End Times Bard

I’ve been thinking about what my next pivot will be, even though I haven’t quite finished my current graceful career pirouette.  Playing with the idea of becoming an End Times Bard.  I’ll go around telling stories and singing songs about how wonderful it is to live in this time of uncertainty and change. I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but this is the gist of it: a communal creative processing of these fuck-nutty times.  I wish I knew how to play the lute but I’ll definitely wear some puffy sleeves and a big feather in my cap…

I got this End Times Bard idea when someone read my book, The Rage, and was inspired to write a song about it.  It took me months to work up the courage to listen to the song, and I was right to hesitate, because listening to it flattened me. Which was amazing and taught me something.

The Rage was my personal story told in a metaphor or allegory. To have someone respond to it in kind, via metaphor set to music (which is a whole other level of emotional expression) felt like I had been seen, heard, and understood in a profound way, one that I hadn’t even known was possible.  I’ve spent many years thinking of writing as a solitary endeavor, and up to a point it is.   But no story is created in a vacuum, and no story fulfills its potential until it is shared.  Creative expression as solely the milieu of elitist, genius, loners is a capitalist myth.  We all need to express ourselves and respond to each other in art.  It’s a matter of survival.  The loss of shared creative expression is part of the reason we’re in the scary place we find ourselves today.  

Big Time art is fine--the stuff in general release movie theaters and well-known art museums--but it confuses us into thinking that’s the only way to do art.  We’ve lost the art of everyday art.  Of sitting around a fire and telling stories or singing songs.  Of having drawing and music be legitimate pastimes even if you’re not making a living from it. Of course, that’s the rub.  We all need to make a living and in order to do that we have to sacrifice the time and energy that would otherwise go into artistic/creative pursuits.  

But how about we change that?  I’m hearing more and more people say the 40+ hour work week is a joke. Rather than greater productivity, it leads to workaholism, burn out, and stress-related health issues. Add to that the infinite options provided by consumerism, globalism, and technology, the pressure to do more and be more is insane. And there’s nothing to balance it out, nothing to bring us back into our feet on the earth, our bodies moving through space, the trees above us and the grass below, our imaginations, and our communities--all the other people having this ridiculous profound experience of being alive.  We’ve lost the outlet of communal expressions of emotion that singing, dancing, writing, reading, cooking, gardening, etc can provide.

Obviously we haven’t lost them completely.  There are huge industries built around gourmet cooking, gardening, self care, exercise, etc.  But these things are viewed as leisure activities, available only if you can afford them.  They’re not considered survival essentials. After the year we’re having, though, everyone on this planet needs help dealing with trauma, and some of the most effective ways of doing this are through moving our bodies, releasing sound, reclaiming stories, processing imagery, and strengthening community connections. These things need to be available to everyone, not just those who can afford leisure. 

We all need the experience of sharing our stories--as a written word, a song, a dance, a sob of grief, a belly laugh of joy--and having someone sing it back to us.  Or draw it back to us.  Or weep it back to us.  To know that someone has seen and heard and been touched by our experiences and truths, and to be touched, moved, and inspired in turn.   

So find your way to the fireside, and bring your best bad poem.  I’ll be there waiting for you, lute in hand.