Nichols Great Book of Bob eBook

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9627615-7-7
Verlag: Mountain Muse Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten

The Great Book of Bob is a unified collection of humorous, soul-wrenching, and harshly honest tales and thoughts gleaned from a lifelong love story-stories of a poet's love of sunrises, poetic epiphanies, laughter, and for the soul mate of his life. And the best part about it, it's not some icky-sticky, lovey-poo bunch of hearts and flowers. It's hard-edged wonder and real reason for all of us to be glad to be alive. Robert Nichols tells his stories that we may each realize the significance of our own. He describes his work as: Stories and rants and impassioned blessings for the soul-the wild-eyed, bliss-bludgeoned decades of an American poet... And all of it in a book about you, Dear Reader. YOU!

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nichols, Robert

Leseproben

Why All This Talk about Art?

Usage note: I tend to use the terms God and Gods interchangeably. This is neither careless typing nor ambivalent theology. It’s the way I sense the Ultimate. There are nuances of need and exaltation appropriate to both singular and plural concepts of the Infinite somewhere in a spectrum from a-theism to mono-theism to poly-theism. It’s all just ‘ism’ anyway. Don’t worry about it.

Before I set you off on the longer journey of this work, I’d better explain why the Arts and the Gods and matters of spirit and soul are so often recurrent in the babble of this Bob.

The answer: all else is naught but for the depth of the Arts, the Gods and matters of spirit and soul.

Okay, so you’re a God-is-dead existentialist or a diehard pragmatist or a bah-humbug atheist. Hey, that’s fine with me. I’m not here to preach you to salvation or damn you to hell. I’d be the last to be so presumptuous as to butt into your matters theological—you’ll see. Read the book.

The following is an essay / lecture I delivered to Lary Kleeman’s 6th period creative writing class at Arapahoe High School in Littleton, Colorado, on May 17, 2005. The class consisted of a delightful bunch of seniors just a week from graduation. What a joy it was to rattle their nimble brains with the best of my nonsense. What fun we had—I even played my banjo. Maybe when this book comes out on CD I’ll plunk a tune or two for you.

Anyway, here it is:

ART!

I’ve traveled a long way to come to this class today—it’s taken me over sixty years to get here.

During the past few months in this creative writing class, Mr. Klee- man, with tools of the craft and inspiration for the art, has endeavored to show you the way.

Today, perhaps, I may help show you the reason.

I’m going to talk about art.

Art: as in poems, songs, images, you know—the whole soul-speaking swath of expression, the marvel and mess of humanity’s craving reach for communication. I’m not talking about the commerce of galleries (“I love your work, really... but could you do something in a mauve?”) or the gimmick-and-scandal publishing houses or the hum-rattle hate chant, waltz-my-granny, opus dope-us grab-bag of the tune-me-in mega-mass conspiracy of Radio Un-free America. Not the silly filth or the guts-and-murder, film-(and bubbly banter)-at-eleven babble and insult of the Great Tube.

No. I couldn’t tell you much about the business of selling one’s soul. I’m not so good at it. Maybe it is big “A” Art I’m talking about. Or not. I don’t need to know. Whatever it is, I’ve dedicated my entire life to its moody madness, God-glimpsing wonder, and mind-wrenching frustration. I’ll tell you about it.

Take this with you and all else is optional:

Art is not a hobby!

It’s like trying to keep a thousand-pound fire dragon in a bird cage. You don’t trivialize the creative force of the universe—you can get hurt.

You take a class in creative writing or water colors or pottery. You buy an oboe. You get season tickets to the symphony. You blow a couple hundred bucks on bad seats for the Toe Jam Johnnie concert. You smile-nod to the Muses and then get on with your quest for an MBA and its promise of the American dream.

Whoopee.

Wrong-o, my friends. You don’t get off so easily.

Deny the true depths of art: the whack-your-ear-off sunflowers, Ode to Joy shout for glory, the “rage, rage against the dying of the light” truths of life and death and lust and the electric-sweet, tickle-silly poems of thrilling love and oh-so-sad songs of grief—Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, 9-0-2-1-whatever Dylan regressions from raging streams to the mumbling marshes; once you lose Steinbeck’s Pearl or Pearl Bailey or Pearl Jam or even Minnie Pearl, you may just end up drool-muttering the nursing home knit-and-purl natter of the empty flesh—deny the true depths of art and you deny your own soul.

So... one more absolute:

Art is not optional; Art is required!

