Early this week I stumbled upon a post on the internet that sparked the inspiration for this here blog. I wish I could recall the creator’s name, or find his original post because I would link it here for you all to see. Basically the premise of the video was a shot of a river where the water slowly rippled & was catching the sunlight under a low hanging branch. The creator then came in with a voice over & asked the observer what they would do if they were asked to describe water to someone who had never seen it before. He then asked you to imagine a world in which you had never seen water before & had happened upon the scene playing as the focal point of the video. The video then zooms into the water, omitting the branch entirely from the frame, & you watch the rays shift & cascade off the murky water in almost a globing, morph-like way. He then describes what is being presented as being akin to almost the most revered of abstract art & it does look a great deal like a kinetic piece that you’d find in a gallery somewhere. He then ends with a quote that I can’t seem to remember for the life of me. The gist of it was that we become so accustomed to magic in our every day lives that it becomes mundane.
Now, again, sorry to have to paraphrase this man’s excellently made social post that clearly stirred something within me. I have no idea why I didn’t even ‘like’ it on whichever social platform I happened upon it through. Sorry to this man. I also apologize to you as the audience for having to experience such a wondrous reminder through the second-hand lens of my memory & the cliff notes it has chosen to retain. I hope, at the very least, that you understand the sentiment & feel along with me on this path forward through this blog.
The reason this struck a chord with me actually relates to my last blog about being burnt out by all the chaos & noise & the bad in the world. When it is the constant it is hard for it not to become your only reality when in actual factual reality nothing is black or white. Nothing is all bad just as nothing is all good. In fact I think most would argue that the spectrum of good & evil morally lives on a bell curve flush with shades of grey. It is, however, hard to see over the hill of the curve back to the good side when you have become saturated in the darkness for too long.
We have to save space for wonder to surprise us in our every day lives. We have to find those moments where we look to the sun reflecting on the water & really marvel at it. Stand in awe of the mathematics, the physics, the chance, the splendor, the small moment that has no measurable impact on the world as far as we know, but still is & exists as a side effect or a happenstance but does so with remarkable beauty.
It doesn’t have to be dappled water either, it can be a beautiful fruit or the complex spiraling of a flower. It can be the sound of rain on a window & the lull it induces existing with no regard for you or it’s affect on you, but happening regardless. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be nature, it can just be noticing something funny & cute & human…which of course is also nature. It can be the center ring on a record that exists so that the disk can continue to spin in perpetuity without playing anything specific to help preserve the disk & the needle. The fact that a single groove in the vinyl leads through someone’s creation to a point of infinite repetition. Something intentional that someone at some point had to decide was important enough to include on every single vinyl press. I want you to look for the mystical, the magical, the mundane.
But Charlie why? Why, you might be asking. Because even on the days where the sky is blackened over & the rain screams sideways through the trees there is awe to be felt. There is life to be experienced. The chaos that bears down destruction & ricochets uncertainty all around also brings with it renewal, change, perspective & these too are beautiful, wonderful, necessary parts of what it is to be alive.
Listen, I know the world is shit right now. The planet is warming & no one seems to want to do anything to stop it, restrictions on poisons in food, water, air, earth are all being lifted, it’s literally raining oil in parts of the world. But if that’s the only reality, if that’s the only view that you can see then where do we go from here? Which way is up when all you see is the endless abyss below extending farther & farther the more you plummet? There has to be some speck of light to reach for, some flicker in the dark of hope that makes enough of us scream out “NO!” & claw out way back towards a future we all know is possible & that would benefit all of us, not just those who cling to greed & monetary wealth that none of us could possibly spend in a thousand life times. We have to be the many who demand a brighter tomorrow & stop letting the few who do their best to bring about our end make the calls. We do that by keeping the hope alive. We do that by finding magic, gratitude, hope, love, wonder, mystery, marvel in the every day!
As Always, Much Love To You All,
-C