Metaphoric Mammal - Part IV
At A Crosroads
Metaphoric Mammal - Part IV
At A Crossroads
We’ve come to a fork in the road. Gonna take it. It’s Yogi Berra’s fault. Left to my own devices I’d eat with my hands, then lick the plate.
For me, utensils and table manners came late. Urged vociferously, surely as a consequence of complex, embedded metaphors, widely adopted and vigilantly foisted on your scribe as he more and more ate in public.
I’m not sure how much choice I had in the matter.
“We must believe in free will. We have no choice.” ~Isaac Bashevis Singer
While I didn’t really know Singer, I did see him regularly at morning meals in The American Diner on the corner of 85th and Broadway. We enjoyed an acquaintance of the nodding kind, at a mutually preferred breakfast time and place.
It’s nice to share nods with a Nobel Laureate. No?
Two quick notes:
1) I cast no aspersions, nor do I imply impropriety. Yitzhak (I sometimes write in Yiddish) ate oatmeal everyday without fail, and was accompanied daily by a dizzying array of not at all bland young women. Paradox?
2) His novel, “Sonim, di Geshikhte fun a Libe,” (he always wrote in Yiddish) translated as “Enemies: A Love Story,” was adapted for the screen by Roger L. Simon and Paul Mazursky, produced and directed by Mazursky. I love this film. The most ribald Holocaust movie ever. Check it out.
I knew Simon a little, Mazursky much better, and it was Mazursky who inadvertently brought about my substantial conversation with Bucky Fuller at, of all places, the Village Gate, a storied place in my life.
We’ll come back to these notes/stories later as we get into crossroads and forks.
Metaphoric Mammal: A Mop Up
Happily, I’ve discovered this overview and extension of our discussion of “Metaphors We Live By” on YouTube. It’s amazing how much quality ‘information’ abounds in cyberspace for the curious among us.
This short (10 minute) piece is concise, includes b&w kitch, and a narrator who speaks in proper English.
Please watch. It saves me time (time/value metaphor) and I couldn’t do the job more effectively. As time is money I can open a new Savings Account with the gelt saved.
Note: I have a Hollywood story about gelt and Red Buttons. Rojas (I sometimes write in Spanish) won both Academy and Golden Globe Awards for his role in “Sayonara” which co-starred Brando (he’s back).
The Rojas and gelt story leads to a string of fascinating stories (not overselling - I promise) that expose the workings of major-league media, which has taken on an outsized influence in our lives.
Crossroads - forks - later.
I plead that you view the following video. Substack (if we can trust them) reports that few to none of you open video attachments.
Do us a favor, open this one. PLEEEEEEEZ!
Some of you who know and/or have studied with me know there’s a PLEEEEEEEZ story.
Enough pleading? PLEEEEEZ!
Still Mopping, Boss, Mopping
The extent to which metaphors embed in mind/body then move us to action, beyond or beneath our attention, is profound.
Johnson puts forth a list entitled:
Typical Image Schemas
Verticality
Containers
Source - Path - Goal
Balance
Center - Periphery
Front - Back
Near - Far
Iteration
Image schemas form as a function of our bodily interactions with the environment, from our linguistic experience, i.e., use of language, and from both our unique and in common story contexts.
For those who have a gnawing interest, Mark Johnson’s book, “The Body in The Mind,” will set your jaws to rest.
For now, a taste.
Verticality
Our sense of up and down. We believe, mostly without question, that up and down are ‘real’ phenomena that radiate meaning.
For instance, we ascribe values of up and down in our emotional lives with reasonably predictable results.
Feeling ‘up’ implies and often imbues happiness, wellbeing, and buoyancy. Sky high? Over the moon? “Blue Skies, Nothing But Blue Skies.”
‘Down’ implies and often imbues a depressed mood, or negative attitude. Life is a drag? My get up and go has got up and gone? I’ve got the blues?
Blues? Different shades of blue? An up hue, and a down hue.
Different sounds of blue? Do colors give rise to sounds? Of course they do. Different modes (keys), lyrics, and melodies.
Sad (down) songs are most often in minor keys. More flat tones.
Happy songs, most often in major keys. More sharps.
Colors and music are vibrational forms. I’ve almost never taught ‘story’ without teaching elemental music theory.
Vibration and pattern. Two basic ways of seeing.
