Find me a new purpose

[DUCKULA]

I will do whatever you guys decide, thanks.

[yourfriendclaire]

A few ideas:

- bird therapist (either therapist for birds or WITH birds)
- witch?
- fruit scientist (invent a Better Cherry)
- hot-air balloon soundsystem designer
- time artist (make time more beautiful)
- queen of new autonomous nation TBD

[meadows]

chew gum!

[jjstratford]

I second:

- bird therapist (either therapist for birds or WITH birds)
who is also a time artist (make time more beautiful)

and hot-air balloon soundsystem designer

[RCH]

I happen to follow this (pet) bird therapist: https://www.instagram.com/joannabergermsc

She offers appointments via Zoom, which seems like a great business model in general. A lot of her work is through clicker training--it could be training a nervous parrot to have fun with new toys, helping a fussy eater try healthier foods, even developing physical therapy-type behaviors. Pretty cool!

On the other side, the search for meaning is a real slog, especially if you are searching within economic parameters. Personally, I've spent a few years sans purpose and one of my psychological survival hacks has been to allow myself to have the purpose of a stone, or a single drop of rain. Let me know what you figure out.

[yourfriendclaire]

I love purpose of a stone <3

[RCH]

It's a whole new spin on underachievement.

[yourfriendclaire]

Or a whole old spin!

From Ursula Le Guin's translation of the Tao Te Ching:

Water and stone
What’s softest in the world rushes and runs
over what’s hardest in the world.
The immaterial enters
the impenetrable.
So I know the good in not doing.
The wordless teaching,
the profit in not doing—
not many people understand it.

[m o l l y]

<3 <3 <3

[alexshred420]

Rocks are people too

[yourfriendclaire]

As the Rockman says, you don't need to have a point...to have a point:

https://youtu.be/X5ThccaxWmk

[joni]

I need help setting up our garage studio, selling some equipment, and getting some other equipment. I don't want to have a fancy studio, I just want a beautiful room that's acoustically dead and everything is plugged in, mic'd up, and ready to record. I know how to do most of this, but I need help figuring out the best way to get everything plugged in and routed through the effects I want to be able to put on everything.

WANT:

Tape delay (or chorus echo)
Homemade plate reverb (maybe like this: https://youtu.be/5OcRMA2FNUE)


REPAIR/MOD:

Baseballs filter pedal
Pioneer SR-202W Spring Reverb
Realistic Electronic Reverb 32-110A

SELL:

White Moog Voyager
(a ton of other little things)

[meadows]

be a rock (biter)

https://youtu.be/aj-OpTHixpU

[joni]

[mention]meadows[/mention] Claire still hasn't ever seen that!!!!

[yourfriendclaire]

Too late now!!!

[meadows]

Oh my god, CLAIRE

FIX IT

[meadows]

By which I mean, please watch it!

[m o l l y]

See it! Does it hold up??

[meadows]

I really don't know... I can't separate my childhood obsession with any objective view of it!

[infopetal]

I've only seen parts of the Neverending Story because Falkor really terrified me as a child! sensitive bb. maybe [mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention] and I should have a watch party.

[infopetal]

the idea of becoming a stone reminds me of my favorite Lydia Davis short story (apropos to the larger thread, too):

New Year's Resolution

I ask my friend Bob what his New Year’s Resolutions are and he says, with a shrug (indicating that this is obvious or not surprising): to drink less, to lose weight… He asks me the same, but I am not ready to answer him yet. I have been studying my Zen again, in a mild way, out of desperation over the holidays, though mild desperation. A medal or a rotten tomato, it’s all the same, says the book I have been reading. After a few days of consideration, I think the most truthful answer to my friend Bob would be: My New Year’s Resolution is to learn to see myself as nothing. Is this competitive? He wants to lose some weight, I want to learn to see myself as nothing. Of course, to be competitive is not in keeping with any Buddhist philosophy. A true nothing is not competitive. But I don’t think I’m being competitive when I say it. I am feeling truly humble, at that moment. Or I think I am—in fact, can anyone be truly humble at the moment they say they want to learn to be nothing? But there is another problem, which I have been wanting to describe to Bob for a few weeks now: at last, halfway through your life, you are smart enough to see that it all amounts to nothing, even success amounts to nothing. But how does a person learn to see herself as nothing when she has already had so much trouble learning to see herself as, something in the first place? It’s so confusing. You spend the first half of your life learning that you are something after all, now you have to spend the second half learning to see yourself as nothing. You have been a negative nothing, now you want to be a positive nothing. I have begun trying, in these first days of the New Year, but so far it’s pretty difficult. I’m pretty close to nothing all morning, but by late afternoon what is in me that is something starts throwing its weight around. This happens many days. By evening, I’m full of something and it’s often something nasty and pushy. So what I think at this point is that I’m aiming too high, that maybe nothing is too much, to begin with. Maybe for now I should just try, each day, to be a little less than I usually am.

[tim]

be a rock (biter)

https://youtu.be/aj-OpTHixpU

some rockys are yum yum, jsyk. not a bad idea

[yourfriendclaire]

[mention]infopetal[/mention], I watched it last night! Catch up & let’s discuss?

It’s so much weirder than I thought it would be. I always conflated Neverending Story with Labyrinth (which I also haven’t seen) because they’re both ‘80s puppet movies that came out before my family moved to the US, I guess? Anyone else have these vague associations between pop-culture objects they’re unfamiliar with?

Also, I just want to take a moment in this excellent thread to acknowledge how much joy this board brings to my life & thank all you sweet people for being part of it. What a balm!

[m o l l y]

Geez Louise, Claire. See Labyrinth!

p.s. love you too. This board makes me feel deeply like I waited way too long to get into boards.

[meadows]

I conflate it with Labyrinth a bit too, due to puppets, but mostly my ardent passion for both movies as a child. There was a year when I rented and watched Labyrinth on Betamax almost every weekend.

The Neverending Story is sad and weird! The idea that one could actually, fully escape into a book was so powerful to me as an only child who spent 98% of their free time reading.

[yourfriendclaire]

I remember feeling really cheated by the idea of "imagination" as a child. I also spent the near-totality of my time with a nose in a book, but I was so frustrated that I couldn't make things *actually* come to life. Imagination was always sold to us as magic, but it's not that!

** SPOILERS BELOW **

When the horse dies of sadness???? The combo of beloved animal friend dying + the idea that animals can be sad is so ethering! It makes sense that Neverending Story is not an American movie.

[meadows]

It's so sad. Kids need sad things, kids are often sad!

[m o l l y]

Yeah god, that whole sad misty swampy scene is like a part of my bones.

[RCH]

Same to all everything everybody said.

Neverending Story was more haunting. Willing to go into the saddest, loneliest, dare I say Nothingest emotional landscapes. The scene with Artex explains a lot about my attachment to pets.

Labyrinth is the jam. Funny, incredibly stylish, genuinely repulsive. Like Giger for kids with unicorn posters. It's so crazy that they really had a bisexual rock star of eroticism seduce a teenager in that story. Those were the times!

"Smells BAD!"

[mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention], does Star War count? The movie with the silly trashcan? Or maybe this is better: until very recently Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Who were all the same to me. Also Van Halen vs. any other 80's rock band were as yet indistinguished to me.

[RCH]

(Guys do you think we helped [mention]DUCKULA[/mention]?)

[yourfriendclaire]

I sure hope so!

[m o l l y]

As a young person I could never remember whether Ziggy Stardust or Iggy Pop was 'the real one.'