“There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily. Labor omnia vincit improbus.”
“When ascetics stay in one place for a long time,
they begin to languish, stuck in a mire of sloth and intertia.”
“There is no royal road to learning, no short cut to the acquirement of any valuable art.”
People who come up to me after playing a show somewhere often say that they too want to learn the guitar, and, usually, that they even tried, but they gave it up for one reason or another. Anybody that asks me for a free lesson or two, gets them almost immediately because they actually take no time whatsoever to learn:
1) Play every day: the more the better. If you can only play for 30 minutes, that’s fine, but if you can play for two hours, that’s better. Half of playing guitar is the ability for your fingers to hold down the strings for a long time, and if you don’t play every day the muscles in your fingers atrophy. Nobody thinks about finger muscles.
2) Give it time. Perhaps in 6 years of steady playing, you will be competent. Even if you’re playing it as a hobby for thirty minutes every day, you will be decent enough in a few years. If you’re really serious and play two hours every day, sure, that time will probably reduce, but if after one year you can play a C and a G chord really, really well, you probably don’t understand how far you’ve come…
Most things in this life could probably be boiled down to these two little rules: practice and be patient. As a matter of fact, I personally guarantee that absolutely anybody can learn absolutely any skill with enough practice and patience. Admittedly, we’re dealing in the world of the physical here. By that I mean it might not be possible for anybody to learn the details of string theory or quantum mechanics or neo-materialist literary theories, but if somebody wants to learn how to bake, having had no previous experience with flour or ovens or cutting in butter or anything, with enough time and enough practice, they will eventually be able to bake about anything you could want.
As a matter of fact, I would say that anybody CAN learn about quantum mechanics or string theory or anything else if they are determined to. It might take twenty years of daily effort, but if they want it badly enough, they will get there.
Therein lies the nut, though. Desire is something that we generally consider to be the major player in the world of the physical. I want your body. You want to kiss me. I want to eat delicious food. I want to see something beautiful. I want to learn how to play the guitar. I want to learn to bake. What gets lost in the melee of growth and development that happens as a result of desire transmuted into effort for the acquisition of the desired object(ive) is that desire is mental. What happens when you learn something new or put effort into getting something? The mind expands. The mental world that you have developed for yourself grows in conjunction with the skill or effort required to possess the object petit a.
Sometimes what we think we want has nothing to do with what we really want, and the only possible remedy for such a situation is the attempted acquisition of what we think we want, because only then will we be able to have the truth of our desires.
Oh, let them talk about the constant motion of desire and the inability to ever have what we want, should we decide against ever attempting to acquire our desires, the human experience seems to get lost. Perhaps it is that we have become too accustomed to our inability to have what we desire:
--Beautiful celebrity bodies being paraded on every channel
--Unobtainable automobiles
--Skills obtainable but requiring a lot of effort
--Advertisements for things not everybody can afford
Perhaps we try for a while. We go to the gym. We save up every month. We practice for a while. We play the lottery. But years of failure have taught us all that we can’t get most of the things we desire, so what’s the point in trying?
We are all ascetics. When we languish in our mires of sloth and inertia, our resolve grows weak, and when once resolve is weakened, the dam might as well have already been breached.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
All Things Come to an
end, but not all things get finished… or at any rate finished in the way that we want them to be. It’s funny how instructive our middle school years can be in this arena. Thinking back on timed group projects where the winners were the first people to completely finish their project, I remember the dejection of looking at an unfinished project when the time came to an end.
On the other hand, it also seems as if when a things finishing time and ending time coincide there is a moment of something-or-other. It’s that moment when you look around and see that everything is as best as it could be for the moment, and something like a touch of pride comes over you for having done what you set out to do in the allotted amount of time.
My time in Korea is coming to an end. In just over a month I will board a plane and return to the land of my birth, to the land of pounds and inches (good-bye the simplicity of a system based on tens), to a land of expansive emptiness and massive cities (although Seoul puts them all to shame in terms of mass), to the land of freedom, and to the land of beer that’s worth drinking.
I think part of why I am okay with leaving Korea now is that I have finished my project: a book reflecting the culture of Korea (emphasis on reflection), noting personal adventures, and full of cogitations on what it means to be a human being in general.
Freedom comes up frequently in these thought-sessions, and it occurs to me that freedom is a concept that exists in the two worlds of existence: physical and mental.