Same story seen/felt/heard from different perspectives in rotating circles. A helix. Oh! I see you DNA, spitting out people who want to live life alive.
Above and Below (A BIG ONE)
Wealth and status as instigated by and described as metaphors.
My portfolio is up. We live in an upscale community. Top notch all the way.
My alma mater is highly rated. A top ten university.
I taught in one of the top five ranked public Communications schools in the world. I did. Obviously the ranking authority didn’t know I was there.
As soon as you stop laughing..
How much does rank and status move us? We want more, not less. Right?
Money and status? Pile it high. The higher the better. More (higher) implies and may imbue a sense of security, exclusivity, and self importance.
Many of us consume mindlessly to get high. Retail therapy anyone? Can a diamond have too many carats? High gloss lifestyles are the rage. Lifestyles (a neologism built for modern culture) of the rich and famous (I have a story - at the crossroads, coming to a newsletter near you). Have you seen life styles of the poor and unknown?
Well, there are tawdry and despicable ‘reality’ shows that exploit the downtrodden and unbalanced (a hard lived metaphor) who want to appear on television, thinking that a moment of ‘fame’ will ease the pain.
These shows are enormous money makers for ambitious money pilers, piling it high while plying their trade in the wide world of highly profitable ‘entertainment’ content.
Near - Far
When we mix (hybrids ‘r us) verticality with near and far, pretty soon we’re climbing the ladder to success. Racing to the highest rung.
Then we get to goals and distance.
What are are our perceived needs, or wants? How do we distinguish between them? What do we need to do to get to the near ones as soon as possible? How far away are the far ones?
Are we there yet? Are we ever we here now? Never?
Does rat race ring a familiar bell?
Feel stressed? A cortisol cocktail before rushing off to dinner in the latest hot spot with a top prospect?
There’s a promotion rung on the success ladder we’re climbing. New business raises our profile.
Up. Fast. Further up. Faster.
Containers
A most pernicious metaphor. The great separator. The independent person. The rugged individualist. The singular person who knows what they want and is on a mission (in the race) to get it.
Containers imply categories. In and out. Winners and losers. Rich and poor. Worthy and unworthy.
Categories produce nations. We can have ethnicity and celebrate traditions without separating them from other ethnicities and traditions. We can see overlaps and contrasts without entirely discounting connections.
When we contain people in nations, failing to appreciate our part/whole connections, we invite otherness of a violent kind. We tear ourselves asunder.
Patriots are born. Fights over land and, more likely limiting beliefs (remember them?), are ignited. Carnage. War. Death and destruction. Life lived DEAD.
As ACTING HUMAN has iterated (there’s another one) to near death (again, where else do you get near death experiences in a newsletter?) we, when living alive, see/sense that we are both part and whole. We act as wave and ocean. Inseparable.
As we learn to ACT HUMAN, peace and wellbeing ripen as naturally as fruit in its season.
We are not merely a ‘bag of skin’ containing a person known as you/me. We are inextricably connected to a process called Universe (a theater in which we act and are acted upon in a dynamic story). We live as vast Galaxies. We are it all. WHOLE.
Give this two minutes, PLEEEEEEEZ! Eerie music. Tonal. Neither major nor minor. Alan Watts narrates.
Alas, we’re at the..
CROSSROADS
All that has come thus far makes it as clear as possible that we live in a ‘reality’ unlike anything that common understanding conveys. And, to the extent we have volition, we can use our new found/created realities as actors who make creative choices. We can co-create reality and ourselves in a Universal Theater.
Alas, we are swirling in a an unfurling mystery. Absolute knowing is perhaps thinkable, though not livable.
We can use skillful means to live. ACTING HUMAN offers learnable skills that can guide us to to more creative lives lived alive.
Everything you’ve read will connect to what comes next as ACTING HUMAN finds itself anew.
With all due respect to Descartes, we want to live beyond thought. Thinking is not proof of life. We want to live life alive. Let the children lead us.
We’ve met regularly for about two months. Writing essays in pixilated prose was (almost) entirely new to me.
Influenced by my former colleague, George Saunders, who has a dynamic newsletter called Story Club, available on Substack, which is derived from his short story seminars at Syracuse and his highly (see what I did there?) regarded book, “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.”
