Shallow vs. Strong

“Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson. Conduct of Life

Symbiotic Relationship

"changes never spring full-grown into being but exist for some time in a symbiotic relationship with the old ways."
Dennis Duffy. Canadian Writes: A Subseries: Marshall McLuhan. McClelland and Stewart Limited: Toronto, 1967 pg 44

Story is a Vehicle

“Story isn’t a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality, our best effort to make sense out of the anarchy of existence.”
- McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principals of Screenwriting. ReganBooks: New York, 1997. pg 12

This quotation speaks to the relevance of story in our lives. McKee agrees with me that Story goes well beyond a pastime. It is not simply something we do to escape reality, to keep ourselves busy, or to relax. Story helps us to understand things about our daily lives and the nature of our existence.

I’m not sure McKee would agree with me that Story is the nature of reality but I would love to propose my theory and evidence to him. Perhaps I will someday. I have wanted to take one of his courses for years ever since I first discovered this amazing book of his. It is a must-own for any writer. But I think it goes beyond writing too.

There is much more to Story than most people recognize.

I Love You More

"But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you.
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new.
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I love you more."
-Beatles "In My Life"

Snappy Comeback

Angela is a 15 year-old kid and her mother is talking to her about how much orange juice she just drank.

Patty, “Orange juice doesn't grown on trees, Angela.”
Angela “It sorta does.”

Great snappy comeback from the kid. I love it!

Pruning Needed

“Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.”
- Francis Bacon. Essays.

Don’t Want to Know the Truth

“It’s much easier to lie to humans and trick them than to tell the truth. They’d much rather be bamboozled than be told the truth, because the way to trick them is to flatter them and tell them what they want to hear, to reinforce their existing illusions. They don’t want to know the truth. Truth is a bring-down, a bummer, or it’s just too complicated, too much mental work to grasp.”
- Crumb, R. & Peter Poplaski. The R. Crumb Handbook. MQ Publications Ltd: London, 2005 pg 297

Governed by Laws

“Take Today underscores his view that all life – mental, material, spiritual, physical – is governed by laws, laws that no one else has even noticed, let alone considered worthy of discussion between the covers of a book. …

The laws are infallible – as precise as mathematics, as ubiquitous as weather – and, after wrestling with them for almost five decades, he has finally grasped them in all their glory.”
- Fitzgerald, Judith. Marshall McLuhan: Wise Guy. XYZ Publishing: Montreal, 2001. pg 152
- Take Today was authored by McLuhan and Barrington Nevitt in 1972

This metaphor sounds like Story and it also uses a storybook to help frame the metaphor. What more can be said about this quote? It’s brilliant.

It immediately reminded me of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek Bible. It was a book that he composed to contain all the rules within the Star Trek mythology. He created a beautiful world based on science and wanted it to be believable. This book was available to every writer of the show so that they would know what could and couldn’t happen in the stories they created.

The fictional world of Star Trek has precise laws. And maybe that is one of the reasons the franchise is timeless. It relates to the real world. It makes sense in so many ways. And it never tried to make us believe in something different every week. It had a beautiful consistency.

Life is like this as well. I believe that there is a Life Bible that contains all the rules of the universe. And like McLuhan says, no one seems to be searching for it. We know some of the precise rules but nothing that ties everything together, except for Story. And brilliantly enough that is even mentioned in this quote. Perhaps McLuhan knew something about the important role story has in the nature of reality. It seems to be like he was one of the best thinkers of our time. I think I need to explore his works more closely.

Live Like You are Dying

He said: "I was in my early forties,
With a lot of life before me,
An' a moment came that stopped me on a dime.
I spent most of the next days,
Looking at the x-rays,
An' talking 'bout the options an' talkin’ ‘bout sweet time."
I asked him when it sank in,
That this might really be the real end?
How’s it hit you when you get that kind of news?
Man whatcha do?

An' he said: "I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.
And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,
And I gave forgiveness I'd been denying."
An' he said: "Some day, I hope you get the chance,
To live like you were dyin'."

