CREATIVITY AND OTHER LIFE QUALITIES: To Care or Not to Care, THAT is the Question...An Invitation through My Lyrics with a Challenge from Lady G

Saturday

To Care or Not to Care, THAT is the Question...An Invitation through My Lyrics with a Challenge from Lady G

I wrote this song a few years ago when teaching social justice. Reflecting on the icons of the present and the past, the melody and words return.

TO CARE OR NOT TO CARE

Life is tough wherever we go

Taking its toll on our innocence.

We're so desperately searching for heroes

To show us a way that makes some kind of sense.

CHORUS:

To care or not to care?

The answer lives so deep in your heart.

The question is everywhere...

The answer lives so deep in your heart.

Candles melt from the inside out

Showing us where the real work begins.

Every heart learns what love's truly about

When we reach past the fear we may feel deep within.

CHORUS:

To care or not to care?

The answer lives so deep in your heart.

The question is everywhere...

The answer lives so deep in your heart.

Bridge:

See a mirror when you look up at the sky,

One tender mirror, if you ask the question, "Why?"

Everywhere there are people in pain--

Look into their eyes, see the heart of all hearts.

Can you reach out in love, hope, and faith

Be the hero who simply steps up and does your part.

CHORUS:

To care or not to care

The answer lives so deep in your heart.

The question is everywhere...

The answer lives so deep in your heart.

Lady Gaga is good at marketing AND I think she's sincere. Children...people need something to believe in and we all need to know that our story, our fringe, disenfranchised, heretofore un-included story is being told and being heard. Lady Gaga gets this across. If she's strategically leveraging, with her needs and ours as fulcrums, to market her brand, I guess everybody wins. Her message will live or die by whatever bears out over time. It always does.

I like that the media gives her a pass sometimes, because her antics or her costumes are just so irresistible. I like that the critics condemn her for fudging on Madonna's song, then Madonna comes out and gives her the "way to go, Girl." I look for substance in her "shock-jock" (disk-jockey, no pun intended) style. It's there--she's a solid writer and a good musician. She's creative, knowledgeable, and still learning. Her heart seems to be in the right place. She took a stand on bullying before everyone else jumped on that train. Her message is mostly positive. I appreciate those things about her and her work.

Children...people still need something to believe in. They...we could do better. But we could also do worse. I don't think she wants us to believe in her or to need her (underlined three times). I do think she challenges us to listen, not just to her, to each other, without judging. She can be critical. She calls for non-judgment with discernment. I have to give her props as an artist and as a person for that--and for getting past her fears, for having the guts to put herself out there on a number of levels in spite of her fears. I think she challenges us there too.

In the past she was like John, eating locusts in the desert. Her monsters (Lady G's pet name for her die-hard devoted fans) were mostly fringies. Now mainstreamers in increasing numbers are listening too. There are gifts and dangers in that. I sometimes think she keeps it shocking not just to get attention (she's got plenty), and not just to take the attention away from her admitted self-consciousness, but so she can stay on the fringes, where her people are. I do worry, when I watch her in concert, that she may have to keep "up-ing" the shock factor...because people get numbed out after a while. I do.

I hope her message never gets lost in the entertainment. I don't think it will, because her monsters feel she really cares about them. I'm not a monster--well, not one of her devoted legions yet. I am listening though. And I do appreciate what she's trying to do. I could be wrong, but she seems sincere. Time will tell. Here's hoping she's fearless enough to be committed to her craft, her message, and to her monsters for the long haul.

For your journal/discussion:

1. Do people need something to believe in? How so? Why or why not?
2. To care or not to care? How do you respond to that question? Be general. Then be specific--tell about a situation in your life where caring or not makes all the difference.
3. Bullying. Courage. Fear. Hero. Chose one and tell about it for five minutes.

Diane Solis

The poetry of Diane Solis has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, excerpted in Expressive Writing: Classroom and Community, and has been published or is forthcoming in literary journals and magazines, including, America, Big Muddy, The Healing Muse, Hobo Camp Review, The Lost Country, Psychological Perspectives, Sinister Wisdom, Slink Chunk Press and elsewhere. Her chapbook ART SPIRITS, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. A science writer and technical editor by trade, Solis practices contemplative and Zen forms of meditation and travels to remote places to photograph and write about the "wild" she encounters there. She resides on the Central Pacific Coast with her partner.

www.dmsolis.blogspot.com

The Latest Quotes for Contemplation:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. --Annie Dillard

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, age after age, forever. ~ Tagore

I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world.... ~ Frank O'Hara

Of all fires love is the only inexhaustible one. ~Pablo Neruda

Prophets are so dangerous because they cry in season and out of season, politely and impolitely, loud and long. ~Joan Chittister

When I say be creative, I don't mean you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem. ~ Osho

There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier? ~ Mary Oliver

Without warning, as a whirlwind swoops on an oak, Love shakes my heart. ~ Sappho

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
T.S. Eliot, from "Little Gidding"

Love many things, for therein lies your true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well... ~ Vincent van Gogh

I have found that to love and be loved is the most empowering and exhilarating of all human emotions. ~ Jane Goodall

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone--we find it with another. ~Thomas Merton

I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for our victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.
~John F. Kennedy

I cannot write convincingly about anything that I am not passionate about. ~Darrell Bourque, Poet Laureate of Louisiana

In the lover's heart is a lute which plays the melody of longing. ~Rumi

But perhaps the most important thing about my father was that he taught us the simplest things -- Navajo things -- like how to just sit and be quiet, to blend in and watch, or to move so silently we'd become a part of the forest. My father taught us how to live the concepts of our culture, especially the importance of communicating with the natural world. ~Lori Arviso Alvord, M.D.