The problem with good stories is that we cannot always live in them (barring the “good story” which is hopefully and supposedly the whole of our life–but right now I’m talking about good fiction stories; the kind that make you wish they were real). The problem with the best stories is their singularity of message: “Good stories are real! Believe in them!” And of course, they’re not real either, strictly speaking. There are no narphs and scrunts lurking round small ponds in my hometown, waiting to magically awaken greatness in me via some ancient link.

Even so, the problem has rather more to do with their truth than falsity. When I look soberly at reality I don’t find the details of Lady in the Water or The Silmarillion or Le Morte d’Artur, but on the other hand I do suppose that I believe reality really is something like those stories, at the end of the day. Reality involves things other than what we can see; reality involves hidden purposes and identities meant to be discovered; reality involves the endowing of normal human beings with abilities that, to someone from a different world, might seem magical.

No, the problem is not with the absence of “magic”–the problem is with my inability to see everything around me for what it really is (magical). And so I leave a good story feeling a sense of indescribable, desperate longing for something more exciting, more adventurous, more exotic, more epic, more fantastic, while steadfastly refusing to consider that if I were in one of those other worlds, I would be wishing the exact same thing, and a great bard of that place who told a story of Earth, her creation, the way that life springs from the very ground, and so on, would inspire me to dream great things. So the question becomes: how can we re-enchant this world? How can we de-familiarize ourselves from the radically “magical” events taking place around us always? It is not easy, and that is why we tell stories–to keep that sense alive somehow. But the result is that unfortunately I begin to desire the reality of the stories more than the reality of the real, based on unfair judgements of the real!

Alas, for now, I will keep running off to hear stories of marvelous and far-off worlds just to remind myself that such things are worth holding on to; but I hope that, instead of becoming depressed after hearing a good story and mourning the “death of the miraculous” in modern culture, I would learn to perceive the miraculous more easily all around. Clearly there is a tension here with my deeply-embedded scientific impulse to categorize and define; to resolve it I hope to be able to know both what a thing is and what a thing means. (In other words, the problem is not with any kind of scientific impulse per se, but rather the presumption of saying that knowledge of a thing’s true identity and significance can be adequately captured by scientific experimentation).

Nonetheless, we should re-establish frequent storytelling as a way to convey the deep truths of reality, even and especially if the best way to convey those truths is to speak of things like magical lands and mythical beings. Remember one of the most powerful lines from V for Vendetta: “Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians cover it up”.

On the storyteller’s end, let us become adept at using such “lies” to tell the truth of a wonderful reality, but on the listener’s end, let us be adept at loving not the “lie” in virtue of its brilliant and captivating colors, but rather the even more brilliant and more captivating truth it (hopefully) conveys. For those like myself who love to live in the imagination, that second part will prove to be the harder of the two… But I personally hope the other side of that coin leads to an increased ability to tell the truth in story (the first part).

I sat down against a wall in the center of the town. No one moved about in the heat of the day; for all I knew, the entire town had been wiped out by a sandstorm. I lowered my head and fell instantly asleep.

When I awoke the sun was still high in the sky. I sensed a presence next to me and turned my head. A man was sitting there silent, dressed in white, and with an intricately-knotted turban that topped a wizened face. He looked at me, then wordlessly offered a waterskin. Such gifts are not to be questioned, and so I drank a few gulps, handing the waterskin back and touching my forehead in thanks. He turned and looked at me fully then, and I saw that his right eye, which had been hidden before, was not an eye but a star. He nodded, apparently to himself, and leaned back against the wall, hiding the curious eye.

“You are an idealist,” he said suddenly in a deep, gravelly voice.

He was right. That was why I was half-dead in the desert.

