To thine own self be true

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
–Shakespeare, Hamlet

Much of our lives simply comes down to our consciousness, awareness, perceptions, and attitudes. We see ourselves, others, and the world outside us in terms of this “thinking”, however limited, limiting, or free and expansive (as in imaginative, intuitive, insightful, empathic).

To a large extent, then, what we are aware of, what we perceive, what we know, what we imagine is who or what we basically are, finally. That is our personal experience and, not necessarily anyone else’s (which is why accord, agreement, and common ground of whatever kinds are so de-isolating and desirable.)

So there is what we know (our consciousness) and how we view and respond to our daily experiences (our attitudes). A basic orientation, beyond this, is the proverbial glass half-full or half-empty. Attitude, then, may be considered to be a response to consciousness or a by-product of it. (This leads to some interesting positions or points, though, ironically, as in a following entry on response to death. For instance, it is possible one might still be basically positive–in attitude– despite an awareness of death,) Values and beliefs may also play roles in determining attitude.

Interestingly, one can also reverse the above and say that attitude leads to consciousness as in, say, an open-minded, curious, scholarly approach to life. So in the end, the two aspects inform and interfuse with each other. One may simply have more or less consciousness or knowledge (called information elsewhere in this blog) and relatively more or less optimism or pessimism in one’s attitude.

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For me, these two qualities are pretty basic in life experience. They also give a means by which to view and understand self and others, especially when it comes to limits and limitations vs. relative freedom/s.

I have watched my grandson playing for about a year and come to the conclusion that our lives begin and continue as a series of projects. One of his earliest projects was stacking colored cups which he did for months in various ways. Later, he would over and over do puzzles of different kinds. Now when he finishes a project, he takes each one to his mother or father. He does not like to be interrupted and, like all toddlers, does not like to be thwarted or told “no”. (Like all of us, he enjoys his limited freedom, and does not suffer external or imposed limits and limitations easily.) Most of all, he, like all of us, enjoys being engaged, or ‘being/getting lost’ in a project.

In much the same way, a family dog does not like having the project of enjoying a meal being interrupted, as in when the meal is pulled away, signified usually by a growl. The squirrel outside in my yard does not understand, likewise, why I would use the garden hose on him as he tries to rip fabric strips off the swing set canopy. No one likes having their projects interrupted, especially when they are busy and engaged on some intent, goal, or ongoing pleasurable activity.

It is and has been, indeed personally, a life of projects. I think back to my collection of Classics Illustrated comics, or collecting 45s when I was 10 to 40. Other projects included getting through and out of high school and playing hockey as long as I could as a child (the rinks in our yard, the pickup games at the community club and a brief stint as a peewee goalie). Projects, projects. The girlfriends, friends, the school musical career, the folk music career, the nursing orderly and letter carrier stints, the band leader project, the textbook writing career (from 1978-on), the teaching career (1972-2002), my ongoing epoch as a husband, the enhanced family project, movie collecting, stamp collecting, poster collecting, my ongoing project as a grandparent (player, performer, teacher), and so forth.

Yes, a life of projects. And, to think that it all began with some cups, some stacking rings, some puzzles, some toys, a pet–the world of my grandson, and that of my mirrored childhood past, too. I don’t think it’s accidental that one of the most famous movie motifs, symbols, and moments is crystallized in the dropping of a snow globe and the utterance of “Rosebud” in Citizen Kane, one of the most famous films of all time. If you`ve seen the movie, you`ll recall that it was young Kane`s being interrupted and being wrested from his playing in the winter snow project that was the defining moment in his life and past. And what was Kane`s life after that? Nothing but a series of projects–Xanadu, the newspaper, his campaign to make Susan an opera singer, his failed political career.

Yes, a life of projects. Like all our own every day and over periods of our transitory lives. Why else do people have bucket lists of projects?

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We are all in process with our various projects (or chosen processes).                     Some of the best projects are the hybrid ones that arise from following one’s bliss–in my case, this blog along with the continuing revelations of my 22 month-old grandson, seen fused together in the entry above.

“Not a whit, we defy augury; there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be.”

