Nora the Piano Cat ... Accompanied by Me Thinking About Animal Sentience

All of us are travelling an evolutionary arc, individually and As One. Many of us don't really know what we believe about many aspects of the fragment of the Universe that we live within. An inquiring mind is a normally functioning mind. For writers of fiction it's important to get to know our own inquiring mind. What do we really believe about this and that? I mean really believe.

Contemplation. Reflection. Hope. Dedication. Resolve. Planning. Intent. Creation ... What do we know about the sentience of some animal species? Elephants, whales, dolphins, horses, dogs ... littleCats? Really, not many of us know very much at all. If you are a writer of stories and your stories include animals as characters - important characters, minor characters, background charactors, it doesn't really matter - then you do need to be clear about what you believe about animals and their consciousness, before you write about them. In this way you can be true to you the artist.

... And So To Nora the Piano Cat

I've been thinking about Nora the cat a lot recently. (Full disclosure: I love Nora!) Nora 'plays the piano'. Which opens the question - are some animals artists? I have blogged about animals as artists.

And I particularly love Nora playing in a piece specially commissioned for her by the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra, conductor and composer Mindaugas Piecaitis.

What if ... It's a Creation through Interaction?

Coming to know another species' sentience is complex and subtle. Legends tell us about the sentience of other species, other beings. So do fables and parables, teaching stories and true-life stories. So many. So, so many. So many stories. So many animals.

Honoring more full disclusure ... I have two cats here and now, and have had the privilege to have been the 'owner' of many cats over the years. With every one of these littleCats that came to share their life with me I saw an emergence of sentience. Not just a growth in relationship ... but a growth in sentience.

What if ... animal sentience in a littleCat, say, is partly created interactively by me and the littleCat together, and is not 'just there'? In which case ... if this is the case ... then ... what happens to me? For, surely, if the littleCat is growing in sentience then ... 'something' will be happening to me also. Right?

Reuben was His Name

By the way ... I once had a littleCat who wanted to play the piano. He was an older cat. Long life lived so not much of 'Time' left to him to live. I watched him tentatively jump up onto my piano stool and reach with a forepaw and touch the keys and make sound. Several times. Each time I saw him do this I felt in that space of reverant resonace within me a sense his 'intent to aspire'. Reuben was his name. 'Death' is not the end of the thread of life that each of us is. Thus 'aspiring' to be 'more' is evolutionary within the arc.

I never encouraged him or mentored him. I think now I should have. Reuben was the littleCat who also shared with me one of his dreams. I 'dreamt' it, but it was his. The shapes were 'spikey'. The colors were 'different'. As was the dance of movements together. Other littleCats, indeed all of them, have taught me the privilege of loving. Not the privilege of being loved ... but the privilege of giving love, of loving. That is a great teaching to be Given.

Whales ... and Crickets ...

Thousands of composers integrate songs of animals, and of Mother Nature Herself, into their compositions. Whale songs are pervasively popular. My favorite is Ocean Odyssey by Adam Goddard. Robbie Robertson, the great American musician and composer of Mowhawk heritage has slowed-down crickets on a track called Twisted Hair on his album Music for the Native Americans. You can listen to that below. His Facebook page explains a little of what was done to integrate the choir of the crickets - "... the crickets were recorded and pitched down/slowed down. Native American opera singer Bonnie Jo Hunt accompanies Robbie and the crickets."

And Back to Writers

Right now I have some characters who are animals come to visit me or find me. And so I have been thinking about animals and their sentience. For, I want the voice that I give them to be true to the story that came to find me.

Namaste! I bow to and honor the light within you!

The Fallow Time

For the joyful fun of it ... dedicated to ... all writers everywhere waiting to hear back from an agent or an editor ... The magnificent Kinks and Tired of Waiting For You.

Acknowledging that seeking out fallowness, the Fallow Time, and waiting therein is important. Out of true stillness comes true inspiration on 'what to "do" next'. Acknowledging that 'unseen activity' is always there. Regardless of who has an opinion on that one way or another. Acknowledging that we must create 'cause' to experience any 'effect'. Some times, the cause we make has to be on our own consciousness - the feeling of the inevitability of 'success' for us and our writing is important. Some times, we need to be still and fallow to hear both what Story Tells us to tell, and, what we need to 'do' in the material world to create effect.

Or ... maybe ... it is just 'what to write next'. The Fallow Time is a good spaceTimePlace to be to come to know what that 'next' is.

Acknowledging that it is also a cool song from one of the most amazing periods, artistically, in the last few hundred year (in the West!).

As a writer I have found it simple and deep to follow in my writing journey the truism of Ibrahim Khawwas, the “Palm Weaver”, giving his definition of the Sufi path -

“Allow what is done for you to be done for you. Do for yourself that which you have to do for yourself.” (as quoted from “Tales of the Dervishes” by Idries Shah. page 147.)

This is a good Russian Doll maxim for those writers who want to work with it.

Usually I choose to have the last word here. However, here is a voice that is totally for the imagination and the imaginal - Carl Gustav Jung "The Power of Imagination". He is important because tellers of stories need to understand archetypes. Simply said.

Namaste! I bow to and honor the Light within you!

Finding One's Own Voice is a Journey

Finding one's own voice as an artist is a journey. If we don't begin that journey then we will not, not surprisingly, find 'it'. And the voiceless artist is ...?

My friend Sambhodi Prem recently posted this video on his FB page - about Osho answering a question in darshan about 'creativity'.

"If you want to create you have to get rid of all conditionings. Otherwise your creativity will be nothing but copy. It will be just a carbon copy. You can be creative only if you are an individual. ... You cannot create as part of the mob psychology. The creator cannot follow the well-trodden path. He has to be a drop-out from the mob mind, from the collective psychology."

I understand one of the facets of this rebellion is the fact that we are all (ALL OF US) innately creative, i.e. it is natural ... and to be 'natural' in this society is to be automatically rebellious ... because creativity is against both despotism and nonsense ... and stupor.

Being 'creative' is also a surrender - to that energetic that 'inspires' us, moves us. (Where does 'that' come from? And, what is it?) I know this to be completely true in my life. I write down what I am given to write down. Then ... I become a writer. Then ... I use techniques and craft ... and so on. I call it 'Polishing the Diamond'. I polish it. but I did not make it.

It is also one of my duties as an artist to not become submerged in the collective cloud of thoughts thought by the human race, as described by Ernest Holmes, most of them thought habitually. Otherwise, how can I be original, since I will be blindly (to mix a cocktail of metaphors) thinking thoughts that everyone else blindly thinks? Otherwise, how can I write 'healingly', counter-balancing the negativity and shallowness that is the stuff and fiber of many stories?

All that, and more, is part of finding voice. Finding one's own voice is a journey. Finding one's own voice is a rebellion. And then ... that rebellion must transform into a revolution.

And, rather than me having the last word, I will, with joy, give the last word to Lady Gaga.

Namaste! I bow to and honor the Light within you!