“How can you tell?” I asked. The barest hint of a smile touched the man’s face and his left eye closed. He inhaled deeply. “I can tell,” he said. I let it pass. I didn’t bother to ask why he had initiated a conversation. I had learned that words have a way of multiplying themselves needlessly, and I did not want to start such a cycle. Besides, energy and breath were precious commodities. If the man had a purpose in talking to me, it would become plain in time. If not, the gift of water had bought the man my patience for as long as he wanted it.

I had not long to wait.

“So, idealist: what is idealism?”

It did not surprise me in the least that the nature of the conversation I was engaged in with a strange man in the middle of a desert was philosophical. I had learned that a test of any kind might arrive at any moment. I considered carefully. Though I knew I was an idealist, I didn’t know exactly what it was, or how to explain the force that had driven me here. I struck on an answer born from my own experience.

“Idealism in a sphere is the willingness to sacrifice everything that others consider important for an object of that sphere.”

“Why sacrifice?” He asked, pausing for a moment before the word “sacrifice”, as if to inspire doubt. I thought for another moment.

“Because sacrifice is where what is ideal (belonging to the realm of ideas) is turned into what is real. Thus, since ideas can only affect when made real, anyone who seeks to be a true idealist must sacrifice to make the bind between the two realms. Otherwise, the individual is a false idealist, that is to say, not an idealist at all. We conclude that ideal ism in a sphere, namely the system which defines the exemplar of a true idealist of that sphere, involves not just sacrifice, but indeed the sacrifice of everything.”

I cursed myself for using so many words, but the man smiled more perceptibly than before. He stood up and dusted off his white robes. He looked down at me, and again I saw the star which gleamed in the place of his right eye.

“Well said. Now I will leave you with a question. The object (of the sphere in which you are an idealist) you seek; are you prepared to sacrifice everything for it?”

I was confused as to the point of the question, but not its answer: “Yes. That is why I am an idealist.”

The man smiled again, and his face softened, but looked more melancholy for it.

“Are you prepared to sacrifice idealism itself?”

Idealism itself? I paused, then reeled, then recovered. “That’s impossible,” I said. “That’s self-defeating.”

The man nodded, and a pain grew in his left eye while the star in his right pulsed and throbbed. He looked at me, somehow more deeply, and the star felt sharper in my mind than any gaze.

“I know,” he whispered, like the sound of sand blowing across stone. Then he cupped his hands in the sign of farewell and walked into the roiling glare of the afternoon. After a few steps he glimmered like a mirage, and I saw him no more.

Which was more the paradox: the man, or the message? I sat in stunned silence for a long time, inscribing the exchange on the tablet of my soul, before slowly standing up. I looked uncertainly in different directions, and hesitated for a brief moment. I looked at my hands. Then I stepped into the sun.

My main contribution was a song I had written the day before the “retreat”, but I will save its lyrics for the time when I have a recording to go with it. I also wrote a short poem while on the top of Mt Tamalpais, north of San Francisco, where we had all gone hiking on Saturday. From Mt Tamalpais there is a glorious view of the SF bay, and this apparent division of the world into air and water, juxtaposed all about by land, inspired the poem, which I am calling “Tesseract’s End”:

Rugged shoulders to spines on back
A strange animal I traverse
Its own life an undefined breath
Overlooked substratum of heaven on earth

I walk sometimes up, sometimes in
Phase shift accomodating forms that
Disregard boundaries of texture--
Oh that my soul felt the same!

To swim or run or fly between
The lines that slice the diff'ring spheres
A hardened wire of surface tension
That feels, from altitude, as rock
(on it I fall, and am crushed)

To be of wing or fin was given
To marvels of motion and muscle
But lightspeed travel twixt high and low
Alone can I exhibit
--if only I could breathe at Tesseract's end

The idea was to imbue some more constrained object (a few paragraphs of prose, or a haiku, or a rant) with a more focused, albeit artistic, answer, with the hope that this presence would be actually a more meaningful way to share than just saying verbally whatever would have come to mind. Indeed, I was very surprised at the level of depth I felt we were able to achieve, seeing as we were working with a significant economy of words; in fact, when we came back together and read what we had written, we had enough time to go around twice, in order to further understand people.

