does it improve upon the silence?”~Shirdi Sai Baba
(source uncertain? Quote found on MetaFilter:
http://ask.metafilter.com/162159/You-know-what-they-say-about-loose-lips-right.)
From that same thread:
There's a psychological phenomenon called "spontaneous trait transference" which causes people to assign to you, the traits you gossip about in others.Another comment I liked:
So if you say "I heard that X has never once showed up to a meeting on time," the person you're gossiping to will now subconsciously believe that you are chronically late.
On the other hand if you say "Y is doing some great work at the animal shelter on the weekends," the person you're gossiping to will subconsciously believe that you're a generous and charitable person.
Whenever you're about to tell someone something about a 3rd party ask yourself, "What will be the results if what I say gets applied to me?"
Cite: "59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot" by Richard Wiseman, better known as "the guy who did that experiment with the basketball game and the person in a gorilla suit."
Eventually, you will disclose something that either completely humiliates you or will very adversely effect someone's life. The trauma you experience from this will be such that you will be cured of gossiping forever.
15 comments:
I find the 'gossip transference" interesting. I am not yet convinced it is valid. I am watching it.
I do know if you say you were abused people assume you are an abuser.
I for a long time watched "You hate others behavior which is mot like you own." and found that concept to be invalid for me.
I learned long ago that gossip lead nowhere I wanted to go.
This is a response to what you have written in the last few days. Pretty much it has gone around in my brain and this is what is left.
First I do not comment on the "Cards" as I have my own way with such things. I just recently figured out how to explain it without sounding disrespectful. It came from my cat.
My cat was doing everything backwards. He was sleeping the opposite the way he usually did. He was letting be go in the kitchen first ect. I mentioned to someone and they "explained" it to me. Something about a gemini reversal and the eclipse. I do believe something is there. I am going with my cat did not need to study it and neither do I.
I really stay away from any "dogma" I try and be open. I let my spirit be my guide.
This is going to be a long one.
The needs/wants stuck me. As did the tribe concept. I was "shunned" with purpose by those that ran MKULTRA what I was in school. The other children were told I was not to be talked to and I was given a desk in the corner that was first so big my feel could not touch the ground and then it was switched to one that was to small. It was devastating. Although it was just my class the who school picked up on it. I was in 4th grade.
I am going to do a new comment as this one will be to long.
Continued comment;
I am framing the wants and needs now in being happy not just fitting in or surviving. I need to create it is part of me.
You wrote somewhere that you brothers might see how wonderful you are. I do hope this happens. I will tell you of an experience in my family.
My nephew brought his girlfriend to Christmas. She works for a design firm. She designed a deli area, she designed a Tupperware container and she went to Spain to set up a study area for banks. The build a mock drive thru, a home area and a ATM to study it. They do not do the study they designed the area. This is all ways cool.
I watched my family process this and how they turned it into what it would be if they did these tasks. They asked questions like "who pays for the hotel, who is in charge, how do you get reimbursed for expenses, do you get to do any site seeing. They pretty much turned what she does into something that they can understand. What they think it must be like to be able to create. They believer that someone taught her how to do this work. They can not see that it comes from within her. They are confident in there believes.
To be continued.
So what to do.
I am finding that there are a very select few in the world that can create. They are trod upon by those who can not. The world believes that they create and that a creative person is just like them only they got different breaks in life.
I am staying away from people that explain to me what they do not understand. I am searching out the few and staying away from the rest.
There I am caught up.
'Caught up' :-) Yay! :-)
Well, on this 'art' thing? *I* think it is like the one-eyed woman in the land of the blind - we, or others who are 'artists'? can see things they cannot.
On the other hand? I have often speculated, and even read *some*where, I *think*?
That 'art' is sort of a way of 'off-gassing' for those of us who don't have access to the 'normal' ways of dealing with emotion.
So, your family? who may, or may not be, depending on who's talking :-), fit some definition of 'dysfunctional' (yes, I'm being a bit pedantic, egg-headed and - what's the other word - 'semantic'al [*is* there an - is it adverb? - form of 'semantic'?]
where was I - oh, so, your family's way of dealing with emotions may be sort of 'normal', in that they're mostly able to get them *out*. They *seem*, at least from what I've read of your writing so *far*, to be able to not 'bottle' things.
