July 16, 2008
How the tempus fugits
when you’re having fun!!!
MORE INPUT ON “THE SECRET”
to creative longevity and prolificacy. David Amram has provided the answer to Philip Glass’s inquiry, “Get up in the morning and work all day. That’s the secret. Is there another one?”
Yes. Have fun while you’re doing it.
I don’t really see Philip Glass having fun. Work to him may be an intellectual compulsion. Certainly he’s driven, but by what? I doubt he’d call it fun.
IT’S ON MY 2009 TRAVEL CALENDAR.
After referencing Amram and Guthrie in my last column, I thought to send Amram an email, and he responded from, of all places, Okema, Oklahoma, Guthrie’s birthplace and site of the annual WoodyFest in mid-July.
He needed more than 1400 words to outline his exhausting schedule of past months—exhausting for me to read, that is—all over the U.S. and Canada performing, speaking, receiving a 6th honorary Ph.D., recording, seeing his son married, and incidentally composing a piano concerto, and after all this he writes, “How the tempus fugits when you’re having fun!!!” And that’s three exclamation points worth o’ fun, more even than that barrel of monkeys!!
“When people ask me how I can get the energy to continue to work 16 hours a day,” he wrote, “I always tell them that since I am a young whippersnapper only 77 years old, I’ll do ANYTHING to avoid getting a day job again!”
Amen, brother!
“I really feel lucky every day,” he concluded, that I am able to survive doing what I love to do, and able to do it!”
“EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE PLASTIC.”
-Woody Guthrie, “Talking Columbia Blues”
I don’t know who you are out there, reading this, but I would say the same to anybody—if you hate your job, if it takes more out of you than it gives you—find a way to get out of it, even if it takes years, ‘til your kids graduate, or you reach the end of that rope that tethers us all. YOU, I’m talking about, not your bank account. YOU, not some plastic replica. As human beings, we must be nourished to grow and evolve. You can feed your stomach but if you starve your soul you’re devolving, diminishing yourself.
Find work you love, and have fun doing it. Easy for me to say, not having any dependents. And not everyone can be a David Amram, a Philip Glass. But what I’ve done was not easy. There was lots of letting go. I have literally bought my time with money. I sold one home and am selling another. I’ve abandoned security, I rid myself of steady income. And I am happy, happy, happy.
“Work,” by its very definition (one of them), “the physical or mental effort directed at doing or making something,” sounds like work. Who wants to do it, unless you love it?
On author Ariel Gore’s website she quotes a writing teacher, Floyd Salas, who said, “All considerations of language, of ideas, of symbols and metaphors serve only one function: to convey the soul of a living being to the soul of other living beings and in that process break us out of our isolation and loneliness and put us in touch with the universal spirit.”
To be in touch with universal spirit is to be whole, at one with oneself and the world.
“AND IN THE DEW DROP GLITTER
Of some radiant crystal spray/We’d saddle up the weather/And we’d harness up the day/Weld up the eaves and corners/Nail up the hoists and beams/Organize the day of work/To rivet to our dreams”
-Woody Guthrie, “Harness Up the Day”
One’s work must convey one’s soul. And if it does not, perform that work in a way that conveys your soul. But the day may come when your soul demands more of you, when it’s time to live your work. Or else everything’s going to be plastic.
The porch of the Portland house the author sold to live as a writer.
------------------------------------------------------------
Short Attention Span Poetry Corner
Did you love your work?
I could-y.
Did you love your life?
I would-y.
Did you rivet your work to your dreams?
I should-y.
Well listen to a man
Called Woody.
His work was his life
His life was his work
Riveted together
Into one whole man
What you saw
Was what you got
Like it or not
But you knew
Standing before you
Was not a dash and a dot
But one whole man
Harness up the day
Mean what you say
And when you pick up your pay
For your soul I pray
Yourself you don’t betray
Take it as one whole man
------------------------------------------------------------
Love thyself last and first/Love thyself more each month/Let no scared howl cause thee/To doubt thyself - Woody Guthrie, "Love Thyself"
7/16/08
axfiles@sbcglobal.net
copyright Alexandra Jones 2008