Art may well be the only element of human existence

that has a shot at saving our culture

from being taken over by stupid people.

Think about it. Art requires focus. Casual listening makes elevator music of Rachmaninoff; at a glance, what could be duller than a bunch of Monet’s water lilies; at a skim, e.e. cummings’ poems are but hodgepodge nonsense. Art requires passionate attention, intelligence, and openness. People attuned to such a degree of heightened awareness are less likely to be duped by the sound bite, bumper-sticker mentality of mass culture. No wonder the big guys are taking the arts out of public education—easier to rule a bunch of stump-dumb, media-lobotomized fools than an enlightened society of wild-minded creative dynamos. Right?

You are here, you are alive, you have amazing potential. Anything less than art-deep involvement is a terrible waste of fleeting and precious time.

The Levels

I’d better tell you about The Levels—four of them anyway. There are at least six but #’s 5 and 6 are out there on the wind-swept steppes of my Spirit Walkabout and... believe me, 1 - 4 will suffice for today.

In meditation of chant and breath, I visit Levels of being each day. It’s just my system of finding some place and purpose in the Universe. The first three are so obvious that we tend to assume they operate like the autonomic nervous system in the body—heartbeat, breath, etc.—on their merry own. Perhaps, but to take this spark of life we live and heat it up until we have a shot at lighting the fuse of any kind of a cosmic firecracker, we need to begin by consciously focusing on the mundane.

Infinity rests upon the soles of your feet!

Level 1:

Say your name out loud. That’s it. In sound and intonation, filtered through the years of your experience, you have just uttered the utterly unique moniker of your grinning, scowling, fumbling mug-of-self-identity. Sure, there are thousands of people with the same name, but saying your name makes it yours alone. This summer I’m going to have a huge gathering of a thousand Bobs—not like the Bob Festival at Avon, Colorado, where real Bobs converge from around the globe to celebrate blatant Bob-ness. No, this is a much more select group. Not just any Bobs, you know. Only ones hovering in potentiality about the core of yours truly. It’s a Heisenberg thing. Yes, this grand gala will be held at the front corner window table at Einstein’s Bagels on South Broadway. A thousand-and-one Bobs—we’ll have a cup of coffee.

Level 2:

How do we ennoble this sack of slosh and vapor, undulating tube and flexing pump, he-who-smelt-it-dealt-it flesh and bone and blood and bile that is the earthly host of our identity? Easy. Just ignore the biological engine and move on to the greater physical realm of which you are intricately a part. Garner your stature from the great mountains, your respiration from the rhythmic pounding surf, your strength from the rage and blessing of storms. Breathe through your heart all manner of earth and sky. Be flesh, be strong, be real.

Level 3:

Deeply inhale the teasing dance, the whispered truth, the Energy of the subtle Universe through your eyes—in and out, in and out. Feel the air as it encircles your brain. Realize there is nothing there.

Nothing.

Doesn’t that just crack you up?

Nothing but the elusive concept of mind. Wow.

Exhale the giddy truth of that and be smart—really smart. Smart like homing pigeons and particle physicists and poets who don’t drink them- selves to death. Smart like your best teacher and like your mother and smart like the impossible complexity of Earth’s Deluxe-sized chemistry set. Smart like the journey of starlight that arcs the eons and twinkles in the night-sky-beauty affixed in the gaze of your pupil-straining orbs. Become smart.

Okay, you’ve got identity, flesh, and mind, now for the leap to soul—the Land of Art.

Level 4:

What is it about Van Gogh’s sunflowers, Beethoven’s tunes, Elvis’ pelvis that shrugs the dust-to-Dustbuster futility of the cycle of flesh, and lights and lilts and excites the centuries?

“That would be, ‘What is soul?’ Alex.”

You don’t need a theological basis to recognize that you have a soul. It doesn’t hurt, but all believers and non-believers and duh-you-got-me dudes are welcome at this tent meeting. Come on in.

The soul is that part of self that transcends dirt and sings on beyond your three score and ten.

Let me give you a bit of an example.

And I’ll tell you, this is not easy—it shudders clear to the core of me—but if art doesn’t ruin you a bit, you’re just dabbling. Right?

My mother died nineteen years ago.

I was out at Quantico National Cemetery a few weeks ago just standing there as the sun rose and smeared through the mist and wooded acres beyond. At my feet lay a flat slab that said:

Hattie M.

wife of

CWO Robert Nichols

Almost crying. Not just sad that she was gone, but still empty for the loss of her, and at the same time, nearly tearful at the...