph. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 331

Everybody dreams. I know that there are people who believe that they don’t dream but what they really mean is that they rarely remember their dreams. Everyone at some point has had a dream that they can remember.

I happen to have vivid dreams every single night. I don’t know why some people remember their dreams and some don’t. I think that dreaming serves a really purpose. If it didn’t, I don’t think we would need to sleep every night

If Only…

“If only I was taller, if I had a million dollars
maybe then you’d be with me
If only I was 18 and had the courage of the A-team
maybe then you’d be with me
But for now I have to dream about your smile
because you’re not here
and all I wanna say is that I really miss you.”
- Goldfinger “If only” from the album “Hangups”

What It Means to be a Father

“One of the hardest things about being a father is you never know what's yours anymore. There's always someone out there trying to take what belongs to you, or at least make you share; your car, your home, food off your plate, even your own kids sometimes. It's a constant battle. Fought less with violence than with love, fought with the best of intentions and scented with cinnamon.”
- Narrator on Everwood

Paying Others to Play for Us

“All too often we are watching other people play. We are literally paying people millions of dollars to play for us. And not just on the baseball diamond. They are playing for us on compact disks; playing for us on videotape; playing for us on stage, at the concert, on the silver screen. We pay them because they play so well. But perhaps we pay them in exact proportion to our longing to be playing ourselves, which is why they are worth more and more every year . . .

We need a lifestyle that creates a context for us to make our own music, rather than always listen; do our own dancing, rather than always watch; perform our own plays, make our own films, write our own stories.”
- Bond, D. Stephenson, Living Myth: Personal Meaning as a Way of Life. Shambala, 1993 pg 125

Go out and play today. Reconnect with your childhood. Have fun!

Happy Monday Everyone!

Art Supports Us

“Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”
- King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Scribiner: New York, 2000. pg 101

Each of Us is Story

“Each of us is a story. We pile up experience, events, conversations, sights and sounds, but we do it hourly, daily weekly, month in, month out, in a kind of jumble. Most of us are not writers, novelists, story-makers, and we are not very good, certainly not well trained, at organizing our material into an understandable narrative. So our daily lives are like a collection of random notes, jumbles together in a shoebox, not placed in a sequence that makes any kind of sense. Things happen to us, not us to them. We do not impose order on experience. Novelists are people who do that. They take experience and they weave it into a tapestry where others, readers, can see the pattern and take pleasure in the harmony and order of the whole. By reading story we can fell the peace of sense, and by sharing this we get the feeling of sense, the model that making sense is possible.”
- Gold, Joseph. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 330-331

Joseph Gold uses literature in his practice to help his patience. This links up with the Stephen King quote I posted last week. Art can be a life support system. Gold’s book shows us that we can use story to organize our life and make sense of the things. He basically tells us that story is the organizing aspect of our memories and our lives.
It is an amazing read.

I believe that Story is the nature of reality. I have collected hundreds of quotations on the topic and want to write a scholarly book on this topic. I thought that by sharing my quotes here, I might be able to get this project off the ground. I have wanted to do this for years now.

I will be sharing story quotes here every week and will be running a series on my main blog as well. I hope you enjoy it.

It's Supposed to Be...

Well it's supposed to be sunlight over me
Light over you, not you runnin' over me
It's supposed to be a two dollar royalty minimum
A Hiphop guild—we got to begin buildin' 'em
It's supposed to be NO police brutality
And the fact that we tolerate that crap is insanity
It's supposed to be museums and archives
Where people can see the importance of OUR lives
But it ain't about any of this
Cats are trying to get that diamond-studded Rolex on they wrist
You hear a voice in the wilderness—you know it's Kris
Higher consciousness lyrics, they will persist
But it's supposed to be about makin' it better
You see, Hiphop's not a product like pants or sweater
Go ahead—be a hero, get your cheddar
Even y'all gonna see when you look back you remember that
- Krs-One “Ain’t the Same” from the album “Kristyles”

Here is verse two as promised. Krs-One has intelligent lyrics and songs that really mean something. He is constantly striving to elevate hip-hop music and culture. He tries to teach the youth through his songs. This is just one example.

