in praise of idle imagination

"Everything in nature contains all the power of nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

That's Forbes.com Thought of the Day today. Quite remarkable, eh? Something to wonder... (Hint: that stuff ain't green strips of crinkly paper nor metal discs.)

Forbes.com? Well if truth be told when other twenty-something girls were reading Cosmopolitan and my cubemates read Byte, I was devouring Fortune. Later I switched to Fast Company and Industry Standard (and even Wired) as soon as those came into being. These days I don't read those either.

Found objects can be media and media can be found objects too; so I just happened to spot Forbes' 90th anniversary issue devoted to networks at a brand new newstand on Decatur Street manned by a brother and sister team.

So something about that Forbes anniversary issue brings me face-to-face with my guilt. These days I play (you might witness activity that resembles work), and I imagine (you might witness activity that resembles innovation).

"Oh, so you're a lightworker," one says.

"Aha, you're a starseed," another says.

Nope, believe it or not, the sun ain't a lightworker either. The sun simply shines. If I believed I was working, I'd quit. (I must cease justifying being. I Am. Period. What's to explain?)

Yet, yet, I want to defend imagination as being USEFUL. Oh, yes, I could write a treatise in defense of imagination. And part of me knows that would be imagination's death knell.

I happened to stumble into the WOMMA Conference. (I kid you not, "my life is science fiction", I did not know it was being held until the night when I run into Jory in the French Quarter.) There, Ron Key from Converseon is giving a talk on Second Life, karmic communication, cultural anthropology, the Second Life Liberation Army among other sundry and related topics. He talks of the backlash against commercial entities on Second Life: "In the context of the fantastic, their brands as they exist in the real world are boring, banal  and unimaginative."

Wow! That line would certainly be in my beginning paragraph...if I were writing a treatise defending imagination's utilitarian, practical purposes.

This imagination series has been tough on me. Inspiration, that I can do.

Imagination brings me the brink of what I'm comfortable discussing openly in society. My own imagination brings me to the brink, period. Unless it's imagination in the service of some utility, uh, it smacks of idleness. What's the purpose? What's the point? What's the bottom line?

Imagination feels more shamelessly wantonly childishly pleasurably ticklishly blatantly wildly

... than inspiration.

"If the Devil finds a Man idle, he'll set him at Work." - J. Kelly, Scottish Proverbs, 1721 (Although I fancy the Turks proverb better: "The devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil." - Colton, Lacon, 1820.) (via The Phrase Finder)

B.C. Forbes' words echo on this network issue backpage ("Thoughts on the Business of Life") admonishing us not to let our opportunity slip, ending with this: "Opportunity can be spelt with four letters. These letters are not L-u-c-k. They are W-o-r-k."

I feel queasy counting the number of times phrases from the backpages (memorializing advice from their 1917 "Thoughts on the Business of Life") are bandied about like "well-directed labor", "habit of work", "rid one's self of a sense of discomfort...do something", "the foe is strong and desperate", "the reward of duty", "hit him first and hit him hard", "I saw there was opportunity...so I became interested in oil."

Oil, Mr. Rockerfeller? Four letters and they are not L-u-c-k, Mr. Forbes? Hmmm, could it maybe, just maybe, be

P-l-a-y?

"To me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make." - Truman Capote

Luck, I think...hmmm, I recall the artist I met last Saturday. She likes to delve into shamanism, and she said some of the oldest shamanistic traditions are in China.

"The Chinese believe in three things," she tells me. "Luck." She pauses for effect. "Heaven. Earth."

I smile. Three things? They are collapsing into all one and the same.

In the Forbes issue, it also says:

One person tells me, "I look at my watch to see the time. I look at my Blackberry to get a sense of my life." - Sherry Turkle, "Can You Hear Me Now?", Forbes, May 7, 2007

"The Internet thus adapts to market principles. Hello, pop-up ads; farewell, open-source programming. The Internet idealists are doubtless benevolent creatures. So, perhaps, was the apatosaurus. Said Adam Smith, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." - P.J. O'Rourke, "Adam Smith: Web Junkie", Forbes, May 7, 2007

Benevolence?! That's what drives open source? Oh, my, the Internet may surely be your undoing (as it was mine).

