Tag Archives: society

Artists Keep Us Sane (and a whole lot more)

What do you think? Is art frivolous or a necessity in society?

I suppose it depends on the times, and the art. If you’re living in what feels like a mad world, then a beautiful piece of art pulls one back to remember what is still possible. Another artist might paint the ugliness of the times to try to achieve the very same thing.

Or is that true? That same painting which I may label “ugly” might be actually be “beautiful” to the artist painting it. There are a million versions of anything, depending on the lens through which it is viewed. Every person sees the same painting in a gallery just a little bit differently than the person standing next to them.

Or do they? This is true only insofar as the viewer is able see it through a lens other than the precise one that society dictated as “correct”. We are all shaped by our cultures and their group beliefs, which hone our own biases and perspectives. Those perspectives carved in the collective stone can be a very difficult thing to break out of.

Artists are used to being censored by masses that largely want to view life and the world as the one painted in the “acceptable style” of the day. Ask the French Impressionists (as just one example of an art movement), whose work was rejected by the respected art salons of the day. Different is dangerous; it generates a cognitive dissonance that most find uncomfortable. It certainly doesn’t sell.

Which bring us to money, and how we so often talk about the value of anything firstly in terms of currency. Will a society so deeply rooted in money, and the idea of outward material wealth, ever fully embrace something that feeds the inner human, not firstly the outward one? In society as it exists now, it would be easy to argue that artistic expression is merely the “icing on the cake” of life.

But what if it’s not just the icing? What if it’s actually the flour and water, the practical and necessary ingredient to create an elevated society?

Artists do not merely beautify the world, they raise questions and generate wider perspectives, and even in the face of censorship, they answer the inner call to create it. This can be in the form of a painting, music, writing, or other vehicle(s) of artistic expression.

That which flows out of the human being with urgency to be expressed, I suggest is not frivolous at all. It is an expression of the human soul, a reflection back to our inner selves where the real answers wait to be found. These, I think, are the paving stones of a brighter road forward, one that leads to a more elevated society that respects and nurtures the soul journey of the human being.

So I ask you again, “What do you think? Is art frivolous or a necessity in society?”

A Tree that Inspires The People

Changing the World

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Changing the world hinges on you somewhat, but not necessarily in ways that you might think. Someone once told me that sometimes we have to change things from the outside first, and sometimes we have to start from the inside. As crazy as it might sound to you, I believe the current state of the world calls for the latter.

I wrote the content of this ebook in 2021, and it has received some minor revisions and a different cover than the original. But, the essential message is the same, and in a more focused way. Allowing yourself to claim your human potential, and therefore your own happiness, not only frees your own soul for its own fulfillment, but you also help to transform the world around you.

If you are reading this today, and would like a free copy, I invite you to download Becoming Bigger: In a world that wants to keep you small. The link is here. It’s about a 25-minute read.

Dreams Out of Africa

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I watched Out of Africa again yesterday. Love that story, perhaps because it is based on the real-life memoir by Isak Dinesen (the pen name of Danish author Karen Blixen). Africa was her great adventure. I remember a long time ago, a high school teacher asked our class if we could travel anywhere, where would it be? Some of my classmates wanted to go to the next town, the next province, the country next door. I put my hand up and said, “Africa”.

Pregnant pause; the teacher looked at me like I was from Mars. I guess I dreamed bigger than most, because I read voraciously as a child and teenager, and books were seeding big dreams in me.

Fast forward to now, and I have traveled and lived in various parts of the world. But, I have yet to see Africa. It’s important to keep one dream unspent for a while, I think. It gives one something to aim for. 🙂

Some day I hope Africa and I will learn a song of each other:

“If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?” ~ Isak Dinesen

Of course, watching the movie this time was tinged with a some sadness with the death of Robert Redford just 4 days ago. The character he played in Out of Africa, Deny Finch Hatton – Karen Blixen’s love – was killed in a plane crash before she left Africa. Denys was buried in the Ngong Hills. Later when back in Denmark, Karen wrote this about some correspondence she received about his grave site:

“‘The Masai have reported to the District Commissioner at Ngong, that many times, at sunrise and sunset, they have seen lions on Finch Hatton’s grave in the the Hills. A lion and lioness have come there, and stood, or lain, on the grave for a long time…After you went away, the ground round the grave was leveled out, into a sort of big terrace. I suppose that the level place makes a good site for the lions, from there they can have a view over the plain, the cattle and game on it.’

Denys will like that. I must remember to tell him.”