Dissolving Bullshit

"I just want to feel something when I go to see theater."  When my mom talks about plays, tv shows, music, dance performances, movies that move her, I believe she feels that chord of truth deep down.  She values truth like I do, in its purest sense.  I am here on this earth to pursue and show that truth through art.  "This is my quest, to follow that star.  No matter how hopeless, no matter how far."  Sometimes we feel sad, depressed, bleak, to where we want to be who we were, instead of what we've become.  But the truth is, we've never changed.  It's always there, that chord of truth.  That which springs eternal within us, and is ever-nourishing if we allow it to be.

These ideas have been coming to me while reading The Power of Myth, and the whole "follow your bliss" philosophy of Joseph Campbell.  I've always known it, but he put it very eloquently, and excitedly.  Those things which strike a chord of truth within you - hold on to them!  Pay very close attention, and never let those go.  I had an acting teacher my Freshman year of college who made us all say out loud when it was we first fell in love with theater.  When we'd finished, he implored us to hold on to it.  There will be bullshit.  But in those moments of love, joy, elation, truth... there is no bullshit.  It is pure.  Those have the power to dissolve the sadness, the bullshit, the worthlessness.  Joseph Campbell calls that your bliss.  Your untouchable bliss.  You could be poor, you could be fighting with your mom, you could be alone, or worse, feel alone, you could be hungry, but the closer you let your bliss be to you and your heart, the better you will be.  The richer, the more peaceful, etc.

I am still learning what this all means, but it's there inside us.  The meaning.  Art, performance, theater, that is my bliss. Something in there holds the key to my pure joy and rapture.  I am grateful to be given permission and opportunity to pursue it.  I'm lucky.  But if you're not so lucky, fight all the more.  It is God-given, it is our reason for being, it is holy, it is pure.  It is truth.