Thursday! 2-42: Explore the Core and Find the Why.
V2, I42
One of my favorite questions, going back to when I was a kid, is “why?” I’ve always been curious about why things work the way they do. Why is the sky blue?1 Why do things in space tend to move around each other in orbits?2 Why do some people wear glasses and other people don’t, even in the same family?3 Why do birds suddenly appear anytime you are near?4 I’d also ask questions about myself. Not out loud, of course because who wants to hear a little kid whine about his early existential crises? But I did have questions. Why do I like some stories and not others? Why did books written for kids my age bore me? How much could I possibly learn and, more importantly, what was I supposed to do with it all? Was there really a difference between the science I learned — planets and stars and time and space — and the stories I wrote or pictures of rocket ships I drew?
I didn’t have answers for that last bunch of questions. Neither did anyone else, so far as I could tell. Plenty of grown-ups seemed to me to have big problems with the big questions Who am I and what do I do with all this? I found some great and life-changing answers in church. Indeed, I still find those answers there, but my prayers aren’t answered in the bright flames of a burning bush nor are they whispered from the middle of a whirlwind. A lot of what I find is broad in application.5 I didn’t learn specifically what I was supposed to do the skills and talents God gave me. I didn’t know my place in the world and it bugged me..
It’s now time for complete honesty. I still don’t know and it still bugs me. I’m still the kid asking “why” about a dozen dozen things. I still want to know how the world around me works and though I’ve a pretty good handle on the mechanics of the whole shebang — physics, biology, geology, and other stuff I can get from a textbook — I’m still not sure how I work inside it all. More to the point of Thursday!, I’m still not sure how my art works in a world that seems to need beauty now more than it ever has. I am an artist. I create beauty. I can make my corner of the world less horrible than it is right now, but how do I keep that focus and how do I keep from sinking more deeply into the ever-present morass of cynicism and despair I see in popular culture, social media, and news reports?
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Well, as it happens, I might have had an answer in front of me for a few months now. My friend Sarah Werner wrote an interesting article back in March about her “creative core values”. I highly recommend you read it (and it won’t take you long). In it, she describes how she sat down and made a list of the things that are most important to her, not only guiding principles of her art, but qualities of life she prizes and things that bring her particular delight. Her list includes tangible and intangible, things you can buy and things you can only develop on your own. Most important, her list came from inside herself. She didn’t include things the outside world wanted her to take up — incessant marketing, for example, or cynicism or a firm opinion on soft drinks. She says nothing about banal political choices but much about wide principles. Her list is both heart and mind, aspirational but also practical. It is, in short, hers.
Why do I write what I write? Why not focus on just one type of writing? Why write small works instead of the great novel? What makes me happy? What can I pull from inside myself to make the world around me a little better? What can I use of my own experiences to keep despair from rising in the world? I think the answers to all those questions and others lie in my own core values. What do I prize? What matters to me more than anything else? If I could carve the world away to the shape of Jimmie Bise, Jr., what shape would I have7? Would it be full of good things or more hollow than I’d like to admit to myself? My core values will tell me.
Don’t think, though, that a core value list is permanent. That’s a trap into which I can fall8 very easily. Perhaps you’re prone to it as well. The person you are today is not the person you were a decade ago. Today You does not have to be Tomorrow You. Core values can and will change. You may think mornings on the beach are essential to your life right now, but perhaps in a year you will fall in love with a house in the hills near a small town and a babbling stream. The list you make today is your list today. It’s okay to look at it every once in a while and make some changes. Or not. Perhaps you look at your list and decide you really dig what you have there and want to keep it that way forever. I can’t say that’s wrong. No one can. Look, you are the one who has to live with yourself every minute of every day. You get to choose what you like and what you don’t. You get to move toward being the person you wouldn’t sell off even if you could.
Your core values — your Big List of Why if you like — also contains the things that that drive your artistic desires. I don’t mean the specific media in which you create but the messages you create. What does your art say? What does it reflect about you and how you see the world around you? What kind of future might people see in your creations? Even if you don’t aspire to change the whole world with your art, you still say something with it. I know I do and I labor under no delusion about the grand importance of my work. Yet, my art reflects me — the core me, the things I like and don’t like, the things I want and don’t want. So does yours. A list of core values might help you sharpen your artistic focus. Heck, it just might answer a couple of those “why” questions that have bothered you for such a long time. That, alone, would be worth the effort, don’t you think?
I won’t share my list with you quite yet because I haven’t finished it. Back when Sarah wrote her article, I gave it a shot, but it wasn’t a very good shot. I pulled back and didn’t explore quite as deeply as I needed to in order to make the list accurate and useful. As part of some other work I’m doing this week, I’ll do more digging. Perhaps one week soon I’ll share my list with you. If you like, you may share yours with me. And don’t think you have to rush. You can do it whenever you like, or not at all. We’re okay like that, you and I. I dig you just fine right here and now.
And I don’t even have to ask why.
What I Wrote Last Week
There’s been a bit of writing this week, but nothing ready for public consumption, except for one thing, which I’d love to share with you. This poem is a Japanese form called a tanka, which begins with the familiar 5-7-5 syllabic structure a haiku or senryu, but with two additional lines of seven syllables each. You could think of a tanka as a particular theme stated two different ways — first in the 5-7-5 lines of the “upper phrase” and again in final two lines of the “lower phrase”. I’m new to these forms and have been trying to nail the right tone with them. This one, though a bit rough, is the closest I’ve come to getting it right, I think.
A Tanka in Summer Summer, furious Beats the earth with fists of rain Roars in flood waters. Countless blameless homes succumb To fury they did not earn.
Light absorption and reflection, kid. High school science class stuff.
Gravity and mass, mostly, kid. College astrophysics. Maybe high school physics.
Genetics, kid. High school biology. Hey! How old are you, anyhow? Six? Seven? Don’t you ask normal questions for a kid your age?
Oh! This one’s easy. Just like me they want to be close to you. Also, if you have a serious doorbell problem involving that song, call Señor Ding Dong.
“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” — Micah 6:8 (KJV)
Or dinner for two a Whataburger maybe? I’m not choosing one burger place over another, because who needs that fight early on a Wednesday morning? I’d just like you to get on the hayride and be a Patron!
Round-ish is a perfectly appropriate answer, but maybe not the one I should give.
And have. Oh my, how I have.