Today it is a real pleasure to welcome to Motherese Bruce Dolin of Privilege of Parenting. A clinical psychologist and parent of two sons, Bruce combines his professional and personal experience with his knowledge of film, philosophy, literature, and art to offer powerful daily posts on how we might become our own best selves through raising children. Bruce’s essays always move me to think, and they frequently move me to tears with their resonance, beauty, and insight. And his thoughtful, thought-provoking comments on my posts and around town never fail to add depth and meaning to our shared conversation.
Thank you, Bruce, for agreeing to share a piece with us here today. I am honored to offer your words to this community.
—
The Virtual Salon for the 21st Century
by Bruce @ Privilege of Parenting
Hi everybody!
Firstly, thank you for inviting me here, Kristen—Motherese is a touchstone in my life and I treasure our connection. This is my first “play-date” being a guest at another blog (after a year of posting daily missives from the cluttered and eccentric confines of my virtual atelier) and I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that this is a big deal for me.
In some back and forth emails, I had commented to Kristen on my wish for/vision of a “Virtual Salon for the 21st century” and so she suggested that I might speak to that in my guest blog, as well as to “what our writing and responding might mean for the direction of community and, perhaps, the arts.”
It was Marshall McLuhan who, back in 1964 said, “The medium is the message.” McLuhan suggested that it’s the medium itself, and not merely the content that it carries, that powerfully influences how messages are received—the medium itself that shapes society.
In the sixties and on through until the arrival of the internet “the media” meant big corporations talking at us, manipulating, shaping and selling us stuff we didn’t need—a message of alienation well expressed by the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.”
In this blogospheric medium in which we meet right here and now, the operative message is interconnectivity. From E.M. Forster’s suggestion, in 1910’s Howard’s End, that we “only connect,” we now arrive at this moment where this medium’s message is that we cannot not connect: we are one. This blogging community is, arguably, a metaphor and a symbol for a higher truth—one in which we are, and always have been, connected (just not necessarily at a conscious level).
In the spirit of consciousness connection, I float the notion of a “Virtual Salon”—a metaphor with which to conceptualize what we’re up to here in this bloggy world.
When I think “Salon,” I think of the romantic and heady goings-on at an elegant apartment on Paris’s Rue de Fleurus a century ago. Gertrude Stein was a wealthy American who, along with her brother, and her grand love, Alice B. Toklas, had an eye for Picasso, Matisse, and other avant garde artists long before they were established brands on the world stage.
As Gertrude’s art collection and scene grew popular, throngs of people—writers, poets, painters, thinkers—started to drop by at all times and at all odd artsy hours. It became a social nightmare for that hostess with the cultural mostess, so Madame Gerty decided to make it a thing, a “Salon,” where writers and artists were welcome, but on Sundays. This Salon became an institution spanning decades, wars, and great changes in the world; looking back, this was a cutting-edge gathering place for new ideas, for new ways of seeing and for furthering modern consciousness.
With this in mind I say: Welcome to our Virtual Salon for the 21st century!
Look around. The Virtual Salon is this particular wonderland where we meet—a medium that somehow mystically unifies the world of our interior lives, emotions and creative expressions with the so-called “real” world in which we work, play, love, parent, and pay bills; this realm links all of us in our kitchens, on our couches, and in messy bedrooms where laptops may sometimes be the hottest thing in the bed (but, thankfully, not always :)). If the divine is to be found in the opposites, this place is ripe with potential magic and transformative power, a place where we might conjure the living spirit of love and of life more richly and fully lived.
In physical terms our Virtual Salon weaves a vast quilt-work of cities, suburbs, and countrysides that span continents. And while we may sit amidst dishes and diaper bags, in our imaginations we might just as well be dressed perfectly to our own likings and striding up to an elegant Paris flat or a dazzling Tribeca loft, windows glowing invitingly against the dusk, the tinkle of glass and conversation wafting to the street.
Hey look! There’s The Kitchen Witch over there, and right next to her, if you look playfully enough, there’s Alice B. Toklas (careful if she offers you a brownie, she’s been known to slip some atypical herbs in the mix). And there’s certainly a BigLittleWolf in our midst; could she be talking with Proust about memory, the erotic, and Madeleines? Why not?