Hopefully at least a few of us will post what we wrote on our weblogs here–I’m going to start with my work of the evening, entitled The Amnesiac Shipbuilder. It’s a story.

Land, that once felt safe and so sweet
Now a detestable spit of sand
What gave life and surety to feet
I'd banish if I thought it would heed a command

Water to drink is no good if it keeps
Life alive but alone, incomplete
Fruit follows suit, it belongs in the deeps
If health is all that there is in this heat

I have in the wreckage a thousand tomes
Whose wisdom's satisfied a thousand men
But my adventure lies not at home--
Useful a shipbuilding book would have been!

Resignation is my lover at night
With whom I wrestle sensuously
But her charms are not even close to delight
And in daylight, I spurn her contemptuously

Laziness would no doubt have been my bane
If I thought effort could affect
But helplessness never gave one gain
Unless him for rescue did God (or fate) select

Either one would be fine.

Shapes in clear water when moving
are blurred and the fuzz provides fear
For unknown says death's always seeking
and will in the end become near

So sun and life soon are forgotten
if only for a space of seconds
Heart and mind illusion-smitten
propel the soul back to the sands

From the shore heartbeats are slower
Embarrassment looks like the heat of the day
The water is clear, it seems fear need not tower
O'er a reckless rejoining the fray

But horizon reveals, dark symbols appear
Omens or fins? both blacker than sky
Recklessness checked, the imagined is here
It seems a more rational soul would have died

I took BART underneath the bay and to Walnut Creek, walked out of the turnstiles, handed over the cash, got an iPod, and got back on a return train within 2 minutes of having departed the last one. I walked straight to the Apple store in SF and exchanged my newly-purchased iPod for one from the store (I wanted a black one), sans receipt. All in all, an incredible experience. The next day, I used craigslist to sell my old iPod for a price not too far from the one at which I had purchased my new player! Brilliant.

This experience spawned two discussions I wanted to share. First, I realized how easy it is for me to become fixated on some material goal, to the extent that I am willing to spend hours and hours monitoring websites, e-mailing people, and taking trains all around the bay for it. I am one who forms habits fairly quickly, and after a few days of constantly checking craigslist, I noticed something changing in me–the iPod which was the object of my desire had passed from being a toy which I thought it would be fun to have, into something that subconsciously I truly believed I needed. I was Frodo, but instead of a burning wheel of fire in front of my eyes, there was a slick Apple-designed piece of obsidian, thumping with seductive media possibilities. Luckily, this scared me enough that I was able to take a step back and evaluate whether such a new toy was really healthy. Under the circumstances, which were that the purchase would involve little to no financial sacrifice, I decided it was OK to upgrade. My hope is that if in the future I become fixated with something less benign (say an expensive car, or a new bike, a new snowboard, or any of a million things it could occur to me to want), I will likewise feel the sort of uneasiness I experienced last week while there is still time to evaluate in a level-headed manner.

Secondly, I had ample time to think more deeply about “iPod culture” in general. It seems clear that an iPod exists to serve consumers in two ways. To begin with, it lets you control the what of your media consumption/experience. It allows you to listen to your tunes, or watch your videos. No more listening to the radio, to the clatter of the train, to the conversation of those people over there, to the sound of the birds, to the dumb thump of the rap music in that car. With the advent of video content, you are now no longer forced to watch whatever is on TV, or whatever your friend is watching, or whatever your family is watching. You have complete control over the what of your media.

You also have complete control over the when of your media consumption. The iPod fits in your pocket. You can listen to it now. You can watch videos on it now. This is probably obvious, but maybe it’s worth saying that having control over the when of your media consumption means an increase in media consumption. No one buys an iPod to listen to music less! So you can listen to music or watch videos whenever you want, and whenever that is, it is more than you listened to or watched before.

