Fairies are everywhere. Everything is full of fairies and part of fairies. It’s all fairy magic. This is about making those connections and building the community of fairies by returning to magical understanding.
It’s now 4:22 PM on 9-23-17. I just sent a bunch of Lady Gaga pics via message. Geiko just said they “saved a bunch of money” on TV as I wrote that phrase. I’m taking an interlude (“didn’t mean to interrupt the lizard” the sportscaster just said “sorry my mics cutting out, folks” - and I thought football in the background would provide less chances to comment… “aloha, mahalo” he said, I think.
… I’m taking an interlude from writing about Shirley Fairies, the ones who show up in that book, which was itself an interlude from talking about world events which were an interlude from talking about “Artpop” - specifically I thought I would wait to have some sort of sex dream myself to write the best thing about it -and I believe I have even dreamed about Gaga since then, not having sex with her but dreamed about her, but no sex dreams that I noticed. Maybe I fantasize too much about sex while awake to have any left over for sleep. I think about how monks sometimes have sex with Lilith in their dreams - and dread it??? - but I’m probably not a candidate for that if I’m not much like a monk, that way, and am kind of the opposite.
But within all these interludes - because I plan to finish writing about Artpop and then finally listen to Joanne - is Fairy magic.
Fairies are in everything, including the interconnections between things - we are part of them, too. I have a few reasons for writing this, now: I have a workshop on Fairy magic in 8 days so it’s on my mind, I found some notes from the last one. Since I’ve been thinking even more about it recently I’ve been given some ideas that are kind of new to me, too. One I mentioned last time, I think, that we are in a symbiotic relationship with fairies but we may understand it better if we reconsider our usual placement in such conceptions of ourselves, as the “Host” of the symbiote and consider that the fairies are our hosts and we supplement and assist them more than the other way around.
So we will notice and respond to more of them, more, if we look at it this way.
But mostly the point I want to emphasise is how our language is anti-magic, denies fairies and the world more fully understood from their perspective. If we realize we are just trained to talk this way and resist it by talking another way we can discover and share more about fairies, naturally.
Because they want us too, it’s just our own resistance.
“Fairies are everywhere” is one way to get that mindset of helping each other which is why I started the gagablog this way - but it really starts shortly.
I personally know I could write real fairy tales if I let myself - I’m holding myself back, now, by lingering around at the edge of this world to tell others, the whole bodhicitta concept, and laziness (“There’s a big gulf between Alabama and the rest of the conference”... “this one’s an A-plus right now.”) but the truth is you can go on into the Fairy World and come back, any time - though some times and places and ways of being are more conducive than others to the “trip.” We have plenty of stories about this.
Fairy Tales are our “best” (most solid? Is that “best”?) conceptions of fairies but there are plenty of other forms and ways we communicate with fairies and learn about them. I like to notice the magic in technology, which naturally “reads” as fairies when you have this perspective that Fairies are Everywhere.
I called this “Fairy tweets, Talks, and Tales” to get attention - it’s the title of my workshop. “Fairies usually tweet through birds” is one of my opening “jokes” and it’s true, we very frequently get fairy messages from birds, animals, wind, trees, flowers, lightning, storms, shooting stars, sunshine, clouds, rainbows, and every other part of nature. But I also want people to think of technology as a fairy realm. We often think of technology as “anti-nature” or “superhuman” in a way, like something that makes us “human, apart from nature” and therefore is more “alien” to nature, “not natural.” We think about how Kids These Days play video games instead of going outside, or Kids In The Future will play video games instead of going to war. Some video games, now, like Pokemon Go!, and more in the future, will defy this idea and “blend” nature and technology - but really they are only separate in our heads.
Technology is not “unnatural” it’s just another aspect of nature - even if we think of it as “Alien” we should remember that Aliens are also Natural, just from different “kinds” of nature - but it’s all, actually, nature, it’s all Fairies - full of fairies and part of fairies.
I mentioned in the gagablog before, and saw it in my notes, a question my daughter asked me: “what were some things you thought when you were younger that seem silly now?” and I said that teachers “lived” at the school - or folded up into the filing cabinat at night. She said she thought this, too, something like it - and I think from the fairy perspective there is something “true” about this. She mentioned that she thought traffic lights were operated by elves inside of them.
Kids are more naturally noticing fairy things because their thinking, their language, has not been trained into the anti-magic thinking of our “common sense” adult world. Many “adults,” of course, still retain magic, fairy connection, through their creativity - and also are childlike, young-at-heart, Ozzite. Other “adults” who have “mastered” the adulting of this world, reached positions of prominence like President of the United States - but act like the Worst of kids, fighting and whining and name-calling and acting out, throwing temper tantrums.
