METHOD IN THE MADENESS
Out of the blue…
Out of the blue…
Out of the blue & sun-lit ground…
forms branch, weave, exchange…
Out of the bod …
inspirations rain, pour up in fountains, flow in & out through forms–like water, breath, blood, light, music….
Thanks to a short attention span, most of what’s experienced, done, found, thought, realized, said, even sketched & written simply evaporates into passing clouds & atmosphere. In our case, much disappears into flash drive memory files (previously into cartons of untranscribed yellow pads), most entries (& even entities) soon forgotten. as rough half-drafts, usually just as well. As with much music made, the prime (& often only) value is found in the making & playing, not in the saving or recording (let alone producing & promoting).
On the other hand, there can also be added value in the sharing. In fact, most value can be amplified & multiplied being shared. (That’s a demonstrable fact.) In many human activities, moreover, sharing, transmission, and/or exchange provide the primary (or even entire) value. Obvious examples include professions like teaching & performing, plus countless personal activities, practically without limits. The value of sharing is already implicit in all communication, transmission of ideas, & community, the primary feature of language spoken & written, dance & all other forms of working together….
Sharing is also the premise of a library, usually a community sharing with itself, individual user with individual contents. That’s so in the Bod Library case as well, although with an added twist &/or wrinkle, derived largely from its limits. , Most libraries get their contents from countless sources & providers, however. By supplying most of its own contents (available nowhere else), & housing its own makings, Bod Library becomes not just a creative center, a place for inviting, inspiring, & improving the material it ends up holding, but self-creative, generating its own “space” & identity, at once virtual & imaginary.
Although Bod Library’s actual physical & digital archives each hold oodles & oodles of self-created materials not available on-line, most of our On-Line content has been created from scratch, fresh, on site, by our resident wizard, Yours Crudely, &/or one of his imaginary friends. And that, i turn, tries to turn a madness into a method. The madness starts with the idea that Yours Crudely’s filing cabinet could double as a whole library worth revisiting by anyone.
The method turns out to be that the library-fiction draws him back (however sporadically), to re-read as if for the first time (thanks to his short attention span), to re-draft & re-edit accordingly, with the possibility that enough returns & improvements leads to something of greater value….
The thanksgiving song Dayenu translates as “It-would-have-been-enough,” repeated as each verse recounts yet another blessing worth gratitude. It can be said in response to a good many human activities–arts, crafts, keen observation, exploration, conversation, exchange…even thought in solitude.
Meaning may be found in the doing, making, playing & sharing, in other words. We can sing dayenu for the blessings of music & language, each layered with values that go on unfolding dimensions. A virtual library can host many modes of human transmission–the arts, sciences, histories, how-to’s, adventures in thought, understanding, language, current events, even the ridiculous.
One might say, If it had only been a temporary ESCAPE, that might have been enough. No one can calculate how much time, effort, cash & credit go into efforts at escape, many with limited or even negative return, even in the land of the free, freak & cheap.
Yet little freer, freakier or cheaper than Bod Library, which in its madness sponsors surprisingly unannounced SPECIAL EVENTS, most notably MINI-GUFFAW LAUGH THERAPY SESSIONS, a few fully backed by their own Foam Finger Guarantees.
As many humorless laugh therapists emphasize, the benefits of laugh therapy do not require anything actually funny, only the laughable practice itself. Just as it’s been shown that intentional smiles can affect mood almost as much as ones naturally produced without pesticides, intentional laughter can promote a sense of well-being, however delusional. Since the delusion can sometimes last years, however, its success rate compares favorably with most pharmaceuticals, yet with far fewer side effects than all but the best-performing sugarless placebos.
All Bod Library staffers, fellows, associates, friends & neighbors claim to have had extensive laugh therapy & potty training before enrolling in the library’s own staff-laugh enhancement delivery system (e.g., “a bell rings & we laugh“). Granted that so long as one’s standards are low enough, you are likely to find things to laugh at, including ourselves, affirming the human condition, which (as everyone now knows) usually stinks.
The more it stinks, the more we need the laughter.
…the escape…the momentary reprieve…with or without a groan in the guffaw, a hee in the haw, a double slop of Murphy’s slaw…a kafka world with fresh kaka… kaka coo-coo, kaka coo-coo…the owl’s calling hoo-hoo-hoo…
~~~~~~~~~~The Mirror-Times-Mirror Re-Re-Re-Review
(A perverse verse might do it, too.)