Time is the Fire

“They say time is the fire in which we burn. Right now, Captain, my time is running out. We leave so many things unfinished in our lives. I know you understand.” – Dr. Soran. Star Trek Generations.

Great metaphor. I always liked this quote.

Deal with the Anger

“Unacknowledged anger does not disappear just because it is denied. The body knows what the mind refuses to admit.”
- Gold, Joseph. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 238

This doesn’t sound like a motivational quotation at first glance but I think it gives us a truth that we need to understand. Anger is a feeling that everyone experiences at some times. It is okay to be angry. It is okay to release the anger as well, in fact it is necessary to do so.

Anger can be released in all sorts of productive and safe ways. You can get a punching bag to release your frustrations. You could go for a run like I do. Or write, paint, make art, whatever. Express yourself and release your anger because holding onto it does not help your health.

I-N-F-O-R-M-A-T-I-O-N!

“Today, the stuff that makes the world go round is I-N-F-O-R-M-A-T-I-O-N! Information! And, the processing and packaging of I-N-F-O-R-M-A-T-I-O-N is big business, huge bucks, and the only game in town. Ain’t no two ways about it! Our age is the age of I-N-F-O-R-M-A-T-I-O-N; our business is the business of I-N-F-O-R-M-A-T-I-O-N; …” - Fitzgerald, Judith. Marshall McLuhan: Wise Guy. XYZ Publishing: Montreal, 2001. pg 91

Believe it or not, this quote is from quite some time ago. It was true then and rings even more true today. Marshall McLuhan was a brilliant man.

It Works in Pairs

“… media works in pairs; one medium always contains another (and that medium contains another and…)”
- Fitzgerald, Judith. Marshall McLuhan: Wise Guy. XYZ Publishing: Montreal, 2001. pg 95

Can you tell me what pairs are at work here in this blog? Come on try it. Leave a comment with what you think. I will take any theories. Anything goes on Thursdays afterall.

Don't Run

“Time don’t go back, it goes forward
Can’t run from the pain, go towards it
Some days can’t be explained what caused it.”
- Jay-Z “Lost One” from the album “Kingdom Come”

Sometimes running away from pain doesn’t help us. We need to confront pain and deal with it. We can’t focus on the past and we can’t dwell on the bad things in life. This quote and verse from an excellent song is inspiring because of that.

People Do It

Angela shares her thoughts with us by way of a voice over in the excellent show, My So-Called Life.

“I couldn't stop thinking about it. The, like, fact that - that people - had sex. That they just had it, like sex was this thing people - had, like a rash, or a - a Rottweiler. Everything started to seem like, pornographic or something. Like, Mrs. Krysanowski has sex. So does Mr. Katimsky. They both have sex. They could - have sex together. Like right now.
[groans] I am, like, the sickest person.”

Don't Listen to Can't

“Every noble work is at first considered impossible.” - Thomas Carlyle

Some people will tell you that you can’t do something. Truth is, most of the time it is they that cannot do it. It is okay not to be able to do things. I don’t believe that anyone can be a master of all trades. But noble work can be accomplished, even if people try to tell you it is impossible. If you truly want something, work with your desire, and nothing is impossible.

Happy Monday Everyone!

Illusion of Authorship

“With interactivity, one tries to give the “illusion of authorship” to people who couldn’t otherwise author.

Thought: maybe the need to be told stories is like the need to have sex. If you want to hear a story, you want to hear a story – you want to be passive and sit back around the fire and listen. You don’t want to write the story yourself.”
- Coupland, Douglas. Microserfs. HarperCollins Books: Toronto, 1995. pg 140

The Eyes Rule

“the domination of the modes of communication by print means that man’s visual sense overrides all others.” - Duffy, Dennis. Canadian Writes: A Subseries: Marshall McLuhan. McClelland and Stewart Limited: Toronto, 1967 pg 26

Found God

“I found God in the boom box
hiding in the high-hats
trapped in the filters
and ready for the kickbacks.”
- Glue “A Lot To Say” from the album “Catch as Catch Can”

Isn't Much a Deer Can Say

“There isn't much good a deer can say about hunting season. Except that it only comes once a year, and maybe that it makes them appreciate the few wildlife preserves they have.” – Narrator on Everwood.

The narrator that speaks at the start and ending of every episode had some great observations on life.