His readers are active. The comment section overflows with observations and questions. His readers are, after-all, writers at various stages of development. They expressly want to write. And, I suspect, somewhere not too far back in their minds, is a hope of getting noticed, discovered like a literary Lana Turners.
We are a different crowd. Most of us didn’t know we were actors. We didn’t even know that there were actors outside of the performing arts. We are metaphoric mammals acting in a metaphor. We ACT HUMAN.
We want to continuously discover ourselves. And, as we do, naturally change the world in which we live as it lives us.
We want to ‘write’ our lives as we live them.
Over the past few months I’ve grown increasingly itchy to improvise new ways to present ACTING HUMAN, in both form and substance.
Perhaps an audio component? Maybe we can gather virtually - Zoom? - from time to time? Perhaps once in while we can meet in terrestrial space. You know, like face to face in the same room. Quaint.
Certainly, going forward, we’ll have more story to illustrate how my life/our lives unfold as story. Story for the sake of story. Story to illustrate the ways in which ACTING HUMAN works to enliven our lives.
“The world is made of stories, not atoms.” ~Muriel Rukeyser
How-to?
A beloved friend, a long ago student, and a longtime collaborator, who knows me and my work well, offered that greater focus on ‘how to’ might help.
The how-to, I suggest, is here for the taking.
KEY: Pay attention, and relate the essays to your daily life. Notice yourself noticing. Honor the actor playing the actor playing YOU.
That said, I hear him, and I will highlight and feature lessons explicitly. As always, he gives good notes, which I usually take without resistance. I will do so once again.
I’m feeling a strong tug to share writing and exchanges with readers around many social issues. Chief among them, commercial media and its contents. And so I will.
Memoir?
Maybe there’s a memoir in here trying to get out. My Hoodoo connection and a wonderful writer, Arthur Flowers, formerly a longtime professor in the small and vaunted graduate creative writing program at Syracuse University (with George Saunders And Mary Karr) has chided me for dumping work of value into a ‘digital ditch.’ He’s all about books and legacy. He’s a BIG man. I’m desperate to get him off my back. OK, Rev. Flowers. Let’s see if there’s a memoir with the chutzpah to crawl out of the muck.
A plethora of meaningful anecdotes and stories use my life for storage. Why not let them earn their keep. They feature an illustrious cast of characters. All of them, are at least fun, many might reveal rare truths in unlikely places.
Brando and I frequented the same restaurant, La Pergola, in Sherman Oaks. You want to know what he ate, don’t you? Admit it.
I want to entertain. Back in the day, my mother saw me working on my income tax return. At the time I was transitioning from my life as a musician to the beginnings of my hyphenate life. In the ‘occupation’ box I entered ENTERTAINER. I can still hear my mother laughing loud and clear. She’s been dead for 28 years.
To ‘not know’ is a core principle of ACTING HUMAN practice. We, like Buddhists, see the utility of beginner’s mind. So I’ll walk that talk. I’m not sure exactly where we’re headed. I’m pretty sure that if we play together in a fun way we will help ourselves enormously.
The first rule of improvisation is “yes, and,” so we won’t do debate or argue from fixed positions. Let’s leave dialectics to rot in the ivy covered towers of academe.
We always acknowledge, continue, expand and explore. Open play is our way.
I’ve shared bandstands, studios, stages, writers rooms, classrooms - I dig playing with engaged collaborators. It’s alive and fun. I’m a sucker for fun.
Note: I appreciate the generous admiration I’ve received. It’s been expressed in comments, social media, and privately. I know it’s truly meant, heartfelt, and clearly comes from careful readers who grok what they’ve read. It warms my heart.
Going forward my loose plan is to publish regularly on Sunday. More often if it’s in the flow of whatever fresh shape ACTING HUMAN takes.
PLEEEEEZ (you want to hear that story, don’t you?) bring your friends along. Ask them to start at the beginning. The posts, so far, have been largely sequential. That will change. More stand alone dispatches. Newsletters are more like episodic television than I recognized at the outset.
Make no mistake, I value ACTING HUMAN practice. I simply want to learn how to use it in PixelLand with greater impact. Given the epidemic of new tech - AI, and the Wild West of mediated relationships replete with viral events - the need for ACTING HUMAN glares evermore in stark relief.
Until next time,
Lights Up!
I'm DOWN with it. That metaphor got turned on its head.