P.O.V. CICADA

                          

You humans  call it an invasion, a scourge, a plague even.  You think I've come to eat your flowers, destroy your vegetable garden, or defoliate your forests.  Most of you have no idea what life has been like for me and my kind.  So let me take a moment and tell you a little about myself.

I never knew my parents.  They were both long dead before I hatched.  On the day I was born, I fell out of a tree.  To protect my soft young body, I had to seek cover in the soil.  My first instinct was to dig.  I was lucky.  I dug for my life.  Many of my generation never got the chance.  They fell on paved surfaces, some were devoured by birds or ants, and some were attacked by spiders before they ever left their birth tree.

Our mothers knew the dangers we would face, so they laid many eggs.  They plowed them into the tender end branches of trees and shrubs.  Their ovipositors sometimes weakened the little twigs, and a passing wind broke them from the tree.  Some folks thought my mother was eating their tree , but really she was giving them a healthy pruning.  Actually, she never ate anything.

I was one of the lucky ones to fall near soft soil.  Yeah, lucky me.  My first glimpse of sunshine on the day I was born would be the last light I would see for a long time; a real long time.  I had to sacrifice light for survival.  So I dug and dug, but never for a moment was I completely safe.  Many of my siblings were stalked and devoured by voles, others were dug up or crushed by new construction.  As I grew stronger, I learned to escape these hazards.

I never had a parent to feed and protect me like my archenemy birds, or you spoiled mammals. I was totally on my own from the day I was born.  I found the nourishment I needed in tidbits of dirt in my dark world.  Slowly, I grew larger and stronger, and developed claws to protect myself and to catch food.  My luck continued for about 17 years,  I had survived!

Then something happened to me that I cannot explain.  All my life I had used the darkness of the underground as my protection.  It was weird.  My black safe haven began to feel like a dungeon.  I had to escape.  I had to go to the place that I feared the most.  Imagine my terror as I dug upward to a totally alien world.  It was against my will, but I could not stop myself.  I dug and climbed up toward the light.  I had no memory of light, or the world above ground, but still I climbed.  Deep within myself, I found the courage to come to the surface and emerge into a strange world with many of my kind.

I looked at all the others.  We were certainly an ugly bunch, all legs and claws.  Of course, strong legs, I mean, come on, we had spent our whole lives digging.  But something felt different.  I had no further desire to dig.  I wanted to climb, up a tree, up a bush, up a fence post, up a house, it didn't matter, I just knew I had to get above the ground.  So I climbed until I was exhausted.  I had to rest.  My legs were so tired I could not move them.  In fact, my legs were locked into place on the bark of my tree.  And my back started to itch, and the light no longer hurt my eyes.

Overnight, my joints felt so achy that I had to stretch.  And that's when it happened!  I heard a crunching sound as my exoskeleton cracked open and as I stretched more, I stepped out of my old dried skin and walked away with a new sleek, wet body.  It was so weird.  I felt like I was carrying something new on my back.  I wasn't sure what they were and I was a little frightened, so I tried to shake them off. I shook so hard that I lost my grip on the tree.  It was de javu.  I dreaded falling to earth again, but I didn't.  I fell up!  It was so cool!  I never had to fall again.  I could fly.  Then I did something else I had never done before.  With the joy of flying, all I wanted to do was sing.  So I sang with total joy.  As I flew and sang, I began to hear others singing, so I flew towards their song.  

Then I saw them.  The ugly mob that came out of the dirt yesterday now was a lacy winged squadron of red eyed beauties. and they could sing.  Nobody ever sang down there in the dirt.  This was special, I mean really special.  Seventeen years in the dungeon of the dirt, then all within one day, I am set free from the darkness, I get a whole new body, I learn to fly and I learn to sing.  It can't get any better than this.  But it does.  I follow one special song and I find a mate and I fall in love.  I propagate a family.  I am fulfilled.

So think about it you unappreciative mammals: if you had the chance, in one fantastic day to get a brand new body, to learn to fly and sing and to have sex, would you turn it down?  I didn't think so. 

The Ecology of Art:

ART: by definition

noun

1.  the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

2.  the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, aspaintings, sculptures, or drawings:  a museum of art; an art collection. See fine art, commercial art.

3.  a field, genre, or category of art: Dance is an art.

4.  the fine arts  collectively, often excluding architecture: art and architecture.

5.  any field using the skills or techniques of art:advertising art; industrial art.

