The Great Work

[Bu🤠ns]

Hey Folks,

Well I just got back from hangin out with Dok and Daruko tonight.  We had a pretty good time both are very cool folks.

Although the events of the evening are rather inconsequential what I want to talk about is what I got out of it.  It's Wednesday right, I'm going out on a Wednesday and I think to myself, "AH FUCK, I'm gonna go out and have to drag my ass out of bed in the morning for the next two days and-and-and...."  Obviously, it's a negative program or whatever but I have a feeling most of us probably run the goddamn thing more often than we would like.  

My dad and I were talking the other day and I revealed that I've been in a rut. He tells me I should find something to do that I really enjoy doing.. He asks, "Whaddya like?"  

I don't know.

I like reading sometimes. Computers.  I enjoy putting googly eyes on clever and interesting places and going on Postergasms.  Playing music.  But none of these ideas really seemed to really 'solve' my rut.  

Tonight I realize, maybe it's not really the thing in itself that I need to do but rather make the thing in itself something I enjoy doing.

It's been said before, I realize. It's something all of you know already.  

The problem is, it's really not.

PD does projects.  I've heard some of you from time to time talk about how it's tough to organize something.  Even I've occasionally felt that I should be contributing more.  I mean I think most of us agree we have a pretty sweet thing going here.  I know that I've never been surrounded by a more creative group of people.  

You're all incredible Artists.

You see, THAT IS IT.  THAT is The Great Work. But it's nothing that you should do.  THAT is something that will happen when it NEEDS to happen.  It seems to me that it's worked this way all along.  When it occurs to you to be creative--to make what you are doing into your Art, thats when it happens.

This is the point when the other artists will notice and say, "Shit! I also have something to offer!" And it just gets bigger.  Each of us with our own little doodle or mural making it the way we want it.

And finally, when it's all over, what will be left is this incredible piece of ... of.... I don't even know what to call it. But I have a feeling its going to be incredible.

Or Kill Me.

[Requia ☣]

Dok and Daruko?  At the same time?  How much blood was there?

[Bu🤠ns]

Only a small puddle, suprisingly.

[memy]

Whatever the Great Work may be, you can count on me to supply as many deformed skull drawings as necessary.

Gourd knows I feel like I don't do enough.

[Bu🤠ns]

Whatever the Great Work may be, you can count on me to supply as many deformed skull drawings as necessary.

Gourd knows I feel like I don't do enough.

[Cramulus]

maybe this is my flawed human nature speaking right here

but what really fired me up is when I get jealous


I talked to an old buddy from high school. He was kind of a stoner, I didn't have very high expectations of him. But it turns out that after he graduated high school, he joined the military, fought in several different countries, got back to the states and decided he was going to cross the country... so he biked from east to west. Then moved to Bermuda, where he's living like a king and running a small company.

I see 26 year old kids on the news who have already changed the world, and will continue to do so

I meet people my age who are already half-millionaires

my girlfriend's best friend is in Hillary Clinton's think tank to solve the energy crisis

and the shmucks I hang out with are hung up on whether the next thing in their netflix que should be Thundercats or Transformers.  


but yeah man, it makes me want to go do something great

and I don't know what


I've been hung up on Crowley's idea that we can somehow know our True Will.

So I've been asking myself every day, "What is my purpose? Why am I here?"


I'm just going to keep asking, but I'm also open to suggestion!

[hooplala]

I've been feeling much the same for a while... like a serious two year rut, no joke.  Funnily enough I came to the same conclusion as Burns did, just this past Monday... ONE DAY AFTER MEETING ROGER.

Coinkydink?

[LMNO]

I have five (zomg) big projects I'm trying to work through, but life keeps getting in the way.




The problem is, it's that very life that allows me the possibility to do the projects.


It's a frustrating balance of sustainability and creativity.

[Adios]

I think I lost my job at just the right time. Since I got fired I have taken the time to start my book. Not that it will be a Great Work™, but it will be MY Great Work™.

Maybe that's just good enough.

[Richter]

I wouldn't say I have any "Great" work in mind.  I'm concerned with always making better work.  Whether that's crafting, writing, hitting thigns with a sword, or supporting and inspiring greater creativity or deviancy in others, as long as it's constnat learning and improvement, that's what I'm after.

