I am hopeful that I can grow a little bit this year in ways that help me be a more integrated person.
This is language from Daniel J. Siegel’s thinking. Here’s one of his definitions for integration: “the linkage of differentiated parts of a system that promotes optimal functioning.”
I used to think about balancing my life. This is useful when there are so many different parts of life that you are involved in, like parenting, going to college, and working a job or two (sometimes all at once).
But last year I began to make some headway in turning down my over-functioning (functioning?) at work and turning up parts of my life that I also enjoy like reading, studying, and thinking.
Also, I wrestle with my own personality and am a bit prone to see flaws in myself and also feel sorry for myself. I am keenly aware that I am a passionate person and can sometimes be intense for other people. At the same time I know that I have enough of the introvert traits that I can use up energy being with people.
But I love my passions and I love people. So I guess this disparity is one of the reasons I’m in therapy, eh?
One idea I am puzzling over that is not so much related to my own development is that if mind is part of an emergent self organization of energy and information (Siegel again), It would seem that music is can also be seen as larger than discrete individual people. Something is happening between us when we make music together. This something has energy and can have beauty and/or be satisfying and enriching.
I keep saying that one of the things I enjoy immensely at work is making music with a bunch of people who are singing hymns and canticles and what-not. My congregation and my trio are the most consistent music making systems in my life right now. I’m about to add choir back in to this.
Music is definitely energy and information. It also taps big time into concepts of collaboration.
If basic relationships mean that we honor differences in each other and promote linkages in respectful communication, something very close to this is basic to music making with other people on a collaborative layer.
I always think of the time that I did a gig with a string quartet (or maybe quintet) that was made up of a nuclear family. It was fun to connect with the group that so obviously had a group personality that was so easy to discern and work with musically.
Anyway, thanks for reading this. It helps me to put this stuff up here. Writing out my thoughts in a way that attempts to be understandable to anyone who happens by helps me organize my thinking and continue to develop it.
But of course comments are always welcome.
Books in the mail
My three volume Temple Classic set of Dante arrived from the U.K. today. This is so exciting.
They are beautiful books. They weren’t all that expensive. It was about 60 bucks (including S & H) for all three. You can see my Modern Library edition to the left above.
My current copy is in sad shape. I have read all of the Inferno using it and am on Canto XXI of Purgatorio.
But here’s the cool part.This interlinear version uses the translation I have been reading (The Carlyle-Wickstead translation) so I can move into my beautiful new books seamlessly.
The only difference is the Temple Classic version doesn’t interrupt the text with footnote numbers. It seems to have all the same notes but they occur at the end of the Canto. Plus the Temple Classic editions are beautifully printed and the type is sharper than the Modern Library edition.
Javaka Steptoe | Illustration & Fine Arts
Eileen brought this book home while she was researching sending books to grand daughter, Alex. I am a fan of Basquiat so I asked her if I could check it out while she had it. Jakata Steptoe has made an amazing book. He used found objects for his canvases, mostly boards. Then integrated their lines into his illustrations which echo but do not duplicate Basquiat’s stuff. I quite like it.
John Steptoe | Author & Illustrator | Creator of Award-Winning Books for Children
Eileen thought Javaka’s last name was familiar. It turns out his late father wrote Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters: An African Tale a book we own and like. Cool.