In the physical realm, it is usually pretty easy to tell if you have freedom: are you confined to move in a small space, do you wear shackles, or do you live behind a locked door that you didn’t lock. On a larger scale, there are the geographical confines of the country in which you live and the reality that other countries are different: language, culture, values, morals, etc. It’s amazing how much of a factor fear plays in the reality of freedom. I find that a lot of Americans have the attitude that there is probably no better place to live in the world than America, so why should anybody ever leave. From a psychological standpoint, I believe it’s that they fear their paper towers might be torn down from the reality of another country being… better than America. On the other hand, Koreans aren’t afraid of that. Most of them don’t like Korea and want to go somewhere else, but they don’t because there aren’t many places where speaking Korean is going to get you very far… so they learn English. Physically confined, whether from an institutional or geographic sense, is usually uncomfortable for the other side.
Freedom of thought is an incredible thing. The ability to have a revolution of the mind is perhaps the greatest freedom in the world, and it must be owned that western people are generally the people that have this characteristic. From an early age, we learn that it is entirely possible to defy our parents. We say, “No!!” we bear our punishment, and we learn that it will be just fine—and perhaps all of this because it’s what we see all over the culture (especially in the media). This one characteristic of Western thought carries itself through to moe in the adult manifestation of our ability to change our mind and be independent. Perhaps that’s what we don’t understand when we are children, but the defiance that we pay for is exacted from us in the future as well with the independence we must all bear. On the other hand, Korea is a country where when father or mother says you “should” do something, it’s the same as saying you “must” do something. What seems like a hint or a nudge in America is an edict in Korea, and you can probably guess what an order feels like to a Korean. If mommy or daddy says you must do something, there is really no not doing it. What they get from it, though, is essentially a lifetime of dependable dependence. They’ll live with mom and dad until they get married, and mom and dad will determine if the boy is worthwhile or not—usually depending on how much money the boy has and what prospects he has for the future.
At any rate, my time being associated with these cultural differences is coming to an end, and a whole new period of being culturally different from the place I am is going to begin. I am afraid of this particular ending.
I’m afraid because it feels finished. I’m afraid because I have changed so much. I’m afraid because I plan to be in a place that I haven’t been, steadily, for ten years. I’m afraid I might like it. I’m afraid I will find it odious.
Sometimes beginnings are far more terrifying than endings.
What I have gotten used to, and what is coming to an end, is simply (yet complicatedly) this: everything I now know is just a little different. Did you catch the most important word in that sentence? EVERYTHING. Every single thing is just a little bit different than what I used to know, and now everything I’m used to is tinged with the dust of being just slightly different. Everything from McDonald’s special sauce to the grocery store experience to the pub experience to the restaurant experience to the food experience (which is sometimes VERY different) to walking down the street is different. There is nothing like seeing big groups of Koreans standing on opposite corners of a vacant street and not daring to cross because the sign is telling them not to… I always think that my mighty western ability to think logically tells me that there is no danger, so I can probably run across. Also, I know that’s called jaywalking, but tell me the last time you saw somebody get a ticket for jaywalking… much less a foreigner on a neighborhood street in Suwon, South Korea.
It’s all ending. The parts that remain unfinished are simply my relations with the people I have met here. The people I’ve become acquainted with are very special to me. It can be difficult to make lasting friendships here (look up Aristotle’s three types of friends) and this is because there is that nagging, lingering reality in the back of your head that reminds you of the ending of your time here. Generally speaking, you can come away every year with about two or three truly good friends. The hundreds of others that you wind up meeting all fall to the wayside eventually—for me at least. Once again, the physical aspect of the friendship is coming to an end, but the mental aspect endures until such time as the physical can be re-ignited.
All endings are beginnings, but not all finishes are. When you finish a race, you don’t immediately begin another race. However, at the end of the race, you begin a period of not running. I’m not sure if my logic is spot on in this aspect, but I think it’s something like all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Finishes and endings are certainly related, but why do movies not end with the words: The Finish. Even the French “fin” or the Italian “fine” that comes at the end of movies translates to “end.” What is their relationship? Finishes, it seems to me, are those brief periods of elation or dejection that come from small victories or defeats on the way to the end. Life will end, and whether the bulk of your experience comes on the side of defeat or victory, remember that what’s important is growth, learning, and the ability to free the mind from dangerous constraints while developing it into a muscle for good.
On the other hand, it also seems as if when a things finishing time and ending time coincide there is a moment of something-or-other. It’s that moment when you look around and see that everything is as best as it could be for the moment, and something like a touch of pride comes over you for having done what you set out to do in the allotted amount of time.
My time in Korea is coming to an end. In just over a month I will board a plane and return to the land of my birth, to the land of pounds and inches (good-bye the simplicity of a system based on tens), to a land of expansive emptiness and massive cities (although Seoul puts them all to shame in terms of mass), to the land of freedom, and to the land of beer that’s worth drinking.
