So...
...what I want to say is something about holy foolishness. There is a perversity that is closely connected with the divine - a rejection of reason because reason is too mundane, too rooted in the temporal, too constrained, too inert and inflexible and imprisoning to be a creative starting point. It is something to do with consequences - not caring for consequences - and hence abandoning oneself to some kind of pure possibility. Walking barefoot, walking backwards, walking on all fours, speaking in riddles, speaking in paradox, sleeping in a barrel, sleeping in the open, dancing without music, talking to animals, washing in ashes, obstructing the highway. This must not be a performance of eccentricity but a rejection of convention's protective armature. Fear and shame and the danger of rejection become irrelevant because the foolish life offers no shelter from them anyway. Since everything is already at risk, the idea of risk itself is neutralized.
To become a holy fool is to offer oneself undefended. It is a training in the possibility of difference. It is a habitual rejection of the safety of what already is.
I remember us carving Rosaline into a tree in the woods - I did the carving. When my Unkle Kenny died at the age fifty everyone said he had spoken in tongues - I think he was just speaking nonsense.
ReplyDeleteI spent yesterday with an artist who lives on a travellers site and drinks her own urine. She seems to be very grounded and sensible but sometimes, like when she says her name and her body changes all the time, people find that strange. But she said lots of very sensible things especially about my relationships and trasngender people. I would not call her a holy fool but perhaps coming from a different place.
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