my own Chautauqua*

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig discusses his belief that because technology has rattled our world, we must find new roots of rationality to sort out our relationship with it. He says it's not that we should abandon rationality, but that we need to "expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution."

He uses the example of Christopher Columbus discovering for Europeans that the earth isn't flat (Edited to add: this is apparently totally untrue of the people at that time, see this comment for details.) Until that time, all rational thought was set in the "fact" that the earth was flat. And here is where he gets into the area I relate to so well:

"I think present day reason is an analog of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go too far beyond it, you are presumed to fall off into insanity. And people are very much afraid of that. I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world, or the fear of heretics."

Just like one of my all-time favorite stories, The Yellow Wallpaper, Pirsig's book is in great part about the journey into and around madness. Insanity is a common theme in art (including writing), of course. What I find most compelling in Pirsig's comparison of the fear of falling off the flat earth with the fear of being insane is that I live with the awareness that many or most people, if granted access to my mind's world, would wonder if I was insane. I've censored myself a lot on this blog because of my readers. I don't think it's so much a concern that people will think I'm crazy as much as it is they will worry. They have worried when I've let more of my creativity show in this space, suggesting lovingly that I go get professional help, etc.

There are so many taboo topics in our culture. Discussing thoughts, ideas, or concepts that don't fit in traditional forms of rationality (make me seem crazy) is a risky proposition.

Pirsig relates this subject to abstract art, too. Some people are troubled by abstract art because it isn't "something." I find the pictures I draw or paint may show "something" sometimes, but that isn't ever my point. It was surprising to me when people would ask me, "What is that?" Or, "Is that a person…?" when looking at some of my pictures. (You can see some of them here.) "What it is" is irrelevant to me when I experience art. It's hard for me to understand people who are so focused on the archetypes of forms or matter when, for me, everything is fluid and interpreted by our own experiences. How does it feel?

I don't often discuss these deeper essences because they can be shocking or even frightening to others if they don't know me well. In fact, there are very few areas in life where being the way I am is entirely acceptable. One is when I am with children. Another is when I am creating (pictures, writing, cooking, making art-like "stuff"). There are those special relationships, too, where my way isn't something I need to tailor or censor to secure acceptance.

I'd like to discus and describe my way, even if it seems unhinged or bizarre. Unlike Perkins Gilman, I won't be writing fiction. What I may write, if it comes to me in a way I want to share, are descriptive pieces that may or may not make sense. Maybe I'm talking about a form of abstract art. I know I'm talking about content that will push beyond traditional concepts of rationality. I will explore and expand the nature of reality (as I always do inside my mind). I will paint with words. I will smear the colors like my favorite oil pastels that melt, getting gushy like cake frosting, with the heat of my fingers.


*Chautauqua is the word Pirsig used throughout his book to describe his journey. It's not an accurate use of the original meaning of the word. However, the enormous success of his book has established the word in a way I enjoy. It seems fitting to me to use a word that doesn't mean what it's supposed to mean as a description for these alternative mind bending explorations.

"In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. ‘What’s new?’ in an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question ‘What is best?,’ a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and ‘best’ was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for." (Pirsig)