But *you*, now, *you* are different somehow. (and so am I.)
I have yet to pin down this 'difference' in myself - it may be so many factors that I'll *never* get a totally clear picture.
But anyway, I don't how this is for *you*, but for *me*, I'm *pretty sure* the 'art' in my music comes from - what - 'angst'? the unexpressed, and often, in many ways, inexpressible? at least, by *me*, in *my* world, with *my* available language, tools, resources and the people I have around me (which, by the way, *I* count as a 'resource')
breaking here
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I have wondered if, when I *finally* get to the point where my emotions flow freely, naturally, and unconstrained?
if I will sort of ‘lose’ my artistic ability.
That is, I will lose the *impetus* for it, the *drive*.
I already feel it waning – the drive, that is – I still enjoy playing, but I’m aware that it’s more a way of ‘communicating’ with other like souls – the musicians i play with now are mostly a lot like me, more and more – I’m gradually steering (? suggests too much conscious control, awareness) – maybe ‘drifiting’? is more better, accurate?
I guess what I’m trying to say is, music allows me to express things I can’t express elsewhere in my life: Wackiness, silliness. A desire to PLAY, to leap up and down just for the sheer joy of it. “Look ma, no hands!” she shrieks, her faced wreathed in a grin of delight so wide it nearly splits in two. &c.
I am also aware that my best works of ‘art’ have, generally, been expressions of love. Pure, direct, undiluted, love.
I’ve made a few mobiles over the course of the last, oh, 20 years or so? and each time, the recipient was someone I wanted to show my caring for, my love to them. But I couldn’t say it in words, not anything like adequately (I mean, come *on* - a language that uses the same word for “I love pizza” as “I love you”???? *Yikes.*. You see what I mean.
I've also done a couple of *gorgeous* drawings (she says modestly :-), and each time, the impetus was love. One I'm thinking of was about 15 years ago, I'd fallen madly in love with a piano player who lived on the opposite side of the country (we met at a music camp), and knew (or was fairly certain) that it had no *real* future.
But - I loved him (for various definitions of the word 'love' :-), and *needed* to express it. I think it's actually one of the best thisngs I do - it's sort of like, that's what my 'flowers' are? and if I can't 'bloom', can't *show* my love? well, I'm sort of 'dead in the water', as a being, as a living entity.
AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!
***
If I can’t express my feelings of love and appreciation openly and freely? I feel *blocked*, stifled, stymied – it’s as if I can’t *grow*.
I’ll speculate? here that this may have partly been my father’s doing – I loved him very much, but he was like – a person putting his thumb on top of a growing seedling? to keep it from growing? He wouldn’t *let* me love him. (pops into my head? Why? was he *scared*? Hm. Maybe he didn’t think he deserved it.. Blargh. *fucked* up human beings. Glargl.)
so :-( :-( :-(
I couldn’t grow around him.
DAMN it. and HIM. and a universe? that *permits* such fucking *stupid*! moronical! *idiotic* (blam, bam, whacking things in agistration [agitation + frustration :-) ]) things to happen!
Anyway. (sigh. moving on, with respectful pause for feelings.)
I love Pizza, and I love you. Brilliant.
I am not going to use the word love other than for living things and experiences. I pick something each year to change. That is for this year. I love my kayak will become I love to kayak etc.
I am not with you on the artist not being able to express emotions normally.
It feels to me like they have more to give. I will explain. If I give a gift of my art to an artist it is different. It does not really matter the quality of the work. They can love it in a way that others do not seem to be able to do.
I do not think you can not let someone love you. You do not get to choose. You only can choose how you accept that love and it is not easy.
So lets talk drawing. I have some ability. I am afraid. I just do it right now. When I paint this color goes there and that one goes there. I do not understand it.
I am afraid if I try and learn to draw than something bad will happen. That I will lose something that I now have. That it will be taken from me.
Well, there are just so many stories of emotionally tortured tormented artists - people who were social misfits in one way or another, either because they weren't conventionally attractive, or were oddballs in some other way.
Van Gogh; Beethoven; Schumann. Writers often seem to be folks who can't find other ways to express or let out the powerful emotions they're feeling, so they write. Many dancers also seem to use their work as an emotional outlet.
