Book of the Labyrinth: Connection
/(We’re looking at excerpts from my Book of the Labyrinth, a blank book into which I have written inspirational stuff, divided into the sections of RITUAL in Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.)
Listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door;
Let’s go.
— e.e. cummings
CONNECTION
A quick review of our structure for RITUAL:
Breaking the Circle
Benediction
In the labyrinth of an evening, the section of the Book called Connection is aimed mostly at my fellow Lichtenbergians who gather there with me, i.e., a connection to the other members of my scenius. For the purposes of Lichtenbergian RITUAL, I have expanded the concept to include as well any connections you have or seek with your larger AUDIENCE or to the artists from the past or present whose work connects to yours.
So what does the Book of the Labyrinth have to say to us about Connection during the Captivity?
Who asks it of us?
— unattributed
Indeed: who asks us to MAKE THE THING THAT IS NOT? Especially now in Captivity, as commissions and performances and social proximizing** vanish, why bother? I think that’s where many of us are in our creative journey. It’s so much easier to doomscroll through Twitter or Facebook, looking for Connection there.
True, we sometimes find it, but that’s a very tight, small eddy of Connection, and if you’re anything like me it does not lead to any actual making.
Can we, should we be satisfied — at least for the time being — with snarky retorts and creating throwaway memes?
Ideas, language,
even the phrase each other
doesn’t make sense.
— Rumi
Keep going,
going on,
call that going,
call that on?
But wait.
— Beckett
However, there is Connection to be found.
Though one be in the east
and the other in the west,
they still feel joy and comfort
in each other’s talk,
and one who lives
in a later generation
than the other
is instructed and consoled
by the words of his friend.
— Abu Sa’id Ibn Abi’l-Khayr
We should split the sack
of this culture
and stick our heads out.
— Rumi
In Captivity, that Connection with outside-of-ourselves (I imagine there’s a German word for that) becomes even more important. It’s harder, to be sure, but it is not only possible: it is necessary.
Out beyond ideas of
wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down
in that grass
the world is too full
to talk about.
— Rumi
If you can’t raise consciousness,
at least raise hell.
— Rita Mae Brown
Or, as we say over at the Lichtenbergianism shop, Remember to Romp.
I get it, I truly do: we all want to curl up in a fetal position with soothing music on Pandora while Sir Patrick Stewart strokes us gently and says, “There, there,” while reading Shakespeare’s sonnets to us. But, if you can, look for the Connection. Go live on Facebook; host a Zoom room; blog.
Check in with your friends: what are they working on? What should they be working on? What would they like to be working on? (Pro tip: Keep that WASTE BOOK open as you chat, because ideas for that next step will flood into your brain. Capture them all.)
Can’t have an actual gathering/conference/exhibit? Make up a virtual one, or as I did with the burn, a completely fictitious one. Invite others to poke at it.
And as always, look for that Connection with the great minds of our world: authors, painters, songwriters, playwrights, filmmakers, anyone who has done it before is still there, waiting to talk with you. (You want my honest opinion? Go with Shakespeare. Don’t “know how”? Learn here and here. Read it out loud. Zoom read with others. Pick it apart. Make it come alive. You will have no regrets.)
Look for your other half
who walks always next to you
and tends to be who you aren’t.
— Antonio Machado
For we are all,
we are all,
we are all children of,
we are all the sons of
a brilliantly colored flower,
a flaming flower.
And there is no one,
there is no one
who regrets what we are.
— Huichol song
Only connect.
— E. M. Forster
** I just made that term up. Could have been worse, I could have gone with propinquitizing.
