New Videos and Small Truths

I really like this Minnesota writer Kevin Kling. His was one of the websites I looked at before developing mine (for The Given Self, www.thegivenself.com). His is kind of whimsical and silly, like he is (in a profound way) and that’s terribly difficult if not impossible to achieve in your work if you’ve got a serious bent (as I do), and just as hard to achieve in a website if it’s not there in your work.

Anyway, he moved from writing, to being on Minnesota Public Radio, to participating in an off-beat theatre venture that goes on here every summer called “The Fringe Festival.”

There’s a way certain people can be a little like “secret mentors” to you, and he’s one of mine. Him and Steve Almond have got that silly obsessiveness that I find profound. Others of my secret mentors are merely profound.

When I saw an article about Kling recently I felt hopeful that doing photography and video might make me a little more playful, and I experimented a little with playfulness here. I call it having some serious fun. (It’s the best I can do for now.)

(Click on the underlined word to go to the video.)

A few weeks ago, Dominic Papatola, who writes a “culture” column I also like reading, reviewed Kling’s Fringe performance:

“It’s difficult not to bifurcate Kling’s work along the fault line of the 2001 motorcycle accident that nearly cost him his life. His pre-crash stories were personal in the sense that they were first-person accounts, but they also spoke to the more universal foibles of Minnesotans and of humanity. After the accident, Kling’s work took a more contemplative and introspective turn, as he delved into realms of spirituality, able-bodiness and the natural world.

Both bodies of work were well-written and well-told, but they sometimes seemed to be the efforts of two different artists. …

Five years ago, he was talking about the difference between the disabilities one is born with and the disabilities acquired on a life journey. In this show, Kling observes that, “some gifts we’re born with; others we find during our life.”

Papatola concludes: “And though Kling retains that essential piece of the kid’s goofy giddiness that propels many of his stories, he’s rediscovered a way to embrace the ambiguities of an adult life.”

Well….

Maybe that’s where my challenge has been…with embracing the ambiguities of adult life. I talk of something similar here as “small truths.”


Maybe meeting that challenge is what turns disabilities into gifts and most importantly (probably) lightens your heart…makes you light-hearted and not so serious. There are times I feel that’s the alchemy of the spiritual path…the blessing of a life well lived…and yet, I don’t know.

Since starting this experimentation with video I did a personal movie of Henry’s spring and summer. I could see things in the people I captured that I hadn’t seen before. I began to understand my friend Mary’s fascination with video for seeing the way a person’s heart can speak to you in a look when you’re moving slowly, frame by frame.

The whole gist of why I did the “seriously fun” video was wanting to be honest somehow about what I’d seen in myself as I’ve done these things. I am light and serious and peaceful and confused…and not one of those images is my “true self.” That doesn’t mean I’m being false or that I am incapable of being true. It’s more like viewing a moment-by-moment or at least week-by-week exploration of various encounters with life and the feelings and movement they produce.

St. Paul Pioneer Press, “Kevin Kling does it again,” by Dominic P. Papatola. 9-13-2010, 9A.