Having the fairy connection, creativity, allows people, of any “age”, to find good things and humor in bad things, find new ways out of bad things. I feel confident, personally, in associating “my own” creativity with the fairy world - I have always felt ideas “sent to me” or that I merely have to be open to story ideas or lyrics or drawings and allow them, the fairies, the art, to express themselves through me. Of course I have my own ideas but I’m always open to this world and think of it as purely full of fairies, spirits - THE spirit, which is why I associate Art so much with the Divine, why I’ve always seen Lady Gaga as the Goddess for how much creativity she channels to us and opens us up to channel by example and by sharing, by Art.
I feel this idea is confirmed by other creative people, too. I heard the author of “Eat, Pray, Love” on the radio years ago talking about how she always thought of her writing as being inspired and given to her by the fairies, even one in particular, or per project, I don’t recall - but she said she did not have the name for the book and realized she was asking people about “her” ideas and conflicted what to call it then she reminded herself - “Oh wait, I respect and rely on the fairies to help me write, let me just ask what they want the name to be” and she went to sleep that night and dreamed or woke up with the name for her book, which did really well.
Then I was reminded to mention this, again, by a poet on the radio just last week. She said she saw the poems as living beings who would change and tell her what they really wanted to be - because she rewrote them a lot but knew that their final form was part of them coming fully to life.
I feel like talking about everything in a fairy way makes it easy to see these connections in art but it also helps everything.
I feel like everyone can relate to thinking something then seeing something on TV or hearing it on the radio or some random way, something that fits the theme of their thought. To me this always suggested a spirit letting us know it is there, this connection between things makes me think of a fairy saying hello. The Big World News events also seem like fairies saying “hello”, or “HELP!” - but spirits in conflict or desperation behind the Events of the Day are a way of addressing them without getting caught up in their awfulness.
We have to do all we can do to help The World - this isn’t a way of being aloof about issues. It’s a way of considering everything as a network, that we are connected, in magical ways, to things we can’t possibly hope to influence - in normal ways. But we can with magic and we can work natural magic by recognizing the fairy connections between everything.
There is a good, creative solution for everything. The constant barrier to these solutions is the idea “well, that would never work” - a lack of imagination. Increasing imagination, helping creative people be more creative, helping more people become creative and growing a cultural and worldwide appreciation for creativity WILL save the world.
Allowing people to consider the difficult, tragic parts of life, as well as the good ones, from the perspective that “everything is fairies” allows us to engage with everything instead of getting overwhelmed and wanting to ignore it - we know that even the Bad Things are expressions of hurt or angry fairies and we can find (“Has a hole and then stays on his feet and explodes!” - football announcer) ways to break through the badness and reconnect.
Creativity, inspiration, wonder, contemplation, prayer, imagination, dreams - all of these are inward ways of reconnecting with the fairy world. But it’s also all around us, in nature, in technology - where we “least expect it” - and even more the less we expect it, or rather, more the more we expect it but in the most surprising ways. People manifest fairies all the time, accidentally and then for whatever reason, getting into it, I suppose, whatever they call it, some people seem more fairy-like.
While we have traditions of fairy tales we are more aware of due to cultural depictions - and may be unaware of a lot about them from the Disney versions we have - there are fairy tales from all over the world. With no disrespect to “either”, all myths can be seen as fairy tales. But instead of focusing on the fairy tales we know and a select, restrictive understanding of fairies we can look for the fairies in other cultures, stories, and in everyday experiences and each other.
I was considering what “difference” there is between religious myths and fairy tales and one I think applies to many things considered to be “fairy tales” - instead of myths (trying to tease out the possibly artificial distinction / bridge the apparent divide) - is that fairy tales don’t have Gods and Goddesses in them, as such - the Gods and Goddesses they have appear as Other Creatures, through other creatures, and while it may never be explained who they “really” are, most likely if it is explained they are depicted as a Pure Fairy.
I feel like it is simply a matter of recognizing the Pure Fairy in everyone, in everything, beneath the exteriors and attitudes and hurts and conflicts and aggressions, to the gentler and blissful expressions instead.
I always feel like I fall in love with girls who have this Fairy quality, for whatever reason, so much that it seems gloriously obvious. It always inspires me to make more art - one reason I love Gaga so much and feel bad I’ve been “away” from her so long (“you’ve got to show Juan that I’m not his lucky charm!” Sister Patrille just said - earlier on Gidget her dad said “The woman is clairvoyant!” and the woman replied “The woman is a woman” - it’s the Feminine, too, whatever that is, in respect to being more fairy-like, again something we all have / are part of and we and the whole world benefit from us discovering more of it.)
I’m ready to end this interlude and get back to really writing this about Gaga, actually trying to reconnect with her, other little monsters, and our art - and back to my own art. I will have to write these faster and really seeking that goal but I know I can do it - after all this “breakdown” for months I feel like I am at some kind of foundation to actually build something beautiful again.
Plus I feel like it’s okay to be in love again, like I really am In Love with someone who could, can still somehow be In Love with me - and that, the shared world, is the best and most immediate magic, the Open Path to fairyland. Otherwise it’s everywhere, twisting through everything, and sometimes just needs a new way to look at things.
