My Adventure Thus Far

Hi, who am I? Hi, who are you? We seem to want to ask those questions but are we really interested in the answers? What answers, what questions... What is a question mark? I can only kid around. My name is Sudra, well not really except while I am writing this piece. I’ll pretend to write about a character named Sudra who will try to explain her views on the big special thing called enlightenment. She doesn’t think it’s special or she is special for having gotten enlightened. She thinks enlightenment is so misunderstood and sadly regulated and positioned to the religious section of the library. The library -referring to a place where one can borrow knowledge and return it after two weeks, completely digested and ready to eat up the next shelf (as long as it isn’t the shelf on self-help books... if one is helping them-self why are they reading a book written by someone other than them-self?)

Well, Sudra is not into knowledge except as entertainment and any ways she is not even real except as a mouthpiece for the author whose name is Santosha. Sudra? Santosha? What is the difference except art always uses such devices so one can express herself. One of the things Sudra always says is “Art is only a cheap imitation of life, now life is truly the wonder, the big beauty. All an artist can do is copy it in some way that convinces people that it should be bought because ‘it’s art’... Whatever that means”... Sudra says, “ Hip, Hip, Hipooray!” Sudra likes everything, so she likes ART even if it’s only an imitation of life and there is no such thing as creativity except in the sense of combining colors and forms in such a combo that people like it enough to buy it. Does Art do anything? Sudra told me the story of going to the Sausalito Art Festival. She told me the story of it, which is to say how she perceived it, and what her response to it was.

Santosha, I’m telling the story and even though you are me and I am only a device, a mouthpiece for you, let me tell the story from my mouth and you just shut up and type very badly as you usually do. Yeah, The Big Art Festival, it’s high brow which means you probably have to pay a sizable sum to show your work there and of course you have to be picked and selected to be worthy enough in the first place. Well, I wasn’t really going just to see the Art, I was also interested in seeing Todd Rundgren; he was performing there. I wasn’t really interested in hearing his music, I was interested in seeing him and I was interested in the artists more so than their art work, even though I really did look at it and I really did listen to Todd’s songs. If their art or song is well done, in tune, put together well that’s a plus for sure but as far as I live and breathe nothing compares to the actual LIVING ART SPECTACLE: THE LIVING PERSON STANDING THERE TRYING SO HARD TO ENJOY THE AWKWARD MOMENT OF BEING ON DISPLAY. Here is my song, here is my art . . . please . . . please like it so I can make a good living and who knows be seen for the creative genius I am... and what’s the point of all these awkward moments if it doesn’t add up eventually to a really special, special moment and a really, really special life. I AM ME! I AM SPECIAL. I’VE GOT SOMETHING THAT NEEDS, NO SHOULD BE SEEN AND HEARD . . . THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING . . . (I HOPE . . . ) . . . Art hype... I walked around the booths and checked out the art and said hello to the artists. It was a really hot day by the bay. I was with my friends and my old buddy: my camera, and tried to sneak shots of people working around. I can’t resist looking at the people, feeling, being, goofing around, grooving and trying to figure out what to do and how to be seen. What shininess splashed everywhere. Bodies all around, all different, all perceiving, what theater, what art. So much to see and mix in with, touch and respond to. What a day, rich, really rich and I don’t mean that the art is costing, though most of it was beyond my bank account. My heart was laughing and smiling and my body was exhausted by the busyness of it.

Then Todd came out wearing a tight, no-sleeved, black kind of shirt and a brightly patterned orange and black cloth wrapped around like a skirt. He came out all alone with no band. Have you ever known someone so intimately without ever having personally met them and hung out with them as friends do on planet earth? This is the scene for me and I am amazed that life has so many dimensions to it. I’ve dreamed of this guy for years, we’ve talked through many nights in astral scenes of our own mind making. This guy is no stranger, yet he wouldn’t recognize me if we walked by each other. Astral buddies, I guess. We have seen and felt more than what is stacked on the shelves of the county library. We know each other not just through the art forms we create and put on exhibit for others to see. That’s some of what went down and up for me at my day at the art festival. Wonder of wonders, we don’t make art we are art. Hey, there is more to my adventure thus far but Santosha’s little fingers are getting tired of punching those letters... till the next time...don’t believe the hype and don’t believe the beliefs.... except as entertainment...........