Anyway, it's just a speculation, I don't have any 'proof', or evidence, just a feeling, based on my own experiences. It's as if the bottled up emotions create this - pressure, that *has* to come out somehow! And the art is sort of a channel, a place for it to flow freely, but sort of in disguise.
As to the 'more to give' - well, maybe it's that artists tend to be more sensitive? both in their awareness of the feelings of others as well as being easily hurt themselves.
And also, literal sensitivity, as in, heightened sensory receptivity, *has* to be a factor - I think for artists, the world is generally louder, brighter, more full of richness and depth than it is to non-artists. Once again, the one-eyed person in the land of the blind.
So maybe they have 'more to give' because they are better able to perceive the depth of feeling and/or expression in somebody else's work? Just a thought.
Also, an artist has a deeper understanding of the *process* of making or doing whatever the art form is - they 'get' the subtle nuances of color, shape, etc., and how difficult (or not) various techniques may be to pull off. Non artists, I *think*, tend to see only the surface, the final result, and be pretty unaware of all that went into it. They can often see what you were *trying* to do, even if the effort didn't come off perfectly, or even *badly* - the art becomes sort of a story, that contains the history of everything that happened while you were making it. And another skilled artist can sort of 'see' all those layers and levels in the work - they can 'read' it in ways that, I suspect, non-artist can't. Though, I have to say, there are some 'appreciators' out there who are pretty dang amazing at really getting artwork. So it doesn't seem to be a universal thing, in *my* experience.
"I do not think you can not let someone love you. You do not get to choose. You only can choose how you accept that love and it is not easy."
This is interesting, about 'letting' or 'not letting' someone love you.
I have been on both sides of this, and find it *much* easier to be the one who's 'more in love' than the other person. Because the only person likely to get hurt is *me*, and I feel I can generally protect myself in such a way that I don't worry about it.
Whereas if someone's in love with *me*, but I don't feel the same way about *them*, then it's much harder - it's a kind of responsibility, to be kind to this person, and honest, without leading them on or hurting them unnecessarily.
Much of my drawing is cartooning - not quite caricatures, and not really like actual cartoons, but more like the style of quick, rough sketching we learned to do in my early architecture classes - everything very stylized. Of course *my* 'cartoons' have their own flavor.
Realistic 'representational' drawing, on the other hand, is more or less just a matter of practice. Of sitting down and doing it, over and over, until your hand and eye can consistently produce a competent representation of what you see in front of you.
The problem, as I see it, is the 'judgment' aspect of it, as in, the idea that there is 'good' drawing and 'bad' drawing.
I mean, look at Warhol, for example - now his stuff was representational, perfectly recognizable as whatever he was trying to reproduce.
But was it 'art'? Just because a bunch of idiots handed over insane sums of money for the privilege of being able to impress their rich friends with this !@#$%, doesn't make it 'art'. It's all in the eye of the beholder, eh? (hope you're not a Warhol fan! :-)
What *I'd* say is, if you decide to take a drawing class of any kind? Just don't let them tell you what's 'art' and what's not. If they try? feel free to walk out the door, *instantly*. Their only job is to teach you a *technique* that you don't already know - the 'art' comes from the person holding the pen, pencil, paintbrush, whatever.
I took a print-making class in college, and took it pass/fail for exactly that reason - I didn't want some yay-hoo lording it over me.
Good thing I did, too - the class was taught by some *twit* of a grad student, who took one look at the flowers and butterflies I was drawing and quite disdainfully pronounced them 'not art'. Well, fortunately I grew up with an artist mother, who had a *serious* fine art background. So I *knew* from 'art', and wasn't intimidated in the least. I was quite content to draw my 'cute' things - I had plenty of other *serious* drawing to do in my arch classes, and really wanted to do the print-making for *fun*.
I think I actually said to the grad student, "I'm not taking this class to learn *your* opinion of what is art or not art - I'm just taking it to learn the technique."
Since I was quite proficient at the technique and completed all the assignments, he (probably to his chagrin) had to pass me :-) HAH! :-)
Oh, and a trick my mom taught me, it must have been a 'mantra' from one of *her* teachers in college (maybe you know this one already?):
"Draw what you *see*, not what you *know*".
For example, we all 'know' that water is blue, right?
But if you really *look* at water, you can see it's all *kinds* of colors, and textures, and patterns, and reflection and refraction and etc.