Is that Lindsey chatting about writing with Hemingway? How drunk is he and does he take offense that she prefers F. Scott Fitzgerald (being alums of the same school and all). Lauren is happy to tell Earnest that she just finished a novel… and glasses up all around to Aidan whose Life After Yes, is just two days old! Here, here! Yet we also have Corinne to stand strong with those who are better off with conversation sparkling and not champagne.
There’s Linda comparing notes on being raised Jewish in America with the Grande Dame Gertrude herself while Amber adds her own deeply felt spiritual perspective and that passion for writing that everyone in the Salon shares—a lovely veil of respect, love, and understanding permeating every conversation.
Check out Sarah and Jen, sprawled on a comfy couch and taking a well-deserved break after the bash they threw for the last ten days. Ah, the art of hosting… and Kristen flits about the Salon, engaging everyone, introducing this one to that one, such a giving spirit and rather modest about her own beautiful writing.
But don’t leave it to me to articulate who is here, the ones I know and admire are too numerous to list and yet I can only see as far as my headlights… each of you see your circle, your Salon—and all these Salons together form something bigger than any one of us: OUR Salon. I’m just glad to be included. Still, what a scene! It makes me want to shout, “Go! Dog! Go!”
In contrast to this vibrant Virtual Salon, once upon a time I was a shy and lonely boy with a big imaginary life (but I was very much alone in that world). I dreamed of putting on plays in my parents’ garage, visualizing it empty of cars and open to a throng of neighborhood kids who would think it cool, and gather, and applaud and then they would like me, I dreamed, and be my friends. But I was too shy to imagine actually doing anything so odd and likely to fail as that. And so instead my brother and I decided to have garage sale.
We gathered all manner of books and toys and spread them out on tables labeled with prices. We posted signs, but on the big day it unexpectedly snowed and we stood in the garage, watching sleet gather heavy on the resoundingly empty driveway. No one came and I went back to dreaming of some sort of community, something that might one day overlay a lonely suburban garage and the bustle of the Globe Theater, of interesting cities with kind and interesting people.
But how could I have ever envisioned this place? This Virtual Salon where I feel so oddly at home, free to come and go, deeply moved and encouraged by what I have found, and continue to find, here.
I wrote my dissertation on creative blocks—on what gets us creative folks stuck and what unsticks us. One thing I learned was a feminist perspective on why most of the great breakthroughs in the arts and sciences over the course of history (not herstory) were made by men—it’s because great works call for long times of uninterrupted thinking, writing, painting, etc. and women have always been interrupted by children. Women (and parenting-involved men) are constantly interrupted, and lord knows if any of us will be crafting Remembrance of Things Past any time soon; however, if the play used to be the thing, maybe now it’s the Virtual Salon that is the thing.
Maybe in our collective posting and commenting we craft (and are crafted into) some sort of unity consciousness (one that simultaneously links us while respecting and honoring individuality). Perhaps we’re like artisans of old, taking pride in our contribution to some great cathedral, putting a whole lifetime into a few bricks, a gargoyle, a stained glass window—working on something that could take centuries to complete, but whose ultimate architect is our collective Soul SELF.
The task of this time is to bring soul back into the world. In symbolic terms this can be seen as the rise of parenting as an ethic (and not just a biological imperative), an attitude of caring for each other, our world and all its children, an interest in love and community and in the so-called “feminine” aspects of life such as relationships and feelings, in re-balancing counterpoint to the long-dominant forces of materialism and so-called rationalism (that all but chased the sacred and the numinous out of our world).
This Virtual Salon is our temple, our speakeasy, our sacred library, our workshop, etc. and we’re loving it, that much is clear. Why else would we bother to keep showing up, sharing, reading, commenting, experimenting, and building trust, safety, support, and encouragement for each other?
I don’t have a dream—but I believe that we are a dream. We are a lucid, co-created dream; and this space in which we gather is neither “real” in a tangible sense, nor is it “unreal” as in something others cannot see or believe exists. This medium and its message might be best understood as an emerging form of consciousness—a world awakening to itself.