“The rest is silence.”–both quotes from Hamlet

There are a number of other memorable quotes in that play of Shakespeare’s, but those two form some kind of bottom line. We will all die, some today, some tomorrow; and down the road at some time the rest will be silence for each of us.                                 In that–another topic I shall cover–about the information/the known and mystery/the unknown–another basic perspective of/on life.

Perhaps the casualness of Hamlet’s “Let be” may strike one as odd (whereas others may fret and be stressed out about the possibility of personal mortality), but at the bottom of things–all mortals must accept their own natural limits and limitations. Things will unfold as they will–death is very much a part of life and ‘flow’/process. It is deeply built into our lives.

I look outside my window and see a dead tree  (a stump–the tree hewn down years ago). I see flowers amazingly alive in Edmo October, but know they will be dead likely this weekend with a predicted low of -7C. I look about the room and see photos of dead parents, a painting by my wife’s dead aunt. I open the paper and read about another train wreck in which hundreds are suddenly extinguished. Halloween with its skulls and ghosts occurs next week. The ‘C’ word is suddenly mentioned in the course of the day and so forth.

Instead of seeing life and death as separate experiences and states, I see them as interfused and mingled together throughout all our days, weeks, months, years, and lives. This vision being ever-constant, with the implied sudden, seemingly random, possibility of death.

I recently survived a near-miss collision with a rather large UPS van this summer; death is always that close, that potentially snuffed-outable–what Frost talks about in “‘Out, Out–‘”. Hamlet, elsewhere in the play, says that a man’s life is similarly extinguishable, as potentially extinguishable as saying the word “One”. There’s nothing serious in mortality” as Macbeth concludes. “Out, out, brief candle”.

No, “Let be” indeed. A philosophic perspective and acceptance that in the midst of life, we are always, realistically/factually, also in the midst of death, or as Milton put it, living life “under the ribs of death.”  Need we be bothered about this underlying reality or perspective? I think not. We may or will come to know more than we do, get whatever missing information or perspectives on both life and death. Some of the mysteries of life and death will continue to unfold the longer we live, along with more of whatever missing information.                                                                                                                                      And, from this further information and understanding of these mysteries, a fuller and greater appreciation and savouring, perhaps, of the relative briefness, fragility, limits, ephemeralness, evanescent momentariness and transitoriness, and potential values and meanings of life, love, beauty, fuller consciousness, flow, process and unique person/life/presence.

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Very much–life and death are not simply separate experiences or entities. They are constantly intermingled and interfused throughout a human day and life. This awareness does, ironically, illustrate the kind of depth to our human experience and journey–a basic overarching perspective or ‘backdrop’, if you will.

But, I think, finally, the response, at least mine, to such a view or awareness–everything in a person’s life does come down to their fundamental consciousness, values and beliefs–as revealed in what might simply be called attitude.                                       

Life is, also  a simultaneously “wonderful world” as Louis Armstrong crooned. Or as W. H. Auden, in “As I Walked Out One Evening” wrote, “Life remains a blessing/Although you cannot bless.” That is to say there are positive attitudes and experiences despite whatever negativity one may also be aware/conscious of. There is, unquestionably, the positive potential and experiences of health, good conversation, family, friends, pets, love, good luck, the arts, Nature, beauty in many forms, kindness, decency, civilized behaviors and practices, peace, etc. On most days of our lives, the glass is half-full, whether we are surviving, succeeding, or experiencing the extraordinary.

When I started this blog last year, I did so because I had a number of ‘basic’ meditations about basic perspectives/frameworks/overviews–ways of viewing, understanding and appreciating life. Call this a foolish, naïve attempt to set down in concise terms, with some examples and quotes, ways of viewing the flow of one’s/anyone’s life.

If you are interested in seeing these, I suggest you go back to the beginning of this blog. Here are some meditation titles/topics to pique your curiosity:

August 2012:

Individual Process, Briefly

On the Necessity of Being an Individual

Conferring the Meanings of One’s Own Life

Consciousness

Presence and Non-presence

Connected and ‘Removed’

Connected Consciousness

September

Of ‘Missing Pieces’

Life as a Play: Of Performances and Roles

Moments of Being

Life Possibilities

Process, Context and Choice

Anyway, the meditations continue, though there are fewer of them now because of how much ground I covered in these early overviews. In many ways, I am happy I set down my consciousness and views on these topics for others, potentially, to read and think about for themselves. They drove/have driven this blog and its start-up.