ART, ART, ART, and then there is music too which is also ART, ART, ART. I love music too. I watched the MTV awards show the other night. First of all, I really don’t get this award thing except as a device to sell even more records of the records that have been overplayed already. Bored and boring! I shouldn’t call them records anyways, CD’s or cassettes and I’m sure people still buy cassettes. In my adventure thus far, I’ve listened to so much music, both contemporary and alternative, though I can’t figure out what alternative is . . . is it really an alternative to the usual music played on the radio? Well, back to the MTV awards. All the musicians, singers or more accurately, performers tried to out pose each other by creating a spectacle. After so much spectacle you just get de-sensitized, not turned on. It seemed and felt so contrived that I was craving the simple beauty of someone simply singing a song straight from the heart. Madonna got on my nerves with her Hindi chanting and then later her pretending to enjoy bumping and grinding with the guitarist. Sure it’s all an act, I know that but it’s not about the act and the need of feeling oneself, it’s about pretending to be in the act of feeling, but let’s face it why does a forty-year-old woman still want to parade around like a horny teenager unless she can make a really decent living out of it.

Well like I said, art and then again music too is only a cheap imitation of life and when art is a way to make a living, and a very comfortable way of making a living, it becomes an even cheaper imitation of life. One of my friends that is a musician said to me the other day, “Strange but I like sitting around playing notes on my guitar and listening to the sounds and I find a pleasure in putting them together in certain ways.” And we both laughed and said, “Stranger still that people put all sorts of meaning and value on to it.” And also give it awards and value, like it has the power to enlighten us, instead of that it’s only a way to record a feeling perception that we had at one time or another. What is it like to sing a song over and over that perceptually you have outgrown or don’t agree with just because it makes you money? Must be boring. And you have to pretend all that feeling into it while you sing it. Perhaps you wrote a love song for someone you once were in love with but now realize that they were an immature brat and took advantage of you most of the time and you have to go out singing that song night after night. Yuk.

Movies are ART, ART, ART, too. And also a cheap imitation of life. I really like movies too except that I hardly ever see a movie that I actually really like. Movies are a good metaphor for enlightenment. Want to hear it? It goes like this. Life can be entertainment and this is clearly understood when we watch a movie. Now, in the name of entertainment we will watch and want to watch, horror, tragedy, stupid silliness, psychological treachery, courtroom drama, people suffering all sorts of problems like drug abuse and sexual abuse, financial hardship, people killing each other over land, gold, etc....etc.... you imagine it, there will be a movie about it or one opening up this week down the street from you with that particular fantasy in it. We sit in the movie theater for the allotted hour and a half if we are lucky and it doesn’t go on endlessly like the Titanic (just drown already...) And let ourselves get into it, really get into it. We don’t sit around spending a lot of time judging the characters. We let them be so we can follow the story and be entertained. They can be despicable or silly or uptight or funny or gentle and strong or sexually obsessed-we don’t care. We are in it for the pleasure of the story and we actually identify with many of the characters who if we actually knew or met would drive us up a wall or terrify us and we would go to great lengths to avoid. After the movie we decide if we were sufficiently entertained or not and if we felt we are we would recommend the movie to others...and it doesn’t matter what the subject matter was about particularly. We don’t take it seriously. We don’t think that the actors are really the characters they play. We know that the movie is only a story and is not really happening when we are watching it.

Now unenlightenment is thinking that you as an actor actually are the role you are playing. Enlightenment is knowing that you are an actor and that life is art - is entertainment and it’s only entertaining if the story of one’s life allows for all of life’s possibilities to be acted upon in whatever way naturally occurs to you. So being awake you know that you are just watching a movie but you also are in the movie playing any character or role or plot line that life cooks up for you to entertain you and because you can’t take yourself too seriously (because life is too mysterious and you can’t really control anything) you groove on the difficult and the easy. You don’t have to suppress yourself or life to be enlightened. Even though you know it’s only a movie, life that is, life still dictates all the shots and all the plots. Enlightenment gives you the freedom of being a very good actor, so good that you can play your part with complete abandonment because you are not any part in particular.

Now I have a problem with a certain brand of so-called illumination that has been mistaken for enlightenment that doesn’t understand that we are not JUST the observer watching the movie, that we are also playing in the movie all sorts of parts. This brand of enlightenment claims that life is an illusion, a movie okay, yeah that’s fine, yet they are afraid to take a personal part or role in life. They have loosened up the idea that there is an identity to the perceiving game; that there is a set role or identity, yet they haven’t gone the whole way of understanding that perceiver is a function of life and it allows one to play at any role quite easily and naturally without having to avoid or suppress life in all its aspects, just like whatever can be played out in a movie. Is life an illusion? Are movies an illusion? Are we an illusion? Is the observer of the movie only an illusion too? Are the characters in the movies just an idea of some writer? Are the actors just an idea of some writer too? Can we be observing this illusion called life, this movie without actually really seemingly playing a part in it that some force that we can call life spontaneously manifests and says to us, now what? How are you gonna live or die? How you gonna play this one?