I have realized that the parenting book I wrote, along with the perfection of its not being readily published, was my invitation and urging into this Virtual Salon, the zeitgeist whispering to me to start blogging since the conventional paths to publishing were not open to me, fates and forces coaxing me into this Salon where now I couldn’t be happier. I will self-publish my book (Gertrude Stein did as much), but that has become an afterthought as I am thrilled to raise a glass today to my kindred spirits in this only connect medium. We are a work in progress, engaged in a process that is alive and unscripted; a “yes and” improvisation as we write to connect and to ensoul our world once again with the fruits of this Salon world, carrying compassion, authenticity and love up and out into our “real” world—in the service of all our collective children.
Namaste, Bruce
The Virtual Salon for the 21st Century
Hi everybody!
Firstly, thank you for inviting me here, Kristen—Motherese is a touchstone in my life and I treasure our connection. This is my first “play-date” being a guest at another blog (after a year of posting daily missives from the cluttered and eccentric confines of my virtual atelier) and I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that this is a big deal for me.
In some back and forth emails, I had commented to Kristen on my wish for/vision of a “Virtual Salon for the 21st century” and so she suggested that I might speak to that in my guest blog, as well as to “what our writing and responding might mean for the direction of community and, perhaps, the arts.”
It was Marshall McLuhan who, back in 1964 said, “The medium is the message.” McLuhan suggested that it’s the medium itself, and not merely the content that it carries, that powerfully influences how messages are received—the medium itself that shapes society.
In the sixties and on through until the arrival of the internet “the media” meant big corporations talking at us, manipulating, shaping and selling us stuff we didn’t need—a message of alienation well expressed by the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.”
In this blogospheric medium in which we meet right here and now, the operative message is interconnectivity. From E.M. Forester’s suggestion, in 1910’s Howard’s End, that we “only connect,” we now arrive at this moment where this medium’s message is that we cannot not connect: we are one. This blogging community is, arguably, a metaphor and a symbol for a higher truth—one in which we are, and always have been, connected (just not necessarily at a conscious level).
In the spirit of consciousness connection I float the notion of a “Virtual Salon”—a metaphor with which to conceptualize what we’re up to here in this bloggy world.
When I think “Salon,” I think of the romantic and heady goings on at an elegant apartment on Paris’ Rue de Fleurus a century ago. Gertrude Stein was a wealthy American who, along with her brother, and her grand love, Alice B. Toklas, had an eye for Picasso, Matisse and other avante garde artists long before they were established brands on the world stage.
As Gertrude’s art collection and scene grew popular, throngs of people—writers, poets, painters, thinkers—started to drop by at all times and at all odd artsy hours. It became a social nightmare for that hostess with the cultural mostess, so Madame Gerty decided to make it a thing, a “Salon,” where writers and artists were welcome, but on Sundays. This Salon became an institution spanning decades, wars and great changes in the world; looking back, this was a cutting edge gathering place for new ideas, for new ways of seeing and for furthering modern consciousness.
With this in mind I say: Welcome to our Virtual Salon for the 21st century!
Look around. The Virtual Salon is this particular wonderland where we meet—a medium that somehow mystically unifies the world of our interior lives, emotions and creative expressions with the so-called “real” world in which we work, play, love, parent and pay bills; this realm links all of us in our kitchens, on our couches and in messy bedrooms where laptops may sometimes be the hottest thing in the bed (but, thankfully, not always J). If the divine is to be found in the opposites, this place is ripe with potential magic and transformative power, a place where we might conjure the living spirit of love and of life more richly and fully lived.
In physical terms our Virtual Salon weaves a vast quilt-work of cities, suburbs and countryside lives that spans continents. And while we may sit amidst dishes and diaper bags, in our imaginations we might just as well be dressed perfectly to our own likings and striding up to an elegant Paris flat or a dazzling Tribeca loft, windows glowing invitingly against the dusk, the tinkle of glass and conversation wafting to the street.
Hey look! There’s The Kitchen Witch over there, and right next to her, if you look playfully enough, there’s Alice B. Toklas (careful if she offers you a brownie, she’s been known to slip some atypical herbs in the mix). And there’s certainly a BigLittleWolf in our midst, could she be talking with Proust about memory, the erotic and Madeleines? Why not?
Is that Lindsey chatting about writing with Hemmingway? How drunk is he and does he take offense that she prefers F. Scott Fitzgerald (being alums of the same school and all). Lauren is happy to tell Earnest that she just finished a novel… and glasses up all around to Aiden whose Life After Yes, is just two days old! Here, here! Yet we also have Corinne to stand strong with those who are better of with conversation sparkling and not champagne.