He said "I was finally the husband,
That most the time I wasn’t.
An' I became a friend a friend would like to have.
And all of a sudden goin' fishin’,
Wasn’t such an imposition,
And I went three times that year I lost my Dad.
Well, I finally read the Good Book,
And I took a good long hard look,
At what I'd do if I could do it all again,
And then:”

“I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.
And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,
And I gave forgiveness I'd been denying."
An' he said: "Some day, I hope you get the chance,
"To live like you were dyin'."

Like tomorrow was a gift,
And you got eternity,
To think about what you’d do with it.
An' what did you do with it?
An' what can I do with it?
An' what would I do with it?

"Sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.
And then I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,
And I watched Blue Eagle as it was flyin'."
An' he said: "Some day, I hope you get the chance,
"To live like you were dyin'."

"To live like you were dyin'."
"To live like you were dyin'."
"To live like you were dyin'."
"To live like you were dyin'."

Can’t Donate

“You can’t donate people out of poverty.”
- Paul Polak on The Hour 10 June 2008

This quote reminds me of the old cliché,
“Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat forever.”

Polak had some great views during this interview. It really makes me want to check out his book Out of Poverty. Next time I am at the library, I think I will have to see if it is there. It might be worth a read. This guy had some really interesting things to say on the program.

Try

“No one knows what it is that he can do till he tries.”
- Publilius Syrus

Finding is More Important that Memory

“There’s one thing computing teaches you, and that’s that there’s no point to remembering everything. Being able to find things is what’s important.”

- Douglas Coupland. Microserfs. HarperCollins Books: Toronto, 1995. pg 303

Finding is More Important that Memory

“There’s one thing computing teaches you, and that’s that there’s no point to remembering everything. Being able to find things is what’s important.”
- Douglas Coupland. Microserfs. HarperCollins Books: Toronto, 1995. pg 303

Our Perception is Flawed

Errol Morris is interviewed by David Samuels in May 2008’s Wired Magazine.

The article is completely in prose except for one Question & Answer segment. I was always told that this was a lazy way to write when I tried to do the same thing in the university paper. When the editor told me to do a rewrite, I took his editors advice and wrote the entire article in prose.

Oh well, here’s the quote. It’s worthy of my collection, if not for the quality of the writing.

“His point is that we live in a solid world, but our perception of its flawed and partial:

Q: But don’t you think that we manage to keep up a coherent narrative of who we are and where we’ve been?

A: No! We remember things selectively. We experience things selectively. We live in a kind of incomplete, patchwork-quilt universe. A bric-a-brac. Assembled in some higgledy-piggledy way.”

I like how this quote backs up my theory that we actually edit our lives through our use of what we choose and choose not to remember. It’s also interesting that he admits that we don’t have the whole picture. We can’t possibly know the entire story. We live in a limited point of view story but our stories can connect to other stories and create a quilt.

I don’t think the universe is incomplete or put together is a haphazardly way. I don’t think Morris believes this either. He is merely talking about our experience of the world.

I think that Story can explain why we don’t know everything and cannot come to the ultimate truth of the universe. Of course, characters in a story never know everything. They seldom every realize that they are a character in a story. I can’t really think of an example where a character realized this but I am sure there are stories that can be interpreted as such out there.

I think Morris is right and our perception of reality is flawed. But that is only because we don’t perceive the nature of reality to be Story. If we did, we would have a new perception in which to see the world. And upon seeing it with these new eyes, perhaps we can come to some important truths. It makes sense to me.