One good way to learn is to go look at some really fabulous oil paintings (originals) and see how the artists use color. Notice that shadows, instead of being solid *black*, are actually green, or purple, or a sort of muddy ochre depending on the background.
Notice the tricks artists use to fool the eye - adding light or dark along an edge to make an object 'pop', or appear to recede into the background. Foreground/background is a trick to learn. Also, perspective. And balance - you know how some people can take a photo where the subject is so real, so powerful, it seems to *leap* out of the frame?
A lot of this is composition.
You know that old optical illusion where if you look at it one way, it's a lamp; but if you shift your perception, you can see, in the 'negative' image, a lady's profile? This is a figure/ground trick, where *both* objects are given equal 'weight', which is why the illusion works. If one or the other had been 'heightened' to bring it to the foreground while sending the other further back, the illusion wouldn't work.
There are all kinds of 'tricks' of various trades. Such as with oil painting, there's something that's called, I think? undercoating? which is where a whole canvas may be prepped with a base layer of a particular color which will then be built upon, layer by layer, with the base coat only visible in flashes here and there, sometimes scraped through with a palette knife to give some 'depth' to a painting.
Oh, another way people *used* to learn, and maybe some still do, was to go to galleries and sit and copy the work of the masters, line by painstaking line. Then once they'd begun to acquire the 'technique' necessary to reproduce a particular style, they'd begin to branch off and develop their *own* style.
Also comes to mind, you might look at some of Picasso's early work, which I think was quite representational - I *believe* the abstract stuff came later.
Whew, *that* was long! You opened the flood gates. I hope *any* of that seemed even remotely relevant. I've also managed to be a complete comment hog. Ach. Guess that's ok since it's *my* blog :-)
I got so caught up in these last few comments, I didn't realize I hadn't replied to the first ones.
Gossip: Yeah, not sure about that one either. Interesting idea. Will, too, try to observe. I'm mixed about the 'value' of gossip - when it's a way to try to figure out what's going on in a situation, or getting someone else's perspective on a problem, I think it can be quite helpful. But when it's just snipe-y and mean - well, I confess I occasionally indulge. But I try to keep it down to a dull roar. I'm *not* always a hice person.
***
Oh, the cards - no worries, those are just for me, really, sort of 'placeholders' for ideas. Also I like the images - they're inspiring, and often quite beautiful.
About the cat, and not 'needing' such things - I think, being a hermit, and with an unsupportive family, and not enough real life, close friends, I rely on such devices to help me 'read' my own instincts. It's taken me *years* to get back in touch with my internal 'compass' after the decades of repression that went before. So while it's a lot *better* than it was, I still tend to doubt myself. For me, the cards, (and any other divination 'method' really, is just helping a person get clear about something they really already 'know' but don't quite have the confidence to trust. I honestly believe that if one is seeking an 'answer' but doesn't have clarity, the 'truth' can pop out from nearly anywhere - a cartoon, a random comment from a stranger, a caption on a billboard, what have you. Really, it's a matter of mental receptivity, and being 'open' for that metal flash of insight, intuition to come to you. I think you're lucky to have the cat, because they seem like such intuitive animals to me.
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Needs/tribe/shunning: Yes. That *sucks* that you had to go through that. And the power of that image, of first the too big desk then the too small one - people can be so insanely brutal to children, and we're so defenseless and vulnerable when we're little. Sigh. I'm sorry you had to experience that.
And thank you for the wishes about my brothers. I appreciate that.
***
Your nephew's girlfriend: Yeah, mockups are great. I used to recommend those for clients (when I still worked as an architect) because people have such a hard time visualizing how a space is really going to work and feel, even trained designed professionals. A hands-on 'test' is *much* better.
Yeah, that's curious the questions your family asked - makes you feel like a Martian or something, eh? It would *me*. It may be that many people can only frame things in terms of *other* things they already know. Kind of like, you can't really talk about algebra if you never learned fractions, or some such thing. So people who have no mental framework for new ideas can't really process them very well, so they're limited to 'seeing' the things that are more familiar to them.
Like, I heard that when Beethoven's stuff first came out, it was considered so outre (?is that the word I want?) for the time that people really couldn't comprehend it at all - it was so far ahead of any of the other music of the time that people had no way to really process it. They had to kind of 'acquire the taste' and learn the language before they could really begin to appreciate it. Fluency, or some such thing.
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