There’s Linda comparing notes on being raised Jewish in America with the Grande Dame Gertrude herself while Amber adds her own deeply felt spiritual perspective and that passion for writing that everyone in the Salon shares—a lovely veil of respect, love and understanding permeating every conversation.
Check out Sarah and Jen, sprawled on a comfy couch and taking a well-deserved break after the bash they threw for the last ten days. Ah, the art of hosting… and Kristen flits about the Salon, engaging everyone, introducing this one to that one, such a giving spirit and rather modest about her own beautiful writing.
But don’t leave it to me to articulate who is here, the ones I know and admire are too numerous to list and yet I can only see as far as my headlights… each of you see your circle, your Salon—and all these Salons together form something bigger than any one of us: OUR Salon. I’m just glad to be included. Still, what a scene! It makes me want to shout, “Go! Dog! Go!”
In contrast to this vibrant Virtual Salon, once upon a time I was a shy and lonely boy with a big imaginary life (but I was very much alone in that world). I dreamed of putting on plays in my parents’ garage, visualizing it empty of cars and open to a throng of neighborhood kids who would think it cool, and gather, and applaud and then they would like me, I dreamed, and be my friends. But I was too shy to imagine actually doing anything so odd and likely to fail as that. And so instead my brother and I decided to have garage sale.
We gathered all manner of books and toys and spread them out on tables labeled with prices. We posted signs, but on the big day it unexpectedly snowed and we stood in the garage, watching sleet gather heavy on the resoundingly empty driveway. No one came and I went back to dreaming of some sort of community, something that might one day overlay a lonely suburban garage and the bustle of the Globe Theater, of interesting cities with kind and interesting people.
But how could I have ever envisioned this place? This Virtual Salon where I feel so oddly at home, free to come and go, deeply moved and encouraged by what I have found, and continue to find, here.
I wrote my dissertation on creative blocks—on what gets us creative folks stuck and what unsticks us. One thing I learned was a feminist perspective on why most of the great breakthroughs in the arts and sciences over the course of history (not herstory) were made by men—it’s because great works call for long times of uninterrupted thinking, writing, painting, etc. and women have always been interrupted by children. Women (and parenting-involved men) are constantly interrupted, and lord knows if any of us will be crafting Remembrance of Things Past any time soon, however, if the play used to be the thing, maybe now it’s the Virtual Salon that is the thing.
Maybe in our collective posting and commenting we craft (and are crafted into) some sort of unity consciousness (one that simultaneously links us while respecting and honoring individuality). Perhaps we’re like artisans of old, taking pride in our contribution to some great cathedral, putting a whole lifetime into a few bricks, a gargoyle, a stained glass window—working on something that could take centuries to complete, but whose ultimate architect is our collective Soul SELF.
The task of this time is to bring soul back into the world. In symbolic terms this can be seen as the rise of parenting as an ethic (and not just a biological imperative), an attitude of caring for each other, our world and all its children, an interest in love and community and in the so-called “feminine” aspects of life such as relationships and feelings, in re-balancing counterpoint to the long-dominant forces of materialism and so-called rationalism (that all but chased the sacred and the numinous out of our world).
This Virtual Salon is our temple, our speakeasy, our sacred library, our workshop, etc. and we’re loving it, that much is clear. Why else would we bother to keep showing up, sharing, reading, commenting, experimenting and building trust, safety, support and encouragement for each other?
I don’t have a dream—but I believe that we are a dream. We are a lucid, co-created dream; and this space in which we gather is neither “real” in a tangible sense, nor is it “unreal” as in something others cannot see or believe exists. This medium and its message might be best understood as an emerging form of consciousness—a world awakening to itself.
I have realized that the parenting book I wrote, along with the perfection of its not being readily published, was my invitation and urging into this Virtual Salon, the zeitgeist whispering to me to start blogging since the conventional paths to publishing were not open to me, fates and forces coaxing me into this Salon where now I couldn’t be happier. I will self-publish my book (Gertrude Stein did as much), but that has become an afterthought as I am thrilled to raise a glass today to my kindred spirits in this only connect medium. We are a work in progress, engaged in a process that is alive and unscripted; a “yes and” improvisation as we write to connect and to ensoul our world once again with the fruits of this Salon world, carrying compassion, authenticity and love up and out into our “real” world—in the service of all our collective children.
