Self isolation and a new project
So, no pressure for us writers, then. I am using the time to write, which I love, and expect you’re continuing to __________, __________, ________ (don’t read on until you’ve mentally inserted your own private passions here.) But, like many, I want to master new skills: so I’m using an enforced isolation to get over my bugbears about technology.
Confronted by a new computer programme, I am like a rabbit in a car headlights: catatonic. Well, that’s stressful and frustrating. But a part of me also finds it fascinating to realise how the self-image (including parts donated by family whilst still in single figures) can be absurdly self-limiting all through life. And one’s own or cultural prejudices all feed into this.
We all see our talents as special, and our areas of lack as somehow less important, less worthy of interest. Often they are severely arts/science based. Ask any mathematician how ‘the artistic set’ view their skills to see them bristle. Think of the Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper, physicist, sneering at geologists, ‘the rock people.’
I believe in natural talents, and I am in awe of genuine genius. I don’t believe that everyone can do everything. As a Druid, I think that we should foster our talents, rather than flog away at less congenial tasks: within reason! I love reading, but I wonder how the young me felt about the process of learning to read and write? We have to master the basics to live the life that will be satisfying to us. So to have a hang up about basic skills simply because they presented themselves past the time of one’s active learning is self-limiting and foolish. You can probably remember elderly relatives who persisted in calling the radio the wireless; the stereo, the radiogram. It was indicative of a mindset that would not move with the times, and, as a Druid, I’m not that person. I remember archive technologies – the cassette, the video player – and mastered them with no problems; and I can set up a new TV and use the internet. When I talk about ‘the wireless’, it is an affectionate nod to long distant relatives, and purely for my own amusement.
So, back to the internet. People can master simple skills - and I’m just another person. King Lear’s been written, so time to get down to my own challenge.
I don’t need to be Antonioni, I just need to learn to cope with imovies, for my own satisfaction. I don’t need to be George Martin with millions of dollars of equipment, I just need to make a simple recording.
What I do need to do is reframe the way I look at all this stuff.
That’s because mastering these processes requires me to access the eagerness and enquiry of the young child to find it all fascinating. And interestingly, it’s the harnessing of that measure of enthusiasm and its subsequent emotional response that is the basis for all magical transformation. Living Druidry, to turn me from techno-phobe to –phile. Now that will be real magic!