I was going to mention how this resembles Engaged Buddhism, applying non-attachment to staying engaged with the world and it’s problems - which I learned a little bit about in college but thought it sounded presumptuous that there was too much concern for buddhism being actually detached from the world and ignoring the problems “outside” the community. But the situation in Myanmar, the genocide perpetrated by buddhists, shows how evil can infect any belief that gets twisted by this world instead of twisting this world into the fairy world, the true goal of all belief.
We’re all different people and respond to all sorts of beliefs but the Best Beliefs are the ones that restore us to the natural harmonious world of nature and magic, the Fairy World - is what I call it but call it Heaven on Earth or Nirvana or whatever you like that means the best thing possible - but not “later” or conditionally, available to all, always, entreating us to rejoin it, express it, share it with others.
I like pointing out how we can notice magic everywhere, in media, social media, art and nature. I’m so grateful and pleased to have new friends from work to interact with and feel connection and acceptance with, especially since I didn’t have that for the last decade at work. It reminds me how much natural magic exists between people, even people who don’t think about things in magical terms (“the way I do”, I should say - everything IS magic and all thinking is magical thinking, of one kind or another, whether people recognize it or not - just becomes more magical if you recognize it.)
There was the idea, an internet rumor from old false prophecy, that the world would end today - I looked it up on wikipedia and it didn’t deserve it’s own blog edition - but it did affect the world, even made the news that people in earthquake and hurricane disasters recently were taking it “more seriously” and spreading the rumor - it was the silliest notion about a planet four times the size of earth crashing into us. But I like to see the magical truth in everything, even outright lies like this, because there are connections between Everything - and there is a major conjunction of planets today (possibly why they chose today, who cares?) But I do like to think of the world changing in such a major way - for good -that it IS the end of the world as we know it and we will finally ALL feel fine (“Grandma we finally won!” the girl on the Great Call commercial said as I wrote this.)
The way people can enter a mass hysteria to expect something bad is understandable, especially during disasters - but think about what that says about how “disastrous” our “ordinary” lives are that we can and often do conceptualize all sorts of Apocalyptic Wasteland - but why is it so hard for us to imagine, why do we have so few examples, of an Apocalyptic Wonderland?
When are we going to have a mass hysteria that everything is about to turn Incredibly Fantastic? What kinds of occurrences need to transpire to get the world into that kind of mood? Those are the things I want to help make happen.
The last thing I want to say is that “we” make the world as magical as we allow ourselves - I’ve been “reducing” my focus to all these events, etc, instead of crafting the world, magically, with stories. I’m the only one holding myself back in this way - I’m the only one holding the whole world back in THIS particular way. I want to stop putting these off until they become crazy long but also put them aside so I am doing my other writing, my fairy tales, first - and finally write my nonfiction book about Oz-Gaga magic, too. But for now I want to do some small, fun projects that are easy to complete - I’m also so grateful from my friend I met at work who is drawing a comic I wrote, i can’t express all the benefit I feel around it, I’m so excited and want to make more myself and with him, too, if he wants.
There’s so much I want to do and it becomes so easy if I just remember the magic on the “other side” calling me to do it, the wonderful transformations that occur from going for it, and forgetting the excuses and fears from “this side” that get in the way. The same way I tell the world “Just Try it!” when they say Peace and Love can never be done, won’t rule the world - let it happen in your own life helps you believe in it for the world and the “separate worlds” magically unite, almost on their own - and we realize it’s just some bad beliefs, ideas, and misconceptions we hold that have ever kept us all apart, all along.
We have so many fairies, in each other, ourselves, to learn from and connect with - I (you) just have to resist the tendencies of my language to control conversations or convince others of “my view” and be open to the possibility of Our View emerging as a brand new, immediate window, doorway to Fairyland. We don’t have to always fall in love with each other when we make these fairy connections but we could at least get way more into magic through them.
And in the same way the “disputes” between countries can be seen, without taking sides, with compassion for both, as opportunities to find new ways to solve problems, with the greater the problem requiring the more creative solution. It’s not a “new” idea but still requires more imagination to say “Why not get rid of ALL nuclear weapons and nuclear power, too?” - and that would solve the Nuclear War problem and many other problems along the way.
Magic is so interconnected - fairies are everywhere and thrive on connections, communication - it will naturally be the solution to many different problems all at once (“Often in the same location, on the same day” the Kaiser Permanente lady said) You look for the magical solution to one thing, the most brave and creative path you can take, and find it will solve completely different and previously “unrelated” problems as well - because it reveals the connections that make everything relative.
Love is the best foundation for everything and what grows out of love will crumble and replace the things built on hate. Knowing this will happen and letting it happen in ourselves is the best way to suggest it to others (Morticia Addams suggested the word “suggest” to me by saying “What a wonderful suggestion.”) and it catches on between us until everyone feels their inclusion and part of it and we can shed our hurt, hurtful, hurting shells that hurt people.
No comments:
Post a Comment