The beginning of the blog is also interesting because I did the entries in a more sequential, connected order. There are also many of my older poems, prose pieces, and song lyrics that illustrate these topics as they occur from back to front, so to speak. So, there is much to be gained from reading the blog in reverse order up until late fall of 2012.

(bust of The Bard on one of my bookshelves)

Lines from “Shakespeare” by Matthew Arnold:

We ask and ask–Thou smilest and art still./Out-topping knowledge.  

All pains the immortal spirit must endure,/All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,/Find their sole voice in that victorious brow.

To activate any photos not showing automatically, click on any picture frame. Then click “Continue to this website”–large pic, then smaller pic will emerge. When loaded, double-click upper left-pointing arrow twice to re-enter entire website with all blog photos now displayed. Pictures can then be enlarged or smallened as wished by clicking on photo. Three sizes in total.

Given the Internet, a hard copy set of an encyclopedia is no longer needed, but there are still several other helpful print books I may reach for when writing. Online definitions from various sources aside, the hardcover Gage Canadian Dictionary and The Concise Oxford Dictionary provide whatever basic definitions and reminders of spellings and pronunciations.

Nothing is worse than referencing a specific you know by sight but can’t name. Two useful visual dictionaries are Merriam-Webster’s Compact Visual Dictionary and What’s What: A Visual Glossary. I also still own a 1962 copy of the classic red and black paperbound I used in high school–The New American Roget’s College Thesaurus, the handiest-ever, easy-to-use thesaurus for looking up synonyms or more exact word choice. It is very simple and quite concise to use, quickly opening up vistas of language possibilities, meanings, and nuances. Definitely a desert island classic.

Two helpful softcover ‘bathroom’ or ‘waiting room’ language reference books are Word Nerd and Phraseology by Barbara Ann Kipfer. In order to use language fluently, it helps to know, understand, and appreciate the origins and meanings of common or famous expressions. Other titles such as 1000 English Idioms Explained or The Oxford Dictionary of Allusions cover more well-known phrases and basic allusions.

Of late, I have received many prompts and ideas for writing from books of quotations. Some of the better wide-ranging and comprehensive ones I have used include: The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations, Pepper’s 20th Century Quotations, Bloomsbury’s Thematic Dictionary of Quotations, The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women, and Partnow’s The New Quotable Woman.

Handbooks of various kinds might be referred to basic grammar questions. Beyond that, for more enthusiastic word fans, I would highly recommend the fascinating labor of love by the Crystal brothers Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary & Language Companion. Shakespeare, of course, was the ultimate poet who changed our language more than any other person in history. If ever I was to be asked for an example of the widest range of possibilities of the English language (beyond a dictionary or thesaurus), that would be the ultimate book. Great birthday or Christmas gift, by the way!

“Intuition…appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality.”–Dr. Alexis Carrel

“Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.”–George Bernard Shaw

“The conclusions of passion are the only reliable ones.”–Soren Kierkegaard

“Trust your hunches. They’re usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.”–Dr. Joyce Brothers

“A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.”–Frank Capra

“Every time I’ve done something that doesn’t feel right, it’s ended up not being right.”–Mario Cuomo, Aug. 2010

“All our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.”–Blaise Pascal, O World, Thou Chosest Not

“It is wisdom to believe the heart.”–George Santayana

“It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.”–Thomas Carlyle

“There are no rules. Just follow your heart.”–Robin Williams

“Great thoughts always come from the heart.’–Marquis de Vauvenargues

“The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know.”–Blaise Pascal

“What you intuitively desire, that is possible for you.”–D.H. Lawrence

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Reason and the intellect are helpful in organizing and structuring one’s life and experience, but there are limits and limitations to a life guided mostly/merely by these two aspects. Thus, many of the choices I have ultimately made in my own life have been guided by the feelings of the heart, intuition, instinct, and hunches. In that, a certain truth and faithfulness to my sensibility and who I am, largely.                                                           

I have long taken my basic ‘cues’ from the following classic poem:

“since feeling is first/who pays any attention/to the syntax of things/will never wholly kiss you”–E.E. Cummings, “VII, Four”, Is 5 (1926)

“The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.”–George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

“You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die, or when. But you can only decide how you’re going to live, now.”–Joan Baez

“We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.”–Thomas Merton

“Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favorable do nothing.”–William Feather

“He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.”–Horace

“Man does not simply exist, but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.”–Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

“The last, if not the greatest, of the human freedoms: to choose their own attitude in any given circumstances.” –Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

“When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.”–William James

“Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.”–Bertrand Russell

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Nothing happens without myriad daily and larger personal decisions and choices. As the Existentialists pointed out, we are defined by and governed by our personal choices.