It should already be clear that the creation of such an environment is incredibly good for business. The individualization of music and video tastes leads to greater sales–we no longer need to sell to an entire household; we can sell to each member of the house! Dad likes different movies and music than daughter, so they each buy their own preferred set. The time-ubiquity of music and video also straightforwardly lends itself to business–more time spent listening to tunes means that more tunes are required and therefore purchased. Apple and the other digital content providers are well situated to make a killing off of us (and they have been doing so).

So far everything that I’ve said has been value-neutral…but is there anything to seriously praise and/or criticize about this digital media lifestyle? On the one hand, I am extremely glad to be able to control what sorts of media I consume. My tastes in music have not usually been particularly mainstream, and so having the option to listen to music I like instead of what is on the radio is quite nice. Likewise, my appetite for new music, for efficiently searching and finding new artists and sounds, is greatly helped by being able to listen to music for just about 100% of my waking day. I can rise from my bed and throw iTunes into a party shuffle that lasts for the full 8 hours of the workday. If I drive anywhere, I can plug my iPod into the audio-in jack in my car stereo. If I walk or run anywhere, I can do it while listening to a randomly-generated set of songs chosen from any of my scores of smart playlists. Moreover, I could rinse/wash/repeat every day for 4 months without hearing the same song twice. In sum, it is quite easy to become a music consumption machine–pop in a song, manufacture a feeling or memory, and output a time-dependent value judgment. Art literally flows through my body more often than not!

On the other hand, one wonders if there are any unhealthy side effects to all of this. In fact, it seems like both the what and when aspects of the iPod lifestyle can have negative results. Let’s tackle the when aspect first–it’s simpler. Basically, when you are listening to music or watching a movie on your iPod, you are eo ipso not listening to or watching something else, namely what is going on around you. Perhaps human senses were designed to be continually titillated by manufactured and produced sights and sounds. But perhaps they were not. What are we missing while consuming media? For some people, maybe not much–in truth, maybe it helps some escape from otherwise dreary family situations. But one thing is certain, which is that it precludes silence. It therefore precludes the kind of silence that our culture studiously avoids, which is the kind wherein you cannot get away from the questions you haven’t been asking yourself (but need to). For many of us, the constant presence of music might be nothing more than a numbing agent designed to frighten away an insistent silence that we have been putting off for so long we’re embarrassed even to recognize its existence.

Beyond silence, headphones also shut out other kinds of music, not produced in studios by important men in ties while watching 18-year old company-made superstars gyrating in front of unimpressed microphones. I am, of course, referring to the noises found outside of our iPod-induced isolations. Birds, wind, rain, the voices of a crowd, footsteps, and all the rest. Headphones function both ways, too: they don’t just keep other things away from you; in addition, they keep you away from those other things. They can be effectively a wall, which is precisely why so many people wear them so visibly.

Now, to the what. iPods allow me to listen to what I want, alone. I don’t have to consult anyone else to see if she is OK with my choice of song or video. To see why this is important, I need to introduce the concept of responsibility for consumption. Humans are made to consume certain things in certain ways. Food is an obvious example–humans need to consume food, and it is good that they do so. However, as various eating disorders show us, there are healthy and not-so-healthy ways to engage in this project of food consumption. To the extent that our own (and only our own) choices lead to health or illness, it seems right to say that we have a responsibility for those choices. In the case of food, this responsibility is cashed out in terms of responsibility to our body. Exercise is also a responsibility we have in the same area. None of this is surprising.

What I want to claim is that media consumption (and here I would distinguish “media” from “art” ) bears similar responsibilities to food consumption, in that these are all things which we take into our bodies (or minds), and which affect us in certain ways according to their particularities. Hot dogs are different than apples. Handel is different than Britney Spears. More than that bare difference, I want to argue a value difference in media, analogous to a health difference in food. I wish it were the case that there were no “bad media”, but unfortunately there is. In the same way that some foods are unhealthy and/or addictive, some media can affect us negatively or engender addictive behavior (pornography being the classic example, and new forms of it joining the audio realm–the addictiveness proven by a trip to Odeo’s Top 40).