[Kai]

I have lots of Great Works. Sometimes they are Humanities, like pieces of mythical fiction and recordings of musics. Sometimes they are Science.

Right now, I just (as in five minutes ago) finished a poster for an international conference in Santa Fe. It summarizes one third of my thesis, which is my current Great Work. Of the other 2/3s, 1/3 is finished, a couple pages in my notebook. 1/3 is not yet completed. Combined together, they will make progress on a problem of insect systematics that people have been struggling with for the past 70 years.

My next great work will be within a group of insects called the web spinning fungus gnats. It doesn't sound particularly charismatic, but the genus I plan to revise are beautiful, folks. Long slender legs and antennae, very delicate looking, with glassine wings bearing striking patterns, and the larvae literally fish in the air for fungal spores, with multiple lines of sticky proteins. No one has worked on this group in North american for a very long time. The primary work was done 100 years ago, and nothing has been written on them since the 70s. Eventually I want to master the whole of the Keroplatidae in North America. And that's just ONE of the Great Works I have planned. Creativity in science means pushing hard to see things in a different light, to understand what no one else has understood before. In systematics it is the reciprocal illumination of evidence upon evidence. Every light in the dark adds to our understanding of the tangled bank.

[P3nT4gR4m]

There are people who genuinely aspire to greatness and there are people who think they do but really can't be arsed. At least that's the conclusion I came to shortly before I removed myself voluntarily from the latter category. Fame and fortune and a dedicated legion of followers, whilst appealing to me, doesn't really flip my switch as much as kicking back with some mates and a few beers and playing tekken, when taken into consideration the ammount of beers and playstation games I'd have to sacrifice in order to achieve it.

Does this make my existence and experience any less valid than Bill Gates or Mahatma Ghandi?

As far as I can work out - only if I let it.

[Bu🤠ns]

@Cram: When I wrote this I considered the doodle vs. mural metaphor.  It occurs to me that we can't all paint murals and chances are most people will only ever doodle.  I don't think this is such a bad thing.  Yogi Berra once said something like, We can't all be heroes, some of us have to sit on the sidewalk and clap as they go by.  I used to think why would i want to be on the sidewalk--fuck that noise but now it seems that its not really the size that counts but that you actually do SOMETHING!  The heroes might be going by, but we might, happen to have some sidewalk chalk if you catch my drift.  

@Hoopla: Dude, I haven't even fully processed everything yet.

@LMNO: EXACTLY.  I'm realizing that that balance is part of the medium itself.  That it's about using what's going on here and now, our own unique 'stuffs' as a part the Art.

@Hawk: Its what you must do--and it's perfect.

@Richter: You got it, man.

@Kai: I'd even add what I've learn from you over the years as another one.  Everybody brings something to the table in their own unique way and I think that's what we need.  

@Pent: For a while i was a bit obsessed with T.S. Elliot's The Hollow Men where he compares hollow men with men with 'direct eyes'  in the same manner you're talking about.  I used to think that I had to do something huge and extraordinary to not be "hollow" but I think it's less about that and more about not letting anybody get in the way of doing what each of us must do.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Gotta admit I'm no believer in "must"

"must" turns into philosophical quicksand real quick and leads directly to notions of divine adjudicators and manifest destiny and a whole lot of other bullshit that I'll do my best to disprove just by the way I live my life - if god ever beats me in a square fight I'll recant, til then - fuck him. Fuck destiny, karma, true will and all of the other bullshit that goes along with it. Strikes me a vast percentage of the human race measures greatness using all the wrong instruments.

[Adios]

Gotta admit I'm no believer in "must"

"must" turns into philosophical quicksand real quick and leads directly to notions of divine adjudicators and manifest destiny and a whole lot of other bullshit that I'll do my best to disprove just by the way I live my life - if god ever beats me in a square fight I'll recant, til then - fuck him. Fuck destiny, karma, true will and all of the other bullshit that goes along with it. Strikes me a vast percentage of the human race measures greatness using all the wrong instruments.

I tend to agree. My book is not a must but a want to real bad. It is bringing wildly unexpected contentment. If it becomes a must I may never touch it again.