lonecity.com

I’ve always had a tendancy to stand back from things.  This tendancy has kept me from doing alot in my life.  Last week I blogged about wanting to go on a cruise.  It is still, and probably always will be on my mind.  Unless I hit the lottery there’s no chance of that wish becoming a reality.  BTW, I don’t gamble…  There’s many things I wish I had done and many I wish I hadn’t.  Still this tendancy to hold back isn’t always a bad thing.  I am able to see things from an outside perspective in almost any group argument because I never get in the middle.  I suppose I would make a good judge or arbiter.  This outside perspective often falls upon other things besides arguments. 

What prompted this blog entry was nothing more than a few second clip of video I stumbled across.  Prior to now I have admitted that I am an Anime fan.  I would go so far as to say I am in love with the japanese culture.  The particular clip that caught my eye and set of this train of thought was from Memiors of a Geisha.  The clip itself was nothing special.  Someone had taken a song and mixed it with video from the film.  Poorly I might add…  Where this outside perspective came in was thinking about how beautiful some of the things that come from the geisha lifestyle are. 

There is no doubt in my mind that the abuses suffered by young girls who are or were sold into the geisha life are terrible.  There is also little doubt that in the modern world such abuse will eventually be forced to its end.  As society grows so does communication and eventually outrageous acts will be seen and prevented before they can take seed.  On the surface this is a good thing.  Now I know you are thinking there is no way that ending abuse is a bad thing thing, and you are right.  However deep below the surface we as a society will lose something along with it. 

When you put a piece of wood on a lathe and turn it you create a representation of the balance in all things.  If there is an ugly scar on one side of the wood and you cut in to remove it, you inevitably cut away a beautiful piece that lies just on the other side.  This balance exists within all things.  It is the principal of yin and yang and more fundimentally equilibrium.   The force behind this balance controls electricity and the very nature of the universe.  The balance of energy between positive and negative lies at the very hart of the atomic structure that makes up every fibre of our existence.

I’m not saying its right to beat a troop of young girls into geisha’s.  I am saying the practice once extinguished will leave behind a hollow shell where once a great beauty resided.  Sure there will probably be for decades or even century’s woman who proclaim to carry on the geisha tradition.  They may keep the face paint and practice the story but in the end the true soul will pass on.  The heart of the truest beauty is bound inseperably to the pain and suffering of those enslaved.

I don’t always see things from the outside perspective but on occasion I have glimpsed it.  This intangable bond between beauty and pain can be seen or rather heard quite clearly in the greatest of music.  Think of all the great artists who have died from drug overdoses and suicides.  There is some pain deep within all of them that drove them to their eventual end.  It is at the height of great pain and the deepest point of suffering that the music begins to resonate with the hearts of so many.  Without this struggle an artist’s work becomes bland and falls into the medium. 

I could name many examples of artists who at their debut had a tremendous hit and upon gaining the fame and fortune of a big record they became content.  The money or the fame settled this deep pain within their hearts and their new music lost its edge.  Those who continue to constantly top the charts seem all to be plagued by drug addiction or some other problem that simply cannot be solved with fortune and fame.  Even going back as far as Mozart and Beethoven the pattern of suffering resonating with artistic prowess holds true.  This balance I speak of resounds through all forms of art.  Van Gough was in so much inner turmoil he was lopping off body parts.

I leave this post not with my idea for a solution, but rather my prediction for the future.  As time goes on parents will no longer be able to beat their children into ballet dancers and pianists.  School counselors will be so well equipped that they will be able to solve the problems of teens who want to drop out, get high, and play music.  In the end society will advance so much that nothing of value will ever happen.   The eventuality will be the extinction of mankind through sheer boredom, or our one in a billion shot at a reset through a catastrophic global event that devolves us back to the stone age.

There is no such thing as a superhero without an equivalent villain.  While plenty of darkness still prevails in the world today I have to wonder. Is it truly right to eliminate it?  What motiviates and inspires us to do more, to create, to be great?  Necessity is the mother of invention.  If something doesn’t bother you, you will never find the power to change it.  Perhaps most of all this post describes patriotism.  The united states was born upon labor of prisoners and slaves.  The evils that must have existed at its birth have fostered the fighting spirit of this great country.  Unfortunately the seed that will broach its eventual destruction has been sewn in the fabric from the very beginning.  This seed is the opposite of innovation and insiration.  This poison seed is known as religion. For no other thing desires more to find the perfect balance.  An end to evil that will truly bring about the apocolypse.