Shift
I have fled, flourished, floundered, and failed. Then I was found, fed, fêted, and set free. Glory be.
Archive | freedom RSS feed for this section
Daily Obstruction: Bodhisattva Vow
30 Jul
Bodhisattva Vow
One is never fully liberated until all others are liberated as well.
Daily Obstruction: Doubt & Certainty
27 Jul
Doubt & Certainty
If you hit rock bottom, at least you’re on solid ground.
Daily Obstruction: Bondage
15 May
Bondage
There are no stronger chains than those we forge for ourselves.
Daily Obstruction: Fool’s Dilemma
13 May
Fool’s Dilemma
The philosopher’s fundamental questions – freedom of the will and determinism – are the playthings of monkey mind.
Daily Obstruction: The Obstruction of Freedom
28 Apr
The Obstruction of Freedom
Most people are not artists because they don’t know what to do with the radical freedom that faces them before the act of creation. To the non-artist, nothing is more intimidating than the blank canvas, the empty page, silence before the symphony, the empty stage.
Daily Obstruction: In a Word
26 Apr
46TH ANNUAL GRAMMY AWARDS — Prince performs “Purple Rain” as the opening act during the 46th Annual Grammy Awards show, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Calif., Sunday, Feb. 8, 2004. LOS ANGELES TIMES PHOTO BY RICHARD HARTOG
In a Word
You can amputate my gangly limbs, stuff me up and put me in a bottle, slap a label on it and sell me on the shelf, but I’ll never remain bottled up. Eventually my phantom limbs will strangle your choking categories and leave them along the side of the road, empty husks that they are.
Contracting & Expanding
20 Nov
Contracting & Expanding
- Freedom – Very young children like the playground of pure imagination – being a pirate on a make-believe ship, imitating a lion, walking on the moonscape of the mind’s eye.
- Law – Eventually they outgrow the mindscape of make-believe and prefer the playground of rules and roles – the grid of the football field, the confines of the basketball court, the complex strategies of board-games. The unstructured playground is “kid-stuff” to them now. Fun is found within the rigid, bound, limits of the game. The imaginative mind has narrowed.
- Liberty – At a certain point, the free play of imagination opens up to some. Second childhood. They have discovered the “liberty” of creativity. Liberty is freedom created by law: fiction emerging out of the innumerable rules of grammar, spelling, convention, etc.; improvisation arising from the rules of harmony, rhythm, dissonance, etc.; dancing galvanized by the bounds of physics.
