Eccentrics make the world go round..

[Loudestenemy]

We are all a bunch of eccentrics. Not to place a particular importance on 1 of the important facets of society, but we are all in a caste of uppity control freaks who throught history have been very instrumental in contributing to the legacy of eccentric bastards who have shaped the worlds eye view of itself.

You have to look at the non conformists like plato and aristotle and galleleo (spelling) who have added their brand of thinking to the think tank, and have changed everything. I imagine that we artists of all types, probably couldn't collectively agree on anything lolol or our own creative differences will be the catalyst to future wars, but we are still underappreciated in this modern society because our brethren are constantly dumbed down by mass media and a declining emphisis on education. (especially if you are an american)

We have a declining interest in the arts and music education in the schools are going town the tubes faster than we can drain out spit valves. Further more the emphisis on Morals and values in society woudl rather us just call them "water Keys".

But throught history i think it has been the artists and philosophers, the playwrights, and the free thinkers, the non conformists, that have pushed the envelope and left the biggest legacy on our knowledge of ancient history.

I liken it to the trumpeters and drummers who have led armies into battle, or songs like "We shall overcome" that have moved the minority citizenry to topple government institutions, has been something that could have very well been left out of the history books.
Take for instance the CHinese opera, where males dressed up as females and vice versa, turning into an art form for public amusement, their combat arts because it was illegal to practice it anyway. HOW ECCENTRIC IS THAT. ANd the arts flourished and some of the oppressive governments fell. THe arts and the opera survives to this day.

Look at the cave paintings of the ancient man and the way that they sculped animal bone and rocks into weapons. THat takes a level of eccentric envelope pushing to further society. It seems that Archaeologists learn alot from the world or artists, looking at the extremely advanced architecture in extinct civilizations, and the ornate tomb paintings that portray a history of the person buried in the box, that lived 5000= years ago.


Yet when we emerge into society today, we have to cut our hair and look presentable. If we even try to break the mold that society wants us to fit in, we end up paying the price for being nonconformist.

Art is associated with drug use, and a lower standard of living.

I wonder if it was the same for JS Bach, whose original music was discovered as being put to a useful purpose.......WRAPPING FISH AT THE MARKET.

So all i can say is that its our wierd, obsessive compulsive nuances, our eccentric dress and mannerisms, our borderline personalities, our radical views of the world that ends up outlasting our own bodies.......as it is my opinion that the art that we create shapes the very understanding of these times by future generations.

So go out and BE ECCENTRIC! lolol Go out and shove hairless rodents up your asses or whatever you do, because i think there is a genius in findind new ways to create.

It is the art that seems to fill the history books, though the artists are long forgotten in some instances.


THink about how many plays that were written about revolution....that led to revolution. THink about how many songs of change that were sung before the change occured. THink about how many poems and stories had assassinations of kings and were really metaphores that reflected the time they lived in , and think about how many assassinations and toppling of governments.



THink about how creative people had to be to discover the delicate nature of the universe.

It was the trumpeters that destroyed the walls of jericho, it was the scottish bagpipers who repelled the roman armies, it was the little walkmen with tapes filled with guitar pluckings interwoven with ak-47 fire and the knittings of war rugs that fueled the Mujahadeen fighters.

THink about it....

[judih]

i'd like to think about it, eric
but i got diverted with the hairless rodent up my ass suggestion

but, when i get through this particular metaphor, i promise, i'll go out and freak out the humble kibbutz folk.

judih

[Loudestenemy]

As least you realized it was a metaphor

[Lightning Rod]

eric,

this is a joyous piece of thought.

yes, it was the trumpeters that brought down the walls

of Jericho and Berlin

what a great, thoughtful post

(nobody is going to know what a spit-valve is but we horn players)

[Loudestenemy]

I thought Roger Waters himself, and his creative eccentricities over everything that brought the Berlin Wall down lolololol.

[judih]

l-rod
there are others who know what a spit-valve is
and have lived through the experience of watching it being used

(anon)

[mtmynd]

nice piece, eric (?)... i agree with judih - the hairless rodent up my ass reminds me of the richard geer story/myth, plus his ass holds no interest to me at all... BUT! (nice interjection, eh?) - I have often said that all that remains of human history is art, be it the cave paintings in france, the petroglyphs of the desert peoples, the murals on the walls of pompei... the list goes on. whether these people that left these reminders were the ecentrics of their times or not, we shall never know, but given the present day context of 'artist' and we may certainly surmise (a word i use sparingly) that they, too, were in the ranks of eccentricity, where the self prefers the imagination over the mundane.

thanx for your piece.

[e_dog]

what is it to be eccentric? is "eccentric" and "nonconformist" the same thing?

how does one classify the practice of "shov[ing] hairless rodents up [one's] ass." is this "eccentric"? does it fail to "conform" to the standard of refraining from shoving small creatures up ones bodily orafices? (and how does one spell "oriface", anyway?)

these are the troubling thoughts that have entered my consciousness as a result of reading Loudestenemy's interesting thread-starting piece.

suffice it to say, the relation between creation and deviance from social norms is a complex and fascinating topic.

some thoughts, sticking with the anal-retentive linguistic kick:
to be "eccentric" is quite literally to be off center or outside of the center. this could mean that one is a social outsider but i tend to think of it as like when you say of a person that they or their mind is off centered -- disturbed, not quite normal or sane, lacking the balance of complaisance that characterizes ordinary living humans, maybe this offcenteredness is a yet to revealed journey to a new center of existence.

a good word, then, this "eccentric." a fine trick to be a poet, a musician, or a wrapper of fish.