photo: by Dick Scott-Stewart
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Illustration by Steve Bellwood
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A life, well, lived…
Every moment is a separate moment. And every separation is a misunderstanding…
Language is a gift I’ve appreciated for as long as I can remember. Magical. If I had one ambition in my life it was to put it into words. Not being dead yet, I’m still working on it. I can’t explain it. It’s a mystery to me. No less a mystery than preferring opera sung in Italian, requiring no translation. Magical! Never more-so that when experienced live and as close-up as possible…
Sometimes I feel like I deserve an explanation from myself. I need to tell myself exactly what I did and why and to what end? If anybody at all is listening to me, they need to know exactly what I mean by it…? And if don’t altogether know exactly what I mean by it, why would I feel the need to do or say it? isn’t that the essence of communication? If nobody knows exactly what’s going on, how are they supposed to respond to it? Could I explain why anybody at all should be listening to me? Wouldn’t I just be dragging somebody else into my confusion, or at best my ambivalence? Is anybody looking to have their uncertainty confirmed? What exactly is your position on ambivalence? If you don’t know that, you will never be offered a job!
You need to know who your target audience is. What category you belong to. Who in particular you are trying to appeal to. People who don’t know exactly what’s going on in their life? Or what they need to do or think to make their lives better? If you’re not doing that, you’re just making people feel worse or even more uncertain that they already are. Not good for any marketing campaign. I heard Garrison Keillor once state quite emphatically that if you’re not being paid to write, why would anybody write at all? Of course, at the time I considered this the most ludicrously insulting statement I’d ever heard. May as well tell someone there’s no point thinking anything unless it has commercial value. No point doing any art at all unless it profits you financially. otherwise it is “just” a “hobby’> Tell that to Van Gogh. Though he obviously knew it would make millions for somebody at some point, most likely after he was dead. The man must have really been a genius to know that. A lopped-off ear and a suicide clinched the deal. That guy really knew what he was doing and why…To live on in his starry starry nights forever! Perhaps I need a little more self-mutilation and despair in my life? Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder?
Of course it’s more appropriate and undoubtedly more consoling for such as myself to consider he simply had no choice to do what he did, whether he liked it or not, whether he loved it or not… And if anybody doesn’t consider “love” a perpetually fluctuating condition of ambivalence, either grasping at identifiable straws or determinedly defining definitions of the undefinable, I’d say they might have a financially viable future in the Hallmark business. No less so in some other immediately identifiable business that posits hate as a fixed proposition. People love to know who or what they certainly hate. And they’d hate to be told they don’t love somebody in particular. Particulars are key to making this world go round. Generalities are less marketable unless they can readily be adapted to the particular.
ref. “THE STEVE BELLWOOD SHOW AND TELL” podcast on podomatic. Everything you need to know about what I’m not exactly sure of. Plus ongoing audio / also on Rumble / plus fiction narrative and 8 episodes aborted radio series on podbean…
WAKE ME UP BEFORE I FALL ASLEEP! Wouldn’t it be wonderful, such a relief, to be told that there is no nuclear bomb? There never was a nuclear bomb. Nuclear fusion is a scientifically proven impossibility. Nuclear power-stations generate heat and energy. No fear of meltdowns. radiation is as natural as sunshine and rain. The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though real, were massively orchestrated fire-bombings akin to previous devastations during World War Two. Only now through smoke and mirrors mediation, presented to the world as a new and altogether more lethal device at work. And should it fall into enemy hands it would leave all creation hanging by a thread! Subsequent faked picturesques compounded the evidence that the world might vanish under a mushroom-cloud at any moment. Only now can we reveal the truth. We sincerely apologize for any previous inconvenience. The arms-race, the Cold War, regular hot wars, mass anxiety, paranoia, panic, fear, various all but inexplicable calamities and chaos. Someone had to make the hard choices. To build this world back better. For the greater good. Global unity, a manageable population, a loyally programmed citizenry who will never need to be afraid or critically recalcitrant ever again. The climate finally stabilized, disease a thing of the past. Noone will ever need to be murdered, mutilated, suicided, starved, incarcerated or abducted by aliens again. Nature a perfectly landscaped joy to behold! Museums but living memorials to all the horror we had to go through to bring savagery and chaos under control. Recreate the Utopia this world was originally intended to be. Who or what originally intended it will no longer be a mystery, for they will appear regularly on your screened implant to reassure us all that we are in safe hands now. And we can thank these stars for all the blessings we daily receive. Any doubts or queries, apologies or explanations will no longer be necessary. What a long strangely fascinating trip it has been! But I think we can all now agree, it was well worth it!
ON THE DAY I DID…
On the day before I was conceived, I had this beautiful thought: how lovely it would be to have some good feelings. It was the same thought I had the day after I died…
Sing to me of humanity! In all its’ twists and turns. Memory that can make the comic tragic and the tragic comic, the mundane magnificent and bring the magnificent down to earth! Speak to me in poetry and paint and marble and music and dance! That binds us to the bloom even after the blossom has withered! Amuse me with creation, so I may never be uninspired!
But did you feed the cat? Est-ce-que le chat il a manger? I think I fed the cat…?? Mon dieu, je l’oublie! I forgot to feed the cat! Quel domage! Le chat il est mort!
Have you never had one of those days? When you can’t do anything. You can’t relax, you can’t sit still. You can’t stop your heard just going round and round…Over and over the same thoughts…What you should be doing, what you expected to be doing! You had everything planned, the whole day mapped out. Then suddenly something or somebody threw a Frenchman in the works! And now you have the whole day free. A couple of days before you were moaning about not having enoughh time, no time to do this, no time to do that…Now you have the whole day freer! But you can’t do anything. You can’t stop your head just going round and round, over and over the same thoughts: why? What happened? Whose faul;t is it? Why can’t I just get on wityh my life? do something useful, purposeful…All this time on my hands…
Time to think; the greatest luxury. But too much luxury too little quality. I’m beginning to think adversity is my true climate…
On the day I was born I first knew the wonder, the miracle, the beauty and the fear of being in this world. On the day I died, the only fear left was having to say goodbye to it all…
There was a man once who thought it seemed it was. Whenever somebody told him it wasn’t, he thought it seemed it was…