Conversation today (& nearly everyday):

"What do you do?"

"Whatever I want to do." (Try saying that guilt-free.)

"You must have savings."

Try again. I'm not a trust fund baby. Do we bake bread, brew beer or do what we do because we're ordered to by management, or The Market? Do we work in order to pay rent, put our kids through college, and other such "own interest"? Why do we do?

"There are different types of enlightenment, but one of the really important ones is just that: It's going from trying to seek enlightenment, where you are driven by a sense of deficiency, of valuelessness, of lack of fullness - to discovering that ever-present wholeness. Then there is that "enlightened duality," where even though you're aware of the great perfection, you are still driven, not out of lack but out of overflowing." - Ken Wilber, "Creative Friction: Community and the Utopian Impulse in a Post-Modern World", What is Enlightenment, April-June 2007

So, I'm done, really, truly, finally, being apologetic. Or guilty.

I don't need to defend imagination for its own sake. Or beauty for its own sake. Or being for its own sake. I'm so with Yeats:

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. - William Butler Yeats, Ode to a Grecian Urn

Bonus: There's a lot more in that Networks issue. Mostly, actually, it's a good issue. Here's some great quotes:

"The Internet has taken place with startingly little planning... The most universal and indispensable network on the planet somehow burgeoned without so much as a board of directors, never mind a mergers-and-acquisitions department." - (from "Other Comments" section of compiled quotes in May 7, 2007 Forbes) James Gleick, New York Times Magazine

"Google is proud of its Ph.D.'s and its eigenvectors. So be it. But mathematics can take you only so far. At some point you need a more human touch - gut instinct or wild imagination." - Jimmy Wales, "Open-Door Policy", Forbes, May 7, 2007

p.s. Hanging out a lot at the Iron Rail Collective and picking up 'zines. Picked up a manifesto by Emma Goldman. "Goldman was taken aside at a dance by a young revolutionary and told it did not become an agitator to dance. Goldman wrote, "I insisted that our cause could not expect me to behave as a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. I want freedom, the right to self expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things."

The first few times I read Goldman's quote, I thought it read everybody's right to be beautiful, radiant things.

images Picasso's The Bathers reminds me of imagination ("Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."), and these bathers look devilishly idle; and also his Three Musicians and Three Dancers

Comments

[arkieology]

Perhaps P.J. O'Rourke and Emma Goldman both believed in freedom, but the similarity ends abruptly after that. Guilt and obligations are destructive to the human spirit and creativity and imagination, but being part of the human race requires some recognition that our actions have repurcusions on others, whether one is a trust fund kid or not. If the world were open and free for all to behave as lilies of the field P.J. and Emma would have little conflict, but as it is and was, if they were in a room together Mr. O'Rourke had better be armed, because I believe Ms. Goldman would at least give him a good thumping. I get the artist must be free to create idea, but we enter this world helpless and leave it the same way. Some are helpless in between, some intentionally kept that way by people exercising the kind of self interest O'Rourke applaude and Goldman worked her whole life against.

Your weblog gives me some indication that you were not raised by wolves. O'Rourke recognizes nothing but blind self interest. Is that enough, and is that really what an artist requires? Or does it also mean that we are also part of something greater than ourselves that includes occaisional altruism.

I spoke in a previous post about Frederick Soddy who replaced Adam Smith's land, labor, and capital, with a new triumverate. Human diligence, natural energy, and discovery (I put creativity before, oops) and I truly believe that they are held together by more than unfettered selfishness. Soddy called the monetary world virtual, and I believe it is held together by virtue, that is the path of the grail and true inspiration.

[Stephen Suggs]

Why do we do what we do? Amazing-- I used to ask the same question when I was a corporate employee. The best answer the smartest co worker could come up with was "To pay the rent". I realize now the question was really an exclamation like "Look what we're doing"!!

Idle imagination? very productive.