“Change is the law of life.”–John F. Kennedy

“Nothing is permanent but change.”–Heraclitus

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Whatever basic notions and understandings of self, life, and others begins with the fundamental, ongoing consciousness of change. This is the most basic backdrop to the processes, contexts, and choices of our lives, whatever they might be. There is always a need for individuals to respond to changes, and an implicit sense of limits and limitations that are embedded in changes.

A return to the mud of his Henry V movie. The opening war battle scene is played under unseen overhead sprinklers which drench the ‘dirt’ floor of the enclosed elongated rectangular playing area turning it to mire for the rest of the performance. This, gives an unexpected reality and “Hell is murky” atmosphere to the rest of the play, soiling footwear and women’s characters dress bottoms, affecting all the play’s characters with Macbeth’s corruption and that of the various bloody action. Contextually risky and very effective.

The stage, as such is in a deconsecrated Manchester church with the audience facing each other, playing witness on either side of the boarded, arena-like playing area. This is a production that puts audience engagingly close to the action, where they may even get splattered! So a wonderful atmosphere for brave audience souls. An ‘in-your-face production which draws the audience in, an effect duplicated by camera close-ups for this special filmed broadcast of a live performance. It needs to be added that the sound is uniformly even and audible with no ‘drops’ and that there are well-edited multiple camera point of views (including an overhead one) which put the movie audience right in the action, too.

The performance is live and passionate on the part of all the cast. The theatrical declaiming of the opening scenes may throw some movie fans off, but there are some appropriately chosen ‘naturalistic’ conversational scenes within the play as a whole. Ironically, the loudest, most powerfully moving moment comes from Ray Fearon as Macduff hearing the news of his family’s murder.

Branagh, himself, makes a perfect Macbeth, delivering the old familiar lines and speeches with a reverence for the poetry along with the unfolding inner reality of his increasingly unhinged character. In particular, his “Tomorrow and tomorrow” speech is a beautiful gem and he can hardly, chokingly, utter the final “nothing”. Overall, his choices reveal the innumerable changing moods of Macbeth with the expected Branagh stylistic energy and familiar flair.

Alex Kingston’s unstable Lady Macbeth, John Shrapnel’s too-naïve Duncan, Jimmy Yuill’s older but effective Banquo are all passionately and convincingly rendered in a production which gallops toward its necessary tragic end, enmeshing good characters and country all. Strong memorable scenes of note include the opening Henry V-ish battlefield scene, Banquo’s ghost scene (played around a table inserted in the arena), the clearly unrighteous murder of Duncan (played somewhat slow-motionly beside candles under a hanging cross at one end of the church/arena), Macbeth’s return to the witches and their amazing apparitions, Lady Macduff’s scene, and the key interview between Malcolm and Macduff.

This is also a vigorous, rhythmical production of the Scottish play which will, audibly, remind listeners of an excellent audiobook production. The voices and tones achieve a ballet-like effect which is mirrored by the production’s wonderful physical blocking. As audience, you will automatically be reminded of the numerous memorable lines and speeches of this oft-studied play. But there is nothing flat in the totally fresh readings given by the co-directors (Branagh and Rob Ashford) and actors. Every word simply matters. The poetry wins out.

Branagh has not done a Shakespeare in over ten years, but this was a role (like Lear, which he will likely, inevitably, do) he was destined to play for stage, screen, and posterity. This production yanks the play away from any memories of the sensationalistic Polanski version, and totally reinvents and reinvigorates it with an incredibly risky, powerful stage version. This is a Macbeth which feels very close to the play as it might have been performed in Shakespeare’s time. A truly remarkable feat and triumph by National Theatre Live.