Art is beautiful; or is it?  Are all beautiful things art?  Paintings are artistic, but some are not pleasant to see.  Photography is an art form, but it also captures the ugly side of life.  Do parents declare as artful, the music their kids listen to?  Are all the sounds immortalized on recordings art?  Words too are immortalized.  Is Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ on an artful plane with Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’?  Does Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ stand with Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods…’?  Some call dance an art form.  Rhythmic movement, pleasing to the eye, why not?  But what of a prancing mustang stallion, or a soaring eagle?  So all things labeled as art are not beautiful and all beautiful things are not art.  Art then is the epitome of the subjective; in the eye, ear, nose or tongue (culinary art) of the beholder.  We, the beholders, the living organisms, interact with our environment and decide which of our experiences can be called “ART”.  Absolute subjectivity!

Living organisms, interacting with their environment?  That’s a definition of ‘Ecology’ and ‘Ecology’ is a science, isn’t it?  And science is objective, isn’t it?.  I am inclined to agree with a wise teacher of mine who declared that objectivity is a ‘myth’.  The root word, ‘object’ is ‘subject’ to numerous definitions.  Put the object on the table.  “Your honor, I object!”  JFK set an ‘objective’ to put a man on the moon.  An objective, a goal, a vision, unseen before fruition, ‘subject’ to much discussion and planning before achieving reality.

Art and ecology both consider composition, energy flux, niche diversity, adaptations, interpretation, structure, interdependence, change, permeable boundaries of interdisciplinary applications and resource management.  The art of science and the science of art are eternally entwined.  Technology is one of the links in the similarity chain.  Surgeons and sculptors both use lasers, as do the lighting techs for rock concerts.  The work done in artist’s studio and scientist’s labs is enhanced with computers.  A botanist performing thousands of cross pollinations to produce a black rose has no more patience than a painter assembling millions of dots of color to create a river side scene.

Artists and ecologists pursue their passions by looking at the world through an ever changing set of lenses.  Microscopes and sub-atomic colliders show that everything in art and nature are microcosmic images of what we know of as the universe.  Everything in time and space looks the same.  We need not search for inter-relationships, they are already there, all around us.

The yet unnamed novel is plodding along.  First draft of part one of three is complete, so a lot of editing on my plate.  I've been following some good advice to write 'hot' and edit 'cold'.  I've added to that knowledge with this advice, "Write like you are in love.  Edit like you are in charge."

YOUR CREATIVITY

Bounded by fences that you yourself build

Controlled by rules that are self inflicted

Limited by your definition of limits

Artistry expires when only

Excuses are created

Just took a chance and posted an old piece on a site I came across.  The piece is the one about what it would have been like if the ancient Egyptians had used corrupt construction trade unions to build the pyramids.  The site is 'http://www.ebookmall.com/americasnextauthor America's Next Author.  Could be fun.  A lot of short stories to read and review and perhaps win an I pad, and if my piece is well received, could get $$.  Who knows?  It's getting stuff out there.

Portrait of Artists by an Old Man

      Sitting in the town square on a lovely autumn day waiting for my car to be serviced, began musing about how many artists of all types call this little town home (Leonardtown, Maryland).  In the short time I have lived here, I have made friends who are involved in painting, photography, writing, music, theater and dance.  Pondering; does being involved in these activities give you the license to call yourself an "Artist"? And having recently reread James Joyce, this happened.

Portrait of Artists by an Old Man 

           Art is magnetic, or is it the artists?  Are they drawn to one another through their crafts and talents, or perhaps through their longings?  All artists have longings. Are they seeking a patron or just a kind, friendly ear or eye or simpatico heart?

            My sense of true art advances through criticism to the very brink of an abyss which swallows up the timid, incompetent, cowardly, and egocentric. Most of those retreat early lacking the courage to go to the edge for their art.  And only those with the guts to go to the edge will advance the arts and fly ike the disciples of the legendary Appolinaris.  The others will retreat to their little cliques and huddle together in sessions of mutual admiration, lacking the mettle to put their 'art' out there; reluctant to express and defend their 'art' toe to toe with society. They retreat to the conclaves of their own,damning the unaccepting public instead of realizing that lack of acceptance is brought about by lack of vision and recognition of the evolution and ecology of art.  They sit in gloomy circles in the back booth of a smoky cafe and compete in artistic expressions of self pity and moral poverty

More on the ecology of art later.....

"Fenwick Inklings" writer's group at a crossroads.  Attempting a triage analysis to project a future.  Stay tuned