We really need to get our blogs going. We are dang good.
CK:
...she says modestly!
LOLNow as to the definition of "escapism" as MJ used it and Willa interpreted it - I need to go back and catch up on several DWTE posts coz I unfortunately missed that one in the midst of the chaos of my last three months.
I understand what you mean - great art as time & space converging in one singular moment to pop you OUT of your present reality and into - somewhere else.
I picture him onstage as that convergent point in time and space and energy, where stars and galaxies and atoms and whirlwinds suddenly collide and take form. He was a blinding example of "star seed" personified - that which we all are and were made to feel along with him.
The attachment says it all. <photo below>
RB:
A picture's worth a thousand, eh? Beautiful being.
Well yes, Willa was saying that by "escapism" MJ meant escaping the bounds of space and time--the shackles that hold us in this version of "reality." Great art makes those borders disappear. And it's indeed "like magic" as MJ would say in his entirely appropriate but childlike way. Suddenly we are one with everything and everyone that ever was. I think I sent you guys NJ's account of the energy at MJ's Bad and Victory concerts she attended--how it all felt like a "religious" experience? Same thing.
On my list to read this summer is an NPR-reviewed book about how "today's world" more and more suppresses right-brain processes and promotes left-brain ones. Author posits that our very humanness resides in the right brain. It's the part that is less concrete, less about measurement and more about integration, synthesis, and intuition. It's the only part that's in the least bit interested in or capable of connecting us to something greater than the sum of a bunch of parts. This book makes me think of MJ as well as what I consider to be really going wrong with the world.
I'm not sure you can experience escaping space and time and connecting with the Universe even momentarily if you're strictly stuck in the left brain
CK:
The book you are planning to read sounds fascinating too, RB - I look to your example and hope to inject my daily life with more time to read once I get moved. I want to slow down for a few months before I choose my next creative expression (which hopefully will make me a living!)...
BTW there is nothing I enjoy more than seeing a left-brain person of my acquaintance come up against an experience that does transcend all things concrete, rational and practical - that journey (or struggle depending on level of resistance) is endlessly fascinating and I think that's why I ended up in the arts in the first place. Reality as a concept often has little meaning for me. People talk about reality as if it were the experience itself but too often they are only describing the trappings...
RB:
CK:
Well yes, Willa was saying that by "escapism" MJ meant escaping the bounds of space and time--the shackles that hold us in this version of "reality." Great art makes those borders disappear. And it's indeed "like magic" as MJ would say in his entirely appropriate but childlike way. Suddenly we are one with everything and everyone that ever was. I think I sent you guys NJ's account of the energy at MJ's Bad and Victory concerts she attended--how it all felt like a "religious" experience? Same thing.
On my list to read this summer is an NPR-reviewed book about how "today's world" more and more suppresses right-brain processes and promotes left-brain ones. Author posits that our very humanness resides in the right brain. It's the part that is less concrete, less about measurement and more about integration, synthesis, and intuition. It's the only part that's in the least bit interested in or capable of connecting us to something greater than the sum of a bunch of parts. This book makes me think of MJ as well as what I consider to be really going wrong with the world.
I'm not sure you can experience escaping space and time and connecting with the Universe even momentarily if you're strictly stuck in the left brain
CK:
Sounds like Willa and I - and you & MJ - are all on the same page here about great art and "escapism" - I look forward to reading that particular post. As I do all her posts. I wish I could comment in some meaningful way on the site about what she says - I simply don't feel adequate.
The book you are planning to read sounds fascinating too, RB - I look to your example and hope to inject my daily life with more time to read once I get moved. I want to slow down for a few months before I choose my next creative expression (which hopefully will make me a living!)...
BTW there is nothing I enjoy more than seeing a left-brain person of my acquaintance come up against an experience that does transcend all things concrete, rational and practical - that journey (or struggle depending on level of resistance) is endlessly fascinating and I think that's why I ended up in the arts in the first place. Reality as a concept often has little meaning for me. People talk about reality as if it were the experience itself but too often they are only describing the trappings...
Whoever took that photo deserves an award of some sort - I just love it.
Besides the instant recognition of the body and hair, besides the beauty of his long and expressive open arms, besides the hint you the viewer gets of standing alone on a darkened stage facing a vast sea of faces and eyes all riveted on the same man, under the more profound vastness of space and stars... there is the sense that he glows from within and is actually the source of the light around him rather than the target of many spotlights from out there somewhere... which is just plain satisfying to my soul.
RB:
This picture has been heavily worked over, I think--looks almost like a painting--to good effect, though.
Another one I want as a huge poster!
CK:
Now girrrl - don't go gettin' all nit-picky when I'm waxing poetic here, yano?? Sheesh!
jkjk
If any digital enhancement HAS been added, it still started out as a brilliant photograph.
Serendipity traveled with the tours, I think.
Or more likely MJ created his own serendipity!! LOL
