280. Two Random Epiphanies on Writing and Learning

I don't have my earplugs, and I am a bit distracted, though usually I can focus quite well. I just came from a MicroWriters group with Hector, and walked away with several words to the wise. I thing my mind is also swirling with chaos because I am anticipating watching the Blue Horizons screenings at 730pm today. Perhaps a horrid influx of memories and obligations for next year, and I'll just want to run out of the theater and cry.

Why? I have been working on writing. Not film. I will have to go back to the generous man who gave me a film donation, and I will return the money to him, stating right now I have to prioritize writing. I can only become a superb film-maker on the premise of becoming a superb writer. Writing is the backbone HTML code to the deconstruction and reconstruction of Reality, so lack of writing ability leads to mediocre films. I need to prioritize my own sanity and internalize my high degree of chaos, before I start layering and multi-media-izing my stories. I am a multi-media storyteller. But first and foremost, I am a writer and a cognitive mapper (which emerges at first as cartoon maps).

The Three Stages of Improvisation, Chaos, and Order. I just ran into a professor of percussion and it was fascinating how she told me her philosophy of learning with drums. At first, a beginner's IMPROVISATION is complete chaos. So it is essential to learn BASIC ELEMENTS for sense of CONTROL. Once you graduate from basic protocol of drumming, then you have to UNLEARN EVERYTHING, and then you learn to improvise, which is a form of identifying a beat, getting off beat, and readjusting yourself to a collective beat. IMPROVISATION then becomes CONTROLLED CHAOS. This professor's philosophy seems to be the ultimate philosophy of education in general. As a kid, you are a close-t0-blank-slate of chaos. You are shoved through some kind of standardized education system. And then you go to graduate school, and your professors ask you to QUESTION REALITY. Doubt everything you learn. The first time this happens, you are in a state of shock, "What the fxck?!!" As if twenty years of building a fabric in your mind had been shattered. Welcome to the "behind-the-scenes" of the university! But now, instead of being an unruly, untrained child, you learn how to systematically doubt and dissect and reconstruct concepts and stories. So, then IMPROVISATION is transformed into CONTROLLED CHAOS. I could only break out the box and Question Reality on the condition that I knew the fragmentation of the existing box of my education. So, there!

I still have chaos in my head, so I'll see how far I can get in the next 15 minutes!