Creativity, Reality, Paradigms

Reality is neither epistemological absoluteness or the illusion of maya described in Yogic texts. Reality is agreement.

 A paradigm is a system or abstract entity set in place to inform modes of being and patterns of thought

 Creativity is the informing, adjusting, or the participation in reality that can bring about new paradigms

Paradigms are created through shifts in reality. Reality is altered through creativity or new patterns introduced into the field that become agreed upon. The masses think of reality as fact or as a fixed actuality versus the simplicity of agreement. Reality is agreement. When you agree with someone you have reality. When millions or even billions of people agree on something it seems to become a type of unalterable reality because of the sheer quantity of agreement.  The brilliance of Thoreau, Ghandi, and Tolstoy was their advice to withdraw agreement to structures that were enslaving or alienating as a form of revolt … as a means of reality change.  When you withdraw agreement you change reality. When you agree you create reality. When you create you inform reality and beckon agreement in either the negative or positive sense

A Road

this road is bumpy, rocky, dirty, even dangerous

but it is surrounded by the most beautiful lava fields you ever saw

and in the summer when the midnight sun is momentarily fading

it looks as if those fields are melting into a black ooze

 

i never knew where that road started or where it went, probably deep

but I always liked that road, I felt free on that road, I felt hope on that road

even with the dirt and the rocks and the bumps it felt right, it felt like home

now, even on this paved city street, I still travel that road

Words of Wisdom

I attempted in my play, Words of Wisdom, to construct a story in which the exploration of several themes could be presented to the audience in a subtle, minimalist, and humorous way. The play is: a social critique, a very dark comedy, an investigation into the implications of schizophrenia and mental illness as a subject, dialogue that is phenomenological and existential in nature, and a story of finding truth in a place surrounded by the worst kind of lies.

An up and coming theatre director in England recently read the play and we had a long talk in regards to both his experience reading it and my process writing it. He made an interesting comment to me when he said something to the effect, “For me, more than anything … the play is about the deconstruction of the main character’s dream. Everything else comes from that”  I agreed. 

If you haven’t read the premise of the play, it is about a young man who seems to be in the midst of some kind of schizoid episode. Whether or not he actually is becomes entirely up to the audience/reader to determine. In any event, the main character is terrorized by a recurring dream in which he is playing chess against a machine … a robot … or some kind of mechanized entity that continues to beat him game after game and … directly after his king his taken, the machine points a gun at him in which he is subsequently startled back into waking consciousness. The terror of the dream stems not necessarily from the gun, but  from the fact that the face of the machine is never actually visible, only its body, which the main character describes as “cold, machine parts, … unforgiving.”  So in essence you have for a dream: the continual loss of a specific game from a specific mechanized entity that results in the potential extinguishing of the dreamer’s life. The symbolization of the dream has many implications and can be interpreted in a variety of ways. But for me, the chess board being the game where the drama unfolds is particularly exciting. 

I was playing in a cafe in downtown Reykjavik the other day and a friend, snapped this picture when I wasn’t looking. I thought it captured in some way the dream sequence that I described in my play … minus the robot of course.

Three Stages of Paradigms

The first stage of a paradigm consists of the breaking away from the old paradigm through the establishment of its ontology and what specific axioms, rules, and means of fulfillment will be in play as the paradigm begins the process of actualization.

 

The second stage is the ‘peak period’ in which the evolution of the paradigm itself  reaches a crescendo and integrates and assimilates forces that have joined with it or opposed it. It’s reality becomes more solidified, more “real” and apparent for observation. The initial postulation expresses itself to have its intended effect.

 

The third stage is the slow disintegration and ultimate death which translates into the first stage of a new paradigm. This stage can be stressful, confusing, even tedious but also a huge opportunity of creative potential and innovation. This is the time in which new ideas are desperately needed and wanted. 

 

Ibsen Quote

I am thinking of the few, the scattered few amongst us, who have absorbed new and vigorous truths. Such men stand, as it were, at the outposts, so far ahead that the compact majority has not yet been able to come up with them; and there they are fighting for truths that are too newly-born into the world of consciousness to have any considerable number of people on their side as yet.   -Enemy of the People, Henrik Ibsen

 

 

Reykjavik

What we will do

become free from all forces of false unification. Differentiate. See the simultaneous duality and non. think, feel, and act freely … spontaneity over rigidity … plan for the future over considering the past. develop consciousness intensely. withdraw all allegiance from structures that do not serve the evolution of the soul. prefer what is creative, positive, transcendent over the mechanical, negative and immanent. movement of the physical body and thought itself are to exist in a state of fluidity, …  flows versus ridges, motion versus stations. think like a revolutionary but never resort to violence. create something and then not have it. have something and realize it can only be temporary. understand the individual is a product of God. and the world is a product of the individual. new paradigms are created by conscious beings not through random forces. realize that life is only a game and any game needs an opponent. be thankful for the people who oppose your ideas and intentions. they are the fun you have been looking for but couldn’t see until now. 

-Brian Culkin

Being, Doing, Having

 

HAITI

Both of my plays available in paperback

Here are the links to amazon.com for the paperbacks:

No One Leaves This Place Dead:       http://www.amazon.com/One-Leaves-This-Place-Dead/dp/0615602479/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335018805&sr=8-1

Words of Wisdom :  http://www.amazon.com/Words-Wisdom-play-about-alienation/dp/0615624014/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335018906&sr=1-1