Don’t Let Go

“So you’re thinking about it.
you think that you got the answer now
and you’ve been praying about it
you’ve asked Him to remove the fear right now
so you’ve analyzed it, ya think ya have control
then you realize it’s time that you let go

It’s not your time, yeah
Feel it all but know it’s not your time, yeah
Feel it all but know that this will pass

So you can cry about it
The tears can help ya heal inside
I know ya lost ya mind now
and you just tell yourself to hide
so you’ve analyzed it, ya think ya have control
then you realize it’s time that you let go

It’s not your time, yeah
Feel it all but know it’s not your time, yeah
Feel it all but know that this will pass.”
- Goldfinger “Answers” from the self-titled album

It Ended

“It didn’t end right with us.” - him
“But it ended.” – her
- Life television show 31 Oct 2007

This line stuck with me. Sometimes things end and it doesn’t matter how they ended. We can spend too much energy trying to make things right and our ex could care less. It’s like talking to a brick wall sometimes. I know. I’ve tried and I thought it was the right thing to do. But to my ex, things were just over and the good ending didn’t matter.
Too bad!

The Best Investment

“The best investment I know of is charity: you get your principal back immediately, and draw a dividend every time you think of it.”
- Henry Wheeler Shaw (Josh Billings)

Happy Monday Everyone!

Hidden Symbols

“There are symbols hidden in places you would never imagine.”
- Brown, Dan. The DaVinci Code. DoubleDay: New York, 2003. pg 97

Story is Organic

“Gregory Bateson goes on to give his definition of story:

A story is a little knot or complex of that species of connectedness which we call relevance. In the 1960s, students were fighting for “relevance,” and I would assume that any A is relevant to any B if both A and B are parts or components of the same “story.”

Again we face connectedness at more than one level:

First, connection between A and B by virtue of their being components in the same story.
And then, connectedness between people in that all think in terms of stories. (For surely the computer was right. This is indeed how people think)

. . . thinking in terms of stories must be shared by all mind or minds, whether ours or those of redwood forests or sea anemones.

In other words, Bateson sees story as a form of all organic organization.”
- quotation comes from Gold, Joseph. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 79-80
- internal quotation comes from Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. Bantam: New York, 1980. pg 14.

We Can Make it Better

“Ladies and gents, gather round lets take an intermission
the industry is strung out, it needs an intervention,
Cam dissing Jay, they cleared Irv Gotti
Nas signed to Def Jam and Fifty signing everybody
and BET is on some other shit
They can Laffy Taffy all day but can’t play Little Brother shit
and if you buying it, they selling it
no 106 for De La, cause they said they not relevant
and that ain’t right, you’re either too soft or too thug
bottom line, I think the game need a group hug
need a new Busta tattoo, a new Snoop drug,
a new attitude called let the artist recoup love
but that won’t happen and I probably won’t sell (Nope)
cause I don’t know Nate Dog and I can’t afford Pharrel
and Paul Wall ain’t answering my call or my email
I tried to make it better but I failed, oh well.”
- EMC “We Can Make it Better.”

This lyric speaks to what is wrong with the hip-hop industry lately.

The outlets that play music or videos aren’t supporting good music

106 and Park is the flagship show of BET and it plays music videos and have performers on it everyday. But they are not representing hip-hop culture very well. They don’t play songs from artists that are actually saying anything. They play watered down pop music that is disposable. They don’t honour or support legends like De La Soul. It’s a crying shame.

Consumers aren’t buying quality music

Strickland raps that the songs being spun are either watered down with no message or just overtly violent and gangsta.

Unfortunately, I think this group is preaching to the choir. And even though the group members are all legendary artists, this album doesn’t seem to be selling very well.

The rap game is about who is hot at the moment

If you have a famous producer or guest artist you get played. But that shouldn’t be what rap is about. It never was before.

Artists try to make a change

No one is listening though.

This needs to change

Fans that have bought this album know the history and support the underground music. More people need to be aware of what rap music is and I think that it is up to artists such as EMC to help bring it back to what it could and should be

Stupid…Echoes

"You know how sometimes the last sentence you said, like, echoes in your brain? And it just keeps sounding stupider? And you have to say something else just to make it stop?"
Angela on My So-Called Life

Fear is the Worst

"The fear of suffering is worse than suffering itself. And no heart ever suffered when it went in search of its dreams"
- Paulo Coelho “The Alchemist”

Good Advice! Happy Monday Everyone!