I think part of why I am okay with leaving Korea now is that I have finished my project: a book reflecting the culture of Korea (emphasis on reflection), noting personal adventures, and full of cogitations on what it means to be a human being in general.
Freedom comes up frequently in these thought-sessions, and it occurs to me that freedom is a concept that exists in the two worlds of existence: physical and mental.
In the physical realm, it is usually pretty easy to tell if you have freedom: are you confined to move in a small space, do you wear shackles, or do you live behind a locked door that you didn’t lock. On a larger scale, there are the geographical confines of the country in which you live and the reality that other countries are different: language, culture, values, morals, etc. It’s amazing how much of a factor fear plays in the reality of freedom. I find that a lot of Americans have the attitude that there is probably no better place to live in the world than America, so why should anybody ever leave. From a psychological standpoint, I believe it’s that they fear their paper towers might be torn down from the reality of another country being… better than America. On the other hand, Koreans aren’t afraid of that. Most of them don’t like Korea and want to go somewhere else, but they don’t because there aren’t many places where speaking Korean is going to get you very far… so they learn English. Physically confined, whether from an institutional or geographic sense, is usually uncomfortable for the other side.
Freedom of thought is an incredible thing. The ability to have a revolution of the mind is perhaps the greatest freedom in the world, and it must be owned that western people are generally the people that have this characteristic. From an early age, we learn that it is entirely possible to defy our parents. We say, “No!!” we bear our punishment, and we learn that it will be just fine—and perhaps all of this because it’s what we see all over the culture (especially in the media). This one characteristic of Western thought carries itself through to moe in the adult manifestation of our ability to change our mind and be independent. Perhaps that’s what we don’t understand when we are children, but the defiance that we pay for is exacted from us in the future as well with the independence we must all bear. On the other hand, Korea is a country where when father or mother says you “should” do something, it’s the same as saying you “must” do something. What seems like a hint or a nudge in America is an edict in Korea, and you can probably guess what an order feels like to a Korean. If mommy or daddy says you must do something, there is really no not doing it. What they get from it, though, is essentially a lifetime of dependable dependence. They’ll live with mom and dad until they get married, and mom and dad will determine if the boy is worthwhile or not—usually depending on how much money the boy has and what prospects he has for the future.
At any rate, my time being associated with these cultural differences is coming to an end, and a whole new period of being culturally different from the place I am is going to begin. I am afraid of this particular ending.
I’m afraid because it feels finished. I’m afraid because I have changed so much. I’m afraid because I plan to be in a place that I haven’t been, steadily, for ten years. I’m afraid I might like it. I’m afraid I will find it odious.
Sometimes beginnings are far more terrifying than endings.
What I have gotten used to, and what is coming to an end, is simply (yet complicatedly) this: everything I now know is just a little different. Did you catch the most important word in that sentence? EVERYTHING. Every single thing is just a little bit different than what I used to know, and now everything I’m used to is tinged with the dust of being just slightly different. Everything from McDonald’s special sauce to the grocery store experience to the pub experience to the restaurant experience to the food experience (which is sometimes VERY different) to walking down the street is different. There is nothing like seeing big groups of Koreans standing on opposite corners of a vacant street and not daring to cross because the sign is telling them not to… I always think that my mighty western ability to think logically tells me that there is no danger, so I can probably run across. Also, I know that’s called jaywalking, but tell me the last time you saw somebody get a ticket for jaywalking… much less a foreigner on a neighborhood street in Suwon, South Korea.
It’s all ending. The parts that remain unfinished are simply my relations with the people I have met here. The people I’ve become acquainted with are very special to me. It can be difficult to make lasting friendships here (look up Aristotle’s three types of friends) and this is because there is that nagging, lingering reality in the back of your head that reminds you of the ending of your time here. Generally speaking, you can come away every year with about two or three truly good friends. The hundreds of others that you wind up meeting all fall to the wayside eventually—for me at least. Once again, the physical aspect of the friendship is coming to an end, but the mental aspect endures until such time as the physical can be re-ignited.
All endings are beginnings, but not all finishes are. When you finish a race, you don’t immediately begin another race. However, at the end of the race, you begin a period of not running. I’m not sure if my logic is spot on in this aspect, but I think it’s something like all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Finishes and endings are certainly related, but why do movies not end with the words: The Finish. Even the French “fin” or the Italian “fine” that comes at the end of movies translates to “end.” What is their relationship? Finishes, it seems to me, are those brief periods of elation or dejection that come from small victories or defeats on the way to the end. Life will end, and whether the bulk of your experience comes on the side of defeat or victory, remember that what’s important is growth, learning, and the ability to free the mind from dangerous constraints while developing it into a muscle for good.
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