I am exploring presenting my stories and life in three ways – images, video and voice. Above, the calming sound of a stream, below, a voice meditation on how we can let our ideas live in such an angry and divided world. About staying inside of ourselves and taking the time to think and gain self-respect. I call it The Peaceful Hour.
Our embrace of information technologies is an amazing thing, it sometimes brings us truth, and sometimes not, it sometimes brings connection, sometimes argument and cruelty. It is chaotic and distracting. It is difficult to think, ideas are so quickly snuffed out, overrun or choked to death. It is, I think, a difficult place for some ideas to live and grow.
We have become used to the idea that all ideas must be approved, agreed with, responded to, challenged, praised, altered. No idea like this gets to breathe, or often, to live. We are all talking, but who, exactly is listening?
I get up early and work hard all day, i write, take photos, care for the farm, shop, cook, blog, walk, pay bills, fuss about money. It is ferociously busy day and I am, like everyone else, also tuning into what we call the news to try and grasp what is happening to my country. This is a hard and painful way to think and seek out the truth.
This week, I began an late afternoon or early evening project I call The Peaceful Hour: Giving My Ideas A Chance To Live.
When the work is done, I gather the dogs to me, and sometimes I walk to the stream in our newly-accessible woods.
If I can, I sit in the meditation chair Ed Gulley brought, or I sit by the stream and listen to this ancient sound (recorded above this afternoon). I come home and meditate, then I read. I light candles, get out a bowl of popcorn, settle by the wood stove. It is a sweet and meaningful time already. The dogs pick it up, as good dogs will, and are silent.
Right now, I’m reading Orson Welles, Volume 3: One Man Band, By Simon Callow, and also The New Brooklyn: What It Takes To Bring A City Back by Kay Hymowitz. It is part of my lifelong search to understand the riddle of this great genius, his great rise and long fall.
My reading soothes me, fuels my imagination, takes me out of the fractured world. I have long been fascinated by the rise and fall of Welles, one of the most creative humans to ever grace our world. I have always wondered what happened to him, and I think I am figuring it out, this new volume helps confirm what I have always suspected and what Maria suggested to me as a joke.
In today’s Peaceful Hour Meditation I talk about that book and about my own determination to let my ideas live. I am committing myself to listening, not talking, understanding, not arguing, thinking, not declaiming. I am a humanist, I believe we are all human beings, connected in various ways.
I am excited about this new and very creative way to tell my stories.