Philosophy of life

I've looked to many sources for inspiration about living life. I recall reading in Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth, Bill Moyers' account of a response from a Japanese Shinto priest. When asked about his ideology of life, the priest apparently paused as though in deep thought, and then slowly shook his head. "I think we don't have ideology," he said. "We don't have theology. We dance."

I'm not there yet.

I've always been drawn to the visual over the textual for inspiration. Joseph Campbell provided context for my reactions to the archetypal messages from the original Star Wars that inspired me as a child (no, I'm not going to use the Lucas revisionist renaming scheme). The title of this blog is inspired by my favorite scene from the Lord of the Rings movies (though it is true that I first experienced those stories in print). Perhaps the most intense textual experience came from Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.

Music has always been an inspiration, ranging from a spellbinding moment of Branford Marsalis' improvisation during a rendition of Fauré's Requiem with the Baltimore Symphony to Tim Finn's lyrics from his song Through the Years:

"I want to be oblivious,
To everything that worries us,
I want to learn the secrets of the universe."

Tim Finn also added:

"I'm never gonna find the answer;
It's never gonna be
Exactly what I hoped it was,
But it's good enough for me."

I like to think that I'm half cat, but that doesn't quite capture my philosophy either. More than anything, I find that my friends are the greatest source of inspiration. Recently, one of my friends wrote a wonderful piece about living life that cites Lin Yutang:

"Lin Yutang’s ideal is the ‘scamp’ – an amiable loafer who wanders through life, learning, loving, living. He is a good-natured Renaissance Man, dabbling here and there, connoisseur of nothing, dilettante extraordinaire. He is earthbound, a man of his biology and of his senses. (For Lin, happiness is “largely a matter of digestion.” He favorably quotes a college president who admonished his freshmen that “There are only two things I want you to keep in mind: read the Bible, and keep your bowels open.”) Lin’s loafing scamp is a profoundly embodied mind, not a brain on a stick. And most of all, he’s eminently ‘reasonable’ – a trait Lin mentions throughout, and points to as the very foundation of the Chinese character."

A loafing scamp. I like that--a lot. Now if I could only learn how to dance...

Cultural Melbourne

One of the most appealing aspects of Melbourne is its emphasis on the arts and culture. I had the pleasure of visiting the State Library of Victoria, which was a short walk from my hotel (it's interesting how everything seems like a short walk when I'm outside the US).

The Library featured a fantastic reading room with an overhead ceiling that invited sunlight to stream into the open space. I was struck by the number of young people studying in the Library, especially since I often read about the demise of libraries. These youngsters certainly had their share of electronic gadgets, but there were quite a few engaged in the satisfying act of reading a book in solitude. The magazine section with offerings from various countries and wide ranging topics provide ampled evidence of the diverse interests within Melbourne. I examined what types of job were available within the library. More than anything, I noted that every job posting included a phrase about "commitment to work, life and family balance."

The National Gallery of Victoria provided my first exposure to aboriginal art. At first glance from the uninitiated viewpoint, it seemed nothing more than geometric figures and lines. After spending some time learning about--most powerfully through a video of aboriginal artists at work--I started to see the art as connections to the dream world and ancestral stories. I kept moving along the emotional path for appreciating art when I read the following phrase at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI):

"Because here it is about something other than just the registering of events, that ultra-modern impulse that converts, through the use and abuse of new technologies, human experience into an archive."

I was spellbound by an exhibit called "Correspondences" that brought together the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami and Victor Erice, an Iranian and a Spaniard. I can still vividly recall Kiarostami's film clip featuring images seen through his rain soaked car windshield and Erice's "sea-mail" correspondence. The intertwining of water and different cultures seemed an especially appropriate theme for Australia.