Namaste, Bruce
{ 71 comments… read them below or add one }
There is so much I would love to comment on and discuss from your post Bruce, but that would be like a whole extra post. It’s best summed up in what you say: “This Virtual Salon where I feel so oddly at home, free to come and go, deeply moved and encouraged by what I have found, and continue to find, here.” Yes!
I wrote something similar for my Five for Ten memory post , though it was not nearly as articulate, about how I feel so full in this word blogging world, about how I’ve discovered my tribe and it’s a wonderful place to be. How there is so much wisdom here, wisdom that I want to hold on to. You’ve written such lovely tribute to this special place, and to many of the very special people we get to share in it. Each and everyone you mention has made a real and profound difference in my life. It has all taken me completely by surprise. It excites me, it challenges me, and I feel welcome. What could be better than that.
Blogging has been an awakening for me, and I’m only just getting started. So many of you have been around so much longer, I’m almost sad to be so late in arriving. But there is much to treasure, and treasure I will.
“I’ve discovered my tribe.”
Yes, Christine, me too. What a perfect way to put it.
Hi Christine, I relate to what you say about feeling “late in arriving,” as late blooming seems to be my path, and yet if we trust our connection, we are the precocious as well as the late blooming, we are holding a space that only exists by virtue of you as well as me. And being the first to comment and warm my heart right there mirror back to you that you are late and you are early all at once. No accidents.
Meanwhile I’m late to work on the west coast and wishing I could dally…
Wow. I love this post. Thank you for sharing your thoughts because you articulated something I have trouble explaining SO WELL. Thank you.
“I don’t have a dream—but I believe that we are a dream. We are a lucid, co-created dream; and this space in which we gather is neither “real” in a tangible sense, nor is it “unreal” as in something others cannot see or believe exists. This medium and its message might be best understood as an emerging form of consciousness—a world awakening to itself.”
YES! :)
I agree, Heather. Bruce has really hit on something here, hasn’t he? This idea of a world awakening to itself. This community as the vanguard of a new way of communicating, understanding, and being understood. So pleased to share this world with you.
BTW, have you met Bruce before? I hope you’ll go check out his stuff. This wonderful essay is just the tip of the iceberg of wisdom you’ll find there.
Hi Heather & Hi Kristen, Sometimes the challenge is trusting the “dream,” the idea that somehow everything that just is, is right in some way. I find myself so appreciative of these kind words, but more so by the sense that I’ll soon be in my office but looking forward to jumping back into the discussion later in my day. Namaste
Bruce, you sly thing. How could I not love this post with all its artistic, literary and French references? (And what delicious company to share…)
It is a glorious and fascinating virtual salon. And one that is a privilege to be part of as it continues to take shape, and I hope, remain fluid – as we explore memory, relationships, creativity, intellect… and yes, the erotic. (Might someone pass me one of Kitch’s brownies, and some of Kristen’s very fine good sense to moderate my indulgence?)
(Loved this!)
Don’t worry, BLW, we’ll watch out for you. Indulge away!
I want to second your point about the salon remaining “fluid.” I too understand it as an organic thing, growing, changing, staying flexible, and expanding to include all comers.
Cheers to all of us!
Hi BLW—great to see you here. Brownies for breakfast, gotta love this place, gotta love this day.
Well, this was kind of an awakening for me. Yes, media has always shoved its message at us without any opportunity for response or interaction. Now with blogging we are the medium and we are the message.
Wow. Thanks for this great post!
“[W]e are the medium and we are the message.” Absolutely – and one that continues to develop as we see fit.
Thanks for being here, Erica.
Hey Erica, This is an awakening for me as well—and it’s so great to wake up in this world and find that we are not alone, even in the things we actually care about. Namaste
Oh. My. Word.
Bruce, you have outdone yourself. I adore the notion of both crafting and BEING CRAFTED INTO a community, and the metaphor of the cathedral. Your conviction that our togetherness, as ephemeral and abstract as it might seem, is the place where we are all safe and, possibly, saved, buoys me. I adore your words and feel privileged to be a part of this community and to have found you.
