Oil Spills and Alien Abductions
Posted on | July 11, 2010 | No Comments
If I were a pelican, say, caught in the gulf oil spill, I’d probably go through a nightmare of poisons, and, if I’m lucky, be pulled out of the ocean by a volunteer, after a ghastly near death experience . I’d then be sprayed, cleaned, scrubbed, treated well, examined, tagged, turned upside down, contained, and finally — released in a different part of Florida.
And I bet I’d say, after all that, looking around a place I didn’t know filled with pelicans I’d never met, ‘I think I was just abducted by aliens’.
It all depends on how you see it.
The fact that we think we think we can ‘clean up’ after a disaster like this, and then have everything return to normal, if only we throw enough money at it - that’s one of the strangest mind-sets I’ve ever heard.
Cashback
Posted on | July 5, 2010 | No Comments
The movie may not appeal to all of you, since it has some commercial comedy strewn around, but it delivers some surprisingly firm nudges about seeing and being seen, and what it all adds up to.
The plot is simple - an recently-dumped insomniac artist, filling in as a night shift worker at a supermarket, discovers he can stop time, and so he draws the beauty of those he sees around him, when he can really look at them. This slight framework of plot is made to carry some haunting ideas, as we watch him as he falls back in love with life
Perhaps the most eye-opening moment is at the end, when Sean Bickerstaff says:
“Love is there, wrapped in beauty and hidden between the seconds of your life. If you don’t stop for a minute, you might miss it.”
It’s an idea worthy of William Blake.
Each artist strives to deliver a love-poem to the world, and each does it a different way. But they’re all love-poems.
Anniversaries: What if….?
Posted on | June 18, 2010 | No Comments
Today marks the 70th anniversary of General Charles De Gaulle’s broadcast to France, from London, in which he urged the French people to continue resisting the Nazi invaders, even though their country had been over-run.
The French Battle fleet, hearing this, dithered. This forced the British fleet to sink the whole lot, fearing that those powerful battleships would be taken over by the Nazis. It was a slaughter, but done to prevent worse things in the future -specifically the blockading and starvation of England, which would have brought it to submission within weeks.
If de Gaulle had not spoken as he had it is possible that all resistance in France would have collapsed and that all of France, under the Vichy collaboration, would have been simply a pawn of the Nazis.
The lesson here is stark. Speak your truth, no matter how much opposition there is. Do not give in to what is wrong, and be prepared to follow through on your words. The invasion of England would have been certain but for those brave words, seemingly shouted into the face of a howling gale. But fate had other plans.
New Video from Beyond 50 radio
Posted on | June 13, 2010 | No Comments
This is the slide show developed by Beyond 50 Radio from an interview with Daniel Davies. Didn’t they do a good job?
Memoir, plot, writing….
Posted on | June 6, 2010 | No Comments
Re-reading Dickens, with his magnificently improbably plots of coincidence and far more characters than one can keep track of, reminded me of Memoir.
In Memoir we tend to think that we are at the center of things, and that our view matters. This is true - to an extent. What makes great memoir is the sense that we are not the only story; that all stories intersect in some way. And what readers delight in is the sense that this person’s specific story is also a tale for all of us, at all times, in one way and another.
Good memoir touches on truths that are still true, next year and the year after, truths that retain their freshness because we all have to be reminded, regularly, of what matters.
Why write anything less?
Smiling Statues (Ancient Greece)
Posted on | June 5, 2010 | No Comments
Those smiling statues I blogged about a couple of days ago…. What could they be smiling about?
Here’s an idea. I think that the date of their creation, about 550 BC might be important. The smiling Buddha is one of the few other smiling statuary figures that exists, and it is from around this time — although separated by some thousand plus miles of well-traveled trade routes.
Perhaps the smile is the smile of those who have glimpsed the mysteries and beauties of the universe, coming to us to tell us that life is good, and we should be grateful and joyful.
It’s a pretty good message.
Isn’t it time we had a few more smiling statues?
Bridgewater State Writing Institute (Aug 1 - 7)
Posted on | June 4, 2010 | No Comments
The Institute will be blasting off this year, looking at Memoir and Creative Non-Fiction and so much more. Jerald Walker is the guiding light, ably assisted by Bob Atwan, with a cameo by me.
Here’s the link:
http://www.bridgew.edu/externalAffairs/NEWI%20Home.cfm
Check it out, writers!
Smiling; and Joy.
Posted on | June 3, 2010 | No Comments
Leafing through my copy of Janson’s ‘History of Art’ I noticed, again, that in about 530 BC statues appeared in Greece, all of which were smiling enigmatically. These statues are called kouros and kore, and are thought of as being ‘archaic’ forms. This means that they aren’t that good by ‘our’ standards.
Later statues rarely have smiles. They have extremely life-like looks of horror and so on, but no smiles.
So why don’t statues smile? If I walk along and someone smiles at me it brightens my day, and I doubt that anyone would disagree with that sentiment. Why, therefore, have smiles disappeared from statuary? Is it because we no longer celebrate delight?
Actually, we do. People smile for photos, and love doing it. But this lack of joy in public art might have been a symptom of things to come. Perhaps we, as a race, think we have be gloomy or sad so we can feel alive, and this idea has perpetuated itself. Perhaps we don’t respect joy.
No wonder one in four Americans will use anti-depressants at some point….
Writing Short - the new way forward?
Posted on | June 2, 2010 | No Comments
I’ve noticed that many books are now rather, um, brief. I just read a delightful book of 150 pages, of which about 40 pages were pictures, or one sentence quotations taking up one page, and other such things.
The book itself was excellent - but short. In this case it made its points well, but the larger question is…. are we becoming a culture that simply can’t deal with long books — unless they are about vampires?
The Huffington Post asks for 200 words or less. Twitter allows only 140 characters. So - is there a future for in-depth investigative journalism, any more (to give just one example)?
For some time now….
Posted on | May 31, 2010 | No Comments
For a number of years I’ve been wondering about creating a learning center - one in which the emphasis is on growing human beings as thoughtful, creative, expressive individuals, while at the same time nurturing critical thinking skills.
Often ‘critical thinking’ is a buzz word that implies heartless analysis and the rejection of all that is not strictly ‘rational’. This is a pity. There is plenty in the world that we don’t yet understand, but to reject intuitions because they cannot be proven is about as limiting as anything one could imagine. What we need, instead, is to think carefully and critically about our own self-limiting beliefs, and to imagine possible ways forward that we can then consider with care. Perhaps this should be re-labeled as ‘careful thinking’? It might be transformative.
Most of the world’s problems seem to stem from thinking in pre-conceived patterns. Just today news came that the Israelis boarded a convoy of ships carrying aid to Palestinians. At least 10 people were killed. Outrage in many countries. Yet - who was the person who felt that lowering armed troops from helicopters onto ships loaded with volunteers was a good idea? What sort of idiot notion was that? There were many other options and of them all this was probably the very worst. Someone wasn’t thinking.
I don’t think one side is right or wrong. Perhaps both are wrong, or both right. Who is to judge? I just think that those people didn’t need to be killed.
We need more ‘Careful Thinking’. Obviously.
Princes, Frogs & Ugly Sisters:
The Healing Power of the Grimm Brothers' Tales
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Write Your Memoir:
The Soul Work of Telling Your Story
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Stories We Need to Know: Reading Your Life Path in Literature
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Hi—I’m Allan Hunter, author of The Six Archetypes of Love and Stories We Need to Know as well as two books on writing for self-exploration, Life Passages and The Sanity Manual. If you’re looking to live your best life I hope you’ll find lots of inspiration here.
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