So, every time we decide to consume a piece of media, we have a certain responsibility to ourselves, just like when we are eating. For the most part, this responsibility stays hidden in the background, and we don’t have to worry about it–our natural inclinations take care of us just fine. But in unique situations, such a responsibility can become a very palpable burden. With the proliferation of media via the internet, and the classic gatekeepers of media art (the record labels, the video studios) not being able to staunch the flow of new independent artists willing to self-promote, we are completely surrounded on all sides by songs and movies clamoring for our attention, screaming for the privilege of being on our iPods. Since in iPod culture we make all our own media choices, this means that we are left all alone to deal with this onslaught. The responsibility to consume healthily now becomes harder, as we have to choose hundreds of times a day whether this is good music or bad, whether I like it or not, whether I should watch it or not, and so on. Eventually, these choices paralyze us, and we are left looking at a device which promised to give us just what we want, but no longer having the ability even to know what that is! I can’t count the times I’ve spent upwards of 10 minutes scrolling through my iTunes library because every time I see an album I’d like to listen to, I can’t be sure that it’s really the “best” to hear at the moment.

Ultimately, this is just another facet of the modern, consumeristic, capitalist lifestyle where the market is flooded with dozens of basically-identical products, the marketing behind each of which aims to convince us just how different they really are. We go to the grocery store and see a hundred different kinds of cereal, and we are immediately besieged; which of these cereals is the best? Which is the best value? Which is healthiest? Which tastes best? Sometimes you feel like leaving the store because you just can’t handle that kind of pressure. And it is exactly that pressure which threatens to hover over us as we carry our iPods to work and on our afternoon jogs.

None of that is to say that the personal media player is evil or even slightly bad. I merely want to emphasize how, in our current cultural context, an iPod comes with more than a $400 price tag–it actually comes with a surprisingly large set of responsibilities, both to oneself and to the world. Or maybe it’s not so surprising–with any technical or economic advance comes an increase in power and possibility, along with a concomitant increase in responsibility. Apple’s marketing is really great at portraying the possibilities their media players can grant us, but we cannot trust them to know, or to tell us, what sorts of responsibilities might go hand in hand with the power they provide–the power of instant, on-demand, and infinitely customizable media. I hope I’ve been able to illuminate both edges of that sword.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch a few episodes of Firefly on my new video iPod. Or wait…should I watch Arrested Development?

(cover art by Chris Nyffeler)

• God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
• O Little Town of Bethlehem
• It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

(for those of you using iTunes, you’ll see the album art is already attached to the songs. Otherwise, feel free to copy the image from this page)

NOTE: Songs are now considered to be the final mix.

It was the first time I’d been to one of these events, and needless to say I was shocked by the high price of the tickets. I realized halfway through, however, that I was watching one of the finest performances I’d ever seen, anywhere. The physical training and prowess displayed easily surpassed any other show of ability I’d seen, whether in sports or arts, and the live music must have been played by some of the best musicians in entertainment.

The show was also particularly interesting for me because it was one of those things where there’s always something going on. There was always someone or other dancing or doing something clever in the background, or flying across the upper parts of the auditorium on a wire, or whatever.

As a rule, I’m hyper-aware, so it was a feast for that hyper-awareness to always have things to notice. Every time I saw something I wasn’t intended to see because my attention was supposed to be focused on the main act, I got excited and leaned over and told David, who probably didn’t care. I’m just talking about times when the cast would surreptitiously clip a safety carabiner to a hidden harness on their way to a dangerous move, or when the electric violinist you could barely see, hidden behind several layers of columns, was really rocking out. I loved all this background stuff.