Yes, Practicle imagination may be more in line with having beautiful radiant things, but idle imagination is more in line with being beautiful radiant things. But Being, idleness,and productivity coming together these days.

And this What do you do stuff? Isn't that such a loaded question between the sexes? I'd love your take on that one and how it fits into this discussion.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Arkielogy, I think you caught on that I was totally at odds with P.J. O'Rourke's statement too. Although the article in general was thought-provoking, that particular paragraph was like an affront to both our humanness and our divine spark.

Hmmm, "..we enter this world helpless and leave it the same way." This is not been my experience, that there is learned helplessness, yes.

At some point, maybe we all need to do what Buckminster Fuller did in our own ways, and purge all second-hand beliefs, and get to a blank slate and really ask what do we know for sure ourselves? Why do you believe we are helpless? Because we cannot ever possess, own or hold onto what we already are, that wholeness that Wilber referred to?

Read a little Don Juan/Carlos Castaneda for first time lately. There is a part in "The Second Ring of Power" about impeccable warriors assume that others are as well.
This came up because main character tried to "help" his friend Pedro when they jumped off the cliff, which was actually a disservice to him, as we shall learn. Our good intentions are often layered with our own projected fears. I witness this on both sides. Myself, a book worth of times others' "help" (arising out of worry, rather than confidence in me) has actually hindered me. When I first met W. (should be obvious reference for longer time readers), I truly thought I was the helper because he was homeless. Thank god, I came to my senses quick enough and saw him for the equal, the friend, that he is.

Don Juan taught only one whom is 'formless' (i.e. awake, there is no seam between 'me' & 'universe') and 'sees' (can hold images in the inner planes, & unseen formless) can truly help a warrior, mostly because they are not carried away by their own psychological projections. This is quite similar to what Tibetan Buddhist Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche taught about the three levels of generosity.

These words carry a lot, in all "relations":
"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." - Lilla Watson, a Brisbane-based Aboriginal activist and organizer

So, no I do not do anything out of charity, altruism, benevolence. It is simply an overflowing, an outpouring, of the wholeness that I witness over & over when I meet my Self in you, & you & you...

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Steve, Beautiful! "But Being, idleness,and productivity coming together these days." Yes!

I do note that coming from an intention to be dutiful, helpful, productive, save the world, something grand like that actually ends up near-paralyzing and squashing the fun simple play spirit ...and so ends up being COUNTER-productive.

I sense that imagination needs FREE rein to be as goofy, outrageously unproductive, uncontrived, boundless as it wants to be. And miracles are actually as efficient, and natural, as it gets.

"What do you do?" I'm not sure if it's just a matter of sexes anymore, but between those that see the value of the unseen, and those that think that only what meets THEIR eye exists and is worthwhile. Amma, the hugging saint from India, said the wars these days are being fought in the subtler realms.

Anyhow, even if and when I evade the question typically someone will ask straight up, "How do you pay the bills?"

I suppose sometimes I answer by telling the story of Jesus' forty days in the desert and the tempter comes to him, If you are the son of God, turn these stones to bread. And Jesus replied, Man shall not eat by bread alone, but by every word that proceedth from the mouth of God.

[arkieology]

Evelyn,

Actually I didn't quite get your point on Mr. O'Rourke. Emma Goldman and the Anarchist movement are very important to me and I just wanted to make a clear distinction between these types of freedom. I do now.

The helplessness I speak of is infancy and old age, both of which may leave us dependent upon the actions of others. I agree that "charity" is often more about the problems of the giver than the receiver.

I think your quote "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." is a good statement of what the anarchists were all about, and myself as well in my better moments.

Hasta luego.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Ark, Ah, yeah, I could see that. Just to reiterate for all...that particular paragraph bashing the open-source programmers, and lauding pop-up ads.

Yech! It's hard to get me riled up, but that did it.

Old and age (related to time) and helplessness, hmmm, more belief systems to wonder about. Take a good look at kids under 2 years of age right now, "talk" with them telepathetically, they will tell you about needlessness, and much more.

[cheap ray bans]

in praise of idle imagination - Crossroads Dispatches