Three Truths of Art

The Three Truths of Art

You need to get past the mistaken idea

that the measure of success

with your art is money.

The point of all art is to nurture

your own soul and the souls of others

and to improve upon

the beauty of the world.

The purpose of creation, my friend,

is to create.

Art is a beginning,

middle, and end all by itself.

You are creating art for your own well being

and for the nurturing of others.

If your art nourishes your own soul

and the soul of just one other,

that is enough.

All the better if you can make

a little bit while doing it.

There are only three levels

of proficiency in any art;

Insufficient, sufficient,

and OMG! Wow!

If you are an artist, dancer,

writer, or musician

and you've been practicing your work

for four years or longer,

you can take heart in the knowledge

that you passed beyond insufficient

some time back.

Remember you will always be

your own worst critic

and even when you think

your work is half-assed,

others who see it will think

it's great and like it just fine.

When you begin to show

your work around to others,

you'll soon discover that

for every nine people

you show your work to,

three will be completely

indifferent to it,

three won't like it much at all,

and three will think it's wonderful.

Always remember, the only person

you absolutely have to please

is yourself.

Dewey Dirks

Illusions

Illusions

I sat at the table earlier tonight

looking out the open sliding glass door.

A light outside lined up with the door frame

so that when I leaned a certain way,

it appeared to shine on both sides of the frame.

They call this an optical illusion because

the perception of two lights

when there is really only one depends upon

the way your brain-box processes the information

it receives from your two eyes.

Yet, to you the light appears to split into two beams.

For the same reason they say

rainbows are optical illusions because

they aren't really there and you see them only because

your brain-box processes the refraction of light

off of raindrops in a certain way so there appears

to be a beautiful curve of colors off in the distant sky.

The secret my friends is that everything you see around you

all day long every day, are a series of illusions.

Cars and trucks appear to you to be what they are only because

your brain-box perceives them

to have a certain function and do certain things.

Houses appear to be what they are only because we all have

a certain perception that those rectangular enclosures

exist to shelter us and we all agree upon the illusion

that we owe the bank a great deal of money that we must pay

in order to use the house where we live and we each participate

in the further of illusion of pretending the house is ours.

Our physics teaches us that all matter and energy obey

a strange set of laws they call 'quantum mechanics'

and our perception of these quantum events

as well as the perceptions of our measuring instruments

depend on the interaction between the objects being observed

and the brain-boxes of the folks doing the observing.

So, the entirety of the world around us that we inadvertently

think of as 'real' depends on our perceptions in the same way

as the illusions of rainbows

and two beams shining when there is only one light.

Rainbows, lights shining outside your back door,

your car, the mortgage on your house, and everything else

that seems real to your brain-box

are all daydreams we each idly dream

deep within an great illusion,

floating gently in a grand enigma.

Dewey Dirks

Peace

Peace

Most of the people

I've met over the years

have been peace loving humans

who had no desire to kill anyone

but many of them were also children

of their society and the sad truth

of it is that America is a country

that has been militarized

for over seventy years now.

We've long been immersed

in a cultural fog of fear, and wars

small and big, overt or undeclared.

You gotta know countries around the world

can't bomb themselves into peace

and the citizens of many countries

find themselves in the impossible

position of being for wars

and for peace at the same time.

Wake up! Wake up people!

Peace doesn't mean you're going to be

peaceful only until the next time

the talking heads on the wide screen TV

tell you it's time to go exploit, bomb and shoot

the next bunch of people into the ground.

You know exactly what peace means.

Peace is just that; The absence of war.

The distance between

where we are right now

and a peaceful Earth

is not as far as you might think.

Peace, my friends, lays

in the laps of two groups of people.

It resides with a few hundred leaders

around the world who steer the decisions

of the big corporations and countries.

Some leader some time is going to

have to stand up an say that the slaughter

stops with them and extend the hand of peace

to one and all around the world

because war only leads to more war

history has shown us all that.

It also resides with the world public

who refuse to show up

when they open the next war

for the business of killing.

Dewey Dirks

Pictures

My mother passed away in 2010. Her birthday is this month. Two of her favorite things in life were playing music on her electric organ and photography. She loved to take pictures of flowers and landscapes and she was very good at it. It brought her much joy :) In her memory, today I'm going to post two photos she took. 

Singing Silence

Singing Silence

All the world and its thousands

upon thousands of parts

is interconnected far beyond

the human capacity

to perceive or understand it.

I drive to coffee everyday looking

around me in utter amazement

and then I sit quietly drinking my cups

of coffee struck speechless as I marvel

at how finely and beautifully the fabric is woven.

The richly patterned cloth extending

through you, all around you

and as far into the distance

as your minds eye can see, hums softly

a beautiful and gentle song; A singing silence

that you can hear when you still the train

of ideas and thoughts streaming through your head.

Dewey Dirks

Publishing Announcement

Hi folks :) I have some big news to tell you. After careful consideration, I've decided not to bring “Fifteen Sides” into publication as my next novel. Instead, I'm going to first publish a pair of poetry books, “Lullabies and Legends,” and “Journey.” I'll be crowd-funding both of them over the next few months. Stay tuned for more information....

Here are the current candidates for the covers of both books--- 

The Returning

The Returning

There is a place deep inside of you

that is as vast as all world outside.

A place where knowledge

becomes no-knowledge,

where opinion, knowing and wisdom

become not-knowing.

A place where stillness permeates movement

and movement permeates stillness.

A place where time goes

now a little faster, now a little slower,

and has little meaning.

A place where everything that before

seemed dead and devoid of feeling

becomes alive and infused

with emotion, compassion and empathy.

It is from there you began,

and to there you must travel.

To there you must return

again and again .

There you meet yourself,

and become once more,

the child you have always been.

Dewey Dirks

Ideas

Ideas

Ideas come and ideas go.

They're memes cooking with fire.

Ideas appear out of nowhere

too roll all around inside our heads.

They paint the world we see

from white noise nothingness into

the elegant colors of the morning dawn,

into dark storm clouds, or clear blue sky,

into forest covered green hills

and brilliant shining sun,

into busy big city streets,

or rainy summer afternoon rainbows.

Ideas come and ideas go.

They're memes cooking with fire.

Born of the dance between

the blue electric light of our spirits

and the flowing world outside,

they allow us to engage the world

and play out our parts

on the wide stages of life.

It's true that depending

on the ideas you happen to use

life can be a living hell

or an adventure through paradise.

Ideas come and ideas go.

They're memes cooking with fire.

Our favorite ideas

feel like old, well worn tools

for us to pick up and put down.

We use them daily

to adapt to changes as time flows by

or to preserve as best we can

the imaginary equilibrium

of the status quo.

Other ideas are rough and craggy chunks

of unworked stone for us to struggle with

or sculpt into a finer form, and thereby learn.

Ideas come and ideas go.

They're memes cooking with fire.

Our toolboxes are as deep as creativity

and as varied and vividly colored

as imagination.

Some ideas are memories.

Some ideas are art.

Some ideas are for getting things done,

some ideas are for throwing away.

Some are for laughing,

some are for flying,

some are for fun,

and some are for improving upon

the beauty of the world.

Some ideas are very special

and blossom and unfold like eternal flowers

as they return home to the mists of our spirits

and become part of our living souls

Dewey Dirks