But, having been thinking a lot about community and spiritual things lately, I was surprised to also have several somewhat awesome realizations whilst watching this display of artistic excellence, relating to the spiritual life lived in community. I remember having 3 or 4 of these realizations, but all that I can recall now are two:

1. Unity is awe-inspiring. There were a number of times throughout the performance where a group of performers would be doing something incredible on their own, for example rolling around in these huge circular wire cages, or playing with this insane chinese yo-yo thing (I know, I need video clips). Anyway, it was amazing, and the crowd burst into applause.

Then, these groups of performers would do something even more complicated, namely performing with their respective props, but synchronously. That is, their actions and motions interplayed with the actions and motions of another, forming this intricate dance whilst maintaining an impossible individual routine. And of course, the crowd bursts into applause.

But then, the best thing of all would happen–two of the performers would actually pretend to be one person! In other words, say there were two girls doing tricks with this chinese yo-yo thing, which requires both hands to manipulate in all these incredible and impossible ways. Well, they would get together and share the same prop, using the right arm from the rightmost girl, and the left arm from the left, to act as one performer.

This subtly blew my mind away…the level of focus and control to do what they were doing seemed to require having one mind. It was insane how their hands could move as if they were receiving instantaneous instructions from one source. So now, the crowd goes the most wild, because they unconsciously realize this point–being that on-the-same-page with another human being is truly awe-inspiring.

The spiritual lesson: it is the same with our community relationships! If we do things with a unity like that the Cirque cast has achieved physically, then the crowd (read: outside world) will involuntarily shout out in applause, because it is delightful and amazing.

2. Discipline brings freedom. At one point during the show, a well-muscled, gymnast-looking man grabbed hold of two narrow red curtains which had dropped from the ceiling, took a short run, and then jumped. He proceeded to soar, arms back and back arched like gliding bird, in a huge arc toward the sky. With the fluttering of the sheets around him and the fact that his body was kept perfectly still, he appeared to serenely lift. In truth, it looked less like the curtains were pulling him upward, and more like his body was actually propelling them with its own power of flight.

The lie was given when the next act took center stage, and I glimpsed this man in the shadows, stomach heaving with the exertion he hadn’t shown during his routine. It had looked like nothing special for him to iron-cross through the air without even solid rings, but in fact it was hard even for this burly guy. It would have been strictly impossible, of course, for anyone in the audience.

But he had trained his body to such an extent that, with every muscle in it straining, it looked like flying was completely natural to him. This training came at a certain cost–daily discipline. No doubt he had some latent physical ability from birth, but without the discipline he would have been like the fat guy they picked for the mountain biker to jump over earlier in the show.

I’m imagining that, in none of his practice sessions, whether it was lifting weights or running or doing scores of pull-ups, did he ever feel like he was flying. To the contrary, his body probably never felt more tied to the earth than when he was bench-pressing something insane. But twice a night (or however often), he gets on stage and flies like a bird, with a smile on his face, and in the freedom that discipline brings.

The spiritual lesson: spiritual disciplines will probably not feel very illuminating or liberating. In fact, they may feel very much like chains. More importantly, they are not instant pathways to anything or at all related to my desire for the end state they bring, in the same way that, even if I wanted to be like this flying Cirque du Soleil entertainer, it would take me years at least to be physically able…who knows, it might even be impossible, given that I have been set in certain physical ways for so many years!

But in the end, after years of hardship and training, spiritual disciplines will pay out in the most unimaginable of ways–the ability to truly fly, spiritually. And if and when I do, those around will greet it with awe, believing that this is some supernatural power being shown, when in reality it is simply what happens naturally in a life that is oriented in a certain direction. It is a genuine natural miracle–natural because built into the fabric of life, and miraculous because it is the work that God desires to do in us.

Well, between these two things, I think there is a lot to ponder. The most excitement comes, in particular, with thinking about the integration of these two lessons–can you imagine a spiritually unified, disciplined group of individuals? I would like to see it; I would like to be it. It would be so amazing, just like the performance that moved me last night.