Limited Perspective

It's after 2am -- now after 3am as I finish typing, and I am sitting here wondering how people are going to keep telling stories. I got a degree in philosophy (and history (double major)) in the 1980s from the University of Pittsburgh, which was at that time, and still is, as far as I know, a very prestigious school for philosophy.   One of my philosophy professors, Wilfrid Sellars, a minor (or maybe major?) star in 20th century philosophy said, "philosophy begins in metaphor and then doesn't stray very far from it."   Which I take to mean: people live for, and through, stories. Stories -- not logic or science, or anything else, ground us and give us a solid place from which to view and evaluate the world. Sting says, "Poets priests and politicians / Have words to thank for their positions." But priests and politicians, a lot of them, anyway, seem to have given up on stories in favor of invective and accusation.   Only the poets, and other artists, lik

Here is the script I used for my piece in my Solo Performance class this week, through Freehold and taught by the amazing Matt Smith.   After my first cut at this, Matt said it was like poetry -- maybe cowboy poetry or beat poetry, I forget what he said but it was so empowering.  That led me to continue to develop the piece to where it was this week.   Maybe I will keep working on it and put it on stage or online somewhere soon. I kept the stage directions.  The highlighted parts are parts that I would say in my own voice or in a third person's voice, rather than the characters voice (aside from the intro, and the last sentence, which are not highlighted, but are in "my" voice.  QFC Clint: a meditation on daily life in 2020  By Patrick Hogan  Everything’s a challenge today, right? A simple boring goofy thing like going to the grocery store feels like a life-threatening situation, right? We have to put on some kind of like brave face just to go out of the house. Well

  I told you it's a poetry blog now.  These are some notes I took for a piece I want to write.  But I think the notes work, in themselves.  The frog and the dog Why do we blame the poor, lowly frog for our own fault? No frog would ever stay in the water. As soon as it got too hot, it would hop out. We do that too. When we get overheated, we get out of the hot tub. It’s our animal nature. Too hot? Run away! Too cold? Run away! Too scary? Run away! Tastes bad? Stop eating it! It’s only because we paper it over with words. The “This is Fine” Dog has to say “This is fine,” to keep itself in that burning room. We talk ourselves into this stuff. With our words. Photo: By Marek Szczepanek - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bombina_bombina_1_%28Marek_Szczepanek%29.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1576776