A piece of my mind
“The ultimate function of literature is to appreciate the world, sometimes indignantly, sometimes sorrowfully, but best of all to praise when it is luckily possible.” — John Dewey
Man finds balance through art, and for man to continue in the face of adversity, to struggle against the odds; we must learn the art of improvisation and creation. Art is a commitment to give shape, pattern and meaning to the insanity of ongoing experience; stylistically recreating the maturation process for every human being, showcasing why we fail and how we can succeed. Art is assistance alongside human life; helping man continually face Set day after day and come out victorious only to do it again when the sun rises. Metaphorically capturing the beauty, contradictions and the natural inscrutability of human existence is the purpose of the artist. Telling those coming up what being a man is all about; telling us about loneliness, pain, heartbreak, doubt, overthinking, love, desire, and everything that makes us alive. Living requires an artistic disposition, often musical and epical, to get through the day; we are forced everyday to create and live from the discovery of our rhythms. We are obligated, like Aset, to forgive the ego for cutting us from the source; and make the daily journey of restoring ourselves to completeness, never growing weary along the journey to adulthood.
“Love must precede hatred, and nothing is hated save through being contrary to a suitable thing which is loved. And hence it is that every hatred is caused by love.” — Thomas Aquinas
God is not finished with us; rising for the universal morning roll call signifies God providing us another chance to participate in the quest for mastery. We are forever being questioned with a daily dragon, and being asked to cross a bigger more dangerous mountain; which means we are forever providing answers that will give articulation to the people that are struggling with their mountain or gearing up to face the one we’ve climbed. We must forever remind ourselves of the possibilities of human existence; it’s easy for man to limit his potential and settle for the comfortable instead of striving for the most challenging. Surprisingly, the most challenging usually provides the most pleasure; our pursuit is a universal display of the grace and compassion needed to suffer and love. Suffering will never end, we will only become better fighters, better dancers, and better lovers; we cannot concern ourselves with the trivial and use our existence to come closer to ourselves. Faith must precede doubt, courage must precede fear, and continuation must precede stagnation; however, humans are so forget that we settle into routines and resentment slowly erodes our relationship to the self. Every morning, before the world impedes our desires, we must learn to live in the hour before the world rises; God not being finished, and providing us with another chance, we are obligated, like Atlas, to carry the world on our shoulders.
“The blues is not the creation of a crushed-spirited people. It is the product of a forward-looking, upward-striving people.” — Albert Murray
Coming from the Afro-American literary tradition, I have a responsibility to create, from the depths of my spirit, a wisdom capable of reaching universality through a representational anecdote. Pulling from the reservoir of collective knowledge and technical devotion allows a creator to move an entire experience forward. We are responsible for creating music with the sounds happening around us; using suffering and pain like a chorus, our mindset like a tonal accompaniment, and using our rhythms to produce a melody. Through the loneliness, despair, isolation, and the feeling of being unable to move forward, we must tell our stories and awaken to the sensual nature of life. The music is found through living our lives and listening to the sounds produced by our environment; we must live according to the beat of our heart. Everyone living is an artist; artistry has nothing to do with one’s productions, but with a commitment to sensuality.
“By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.”— Henry David Thoreau
Man freezes to death from a lack of affection and warmth; whether a child that is never held or a man, with no where to go for warmth, on the concrete in a moving city; man needs warmth, touch, and affection to live. We cannot live without affection, and any attempt will cause a man’s heart to freeze; for those times of drought from any physical nourishment — kisses, hand holding, thigh touching, being held in bed, conversations, slow sex — it’s best for man to reside in nature. Man must conquer the silence of nature, and sit within this necessity to become humbled; many lovers of wisdom have neglected the joy of touch, and overemphasized the need for mastering solitude, but our objective is mastery and balance. We have sentimentalized nature and focused on anti-social animals for examples on how we should live, but we can learn a lot from the love chants of songbirds, and lions rubbing their cheeks against one another. Being able to be loved, learning to be loving and learning the art of solitude are all important in our maturation; we must be able to provide each other the nourishment to live, but our source, our well-spring, must come from us.
