Wanted: Dreamers

“A dream we dream together is reality” ~ John Lennon

***

The other night while drinking Bloody Mary’s, and working on school-ish type pursuits, I was approached by a Tarot card reader. Would I like a reading? Mmmm… but to procrastinate schoolwork… and I’m behind from a not-so-wise decision to imbibe… well, okay sure!

While shuffling the deck, she shared a book by Deepak Chopra. She “felt I was supposed to see it for some reason.” She seemed awkward saying this, perhaps hesitation in expressing such a clearly mystical and illogical sentiment. However, her confidence swelled as she laid out the cards.

“You spent a good bit of your time the last five years building. The cards say it’s time to move beyond yourself, and try to find a team. You will find a team actually… there will be some fear involved… but all will work out, and you will work through your reservations. With these people, you will begin to accomplish dreams.”

A+ for vagueness!

I jotted down her words which amounted to a five-minute reading. I tipped her, she moved on, and I returned to lesson planning for a tour with fourth graders at my Art museum intership.

I didn’t think of it again until I began rereading old blog posts yesterday.

***

I stumbled across a June 2010 comment from Michael Doyle: 

“If grad school knocks out the brazen from your brazenness, re-read your posts this year….”

I recall being grateful for his support, but I certainly didn’t expect graduate school to knock out my brazenness. Oh Doyle. Please tell me sometime where your psychic powers come from.

So yesterday I took Michael’s advice. I walked forgotten paths of thought, revisited old ideas, and ignited a few old flames. It was like meeting a long-lost friend, only the friend was the long-lost me.

I liked her. I liked her spiciness, fire, and vigilant pursuit for individuality, authenticity and personal truth. She was a trail blazer in those days. She was a stranger in a foreign country whose language she stubbornly resisted fluency. In order to be heard she would make her own country… her own blog… with a brazen teacher as its president.

It wouldn’t matter what people thought of Brazen because she wouldn’t be a person, but rather an idea. Criticism of ideas are far easier to receive than criticism of personhood. In this safe space she created a refuge to be intensely herself. She could take risks, share funky ideas, screw up, say ridiculous, ignorant or downright wrong things. She could reflect on the way others responded to these words, and then recreate herself based on new conceptions of who she hoped to become next.

She had started blogging to find herself, and somewhere between late night reflections on Kindergartener musings, and mind-meanderings of her own, she learned one of life’s biggest lessons:

The blog wasn’t about finding herself, it was about creating herself.

Hadn’t she read this on a refrigerator magnet when she was 7?

***

There is an empirically based reason why Tarot works.

Tarot works because the human mind is always trying to create meaning from what is put before it. When you  look at a Tarot card, or when a card-reader shares an idea, your brain tries to make connections between what you are learning and seeing, with something in your current repertoire. These connections are important, because they are literally ideas and thoughts surfacing, that would have remained buried had it not been for the external suggestion.

In this way, the cards are not actually predicting magical unseen notions of the future, they are bringing out the truth which is already there, deep in your subconscious… a very handy tool for connecting to your deepest concerns, thoughts and wishes.

***

While having coffee with a friend today he said:

“I think being an artist reminds us the importance of many voices. It’s easy to get fixated on details, to block out alternate possibilities, and to suffer from ideological tunnel vision. Artists learn to step back away from a thing and invite others in… to kill their babies. Everyone contributes, and everyone subordinates. Together they create a more holistic truth than would have every been possible from one solitary ego.”

In the wake of Doyle’s comment and the Tarot card reading, it was like a cranial Rubix Cube snapping into place.

I created the blog to find comfort in creating myself.

Comfort in creating myself can lead to comfort in creating with others.

Groups of people who have comfort in self and collaborative creation do amazing shit.

Now… I gotta create me a group.

Takers?

28 Nov This entry was published on November 28, 2011 at 1:47 and is filed under My Teachers, Theoretical Shenanigans, Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.