Thank you, and thank you, Kristen. xoxox
Yes, the metaphor of the cathedral got me too – in part because I find this community to be an almost sacred space. Since I first read this essay earlier in the week, I’ve been thinking about it in the context of our conversations about faith and practice and presence and the ways in which the ritual of blogging – the writing, the connecting, the meditation of it all – is serving spiritual needs that I forgot I had.
Thanks, Lindsey.
Hi Lindsey. From Exeter to Notre Dame to the Redwood Forest, perhaps the Salon links all our sacred places—consciously inviting spirit so that we experience our joy and better tolerate the suffering that comes with being human (or at least so far it has for all of us—but still, our soul-making suffering and questions are part of what brings us here to this Virtual Salon to party, grow and also to receive and give comfort, encouragement and love).
Now I really have to go to work. Catch you all later.
And thanks Kristen—you’re fantastic! (but so is everyone else, since the group’s the thing)
Aaah! All the bits I want to cut and paste and relish have already been cut and pasted and relished! Needless to say, there is SO MUCH HERE. Bruce, once again you have articulated what is so very hard to articulate, hitting the nail squarely on the head. “This medium and its message might be best understood as an emerging form of consciousness—a world awakening to itself.” I couldn’t agree more. The dialogues we have here are both with ourselves and with each other – that, I think, is the magic. We are “talking” in a way that we can’t in the brick and mortar world, revealing parts of ourselves that necessarily stay hidden in “regular” conversation. Through these virtual conversations we are connecting more deeply and more profoundly both with each other and with our true selves.
Thanks for this post and the shout out!! I immediately forwarded the post to my family with these words: “I am part of the club! These bloggers are the ones I MOST admire and I am named among them. SO COOL.”
Cool, indeed.
Lauren, I’m so glad you’re here, part of this community today and always. And I love what you have to say here about the salon allowing us to connect not only with each other, but with our “true selves.” I feel that so profoundly. Thank you for articulating that idea for me.
Hi Lauren, I have found that in order to truly feel loved we must feel understood; yet in the world we navigate outside of this space it has been rather challenging (and often dispiriting) to maintain authenticity. Thus we socialize, but feel alienated, often like impostors or simply not truly nourished or connected.
I find it remarkable and liberating that something is working here that lets us experiment with being real (rather than with masks and fantasies).
It’s as though we’ve happened upon something that works for us, and we couldn’t have foreseen it, much less thought it up.
That’s very cool, indeed.
Hi Kristen!
Greetings from Malaysia again! Just want to say thank you for dropping by my blog on my SITS day. Thank you again and hope to see you back here sometime! :D
Warmest Regards,
Jenny aka I’m a full-time mummy
(http://imafulltimemummy.blogspot.com/)
It was my pleasure to join your SITS party, Jenny. Looking forward to connecting again soon.
If I were to read this without any knowledge of the community we’ve already built I would be overwhelmed for certain. But knowing that much of this community has already sprung up amongst us heartens me.
Such a treat reading your words this morning. Pardon me while I go stew on them for the balance of the day!
Hi Gale – Glad I’m not the only one still processing. :) Bruce sent me this post on Sunday. I read it immediately and have been thinking about it ever since. I am so glad to have had the chance to share it with all of you.
Hi Gale, I thank you for being willing to chop, saute and simmer in the alchemical kitchen. I find that certain ideas are like tough cuts of meat, requiring patience and conversation while time and heat breaks things down… perhaps a cassoulet without the calories, maybe something vegan… some crusty bread, a few good cheeses, a little wine and soon the ideas were just a pretext to get together and hang out.
The message is that we’re already connected, so thanks for being here with your words.
Hey Bruce – Please note that this particular hostess with the mostess is a vegetarian. So maybe a nice vegetable frittata? Or a big pot of vegetarian chili?
Bruce,
Thanks for this call to community. I, like you, am not a joiner. However, I keep returning here because I find something of real value. I appreciate your dedication to putting down your thoughts everyday. It seems a spirtual practice to connect your right thinking with right action. Thanks for sharing that.
I am often intimated by the blogosphere with so many places to go and so much to read. However I trust the recommendations I get here because it does feel like a community of like minded people meeting in a way we could not before. I wonder how the world would be different if we’d had the internet in 1968? I love the spirit of that time and I feel some of that here; trying to make the world a better place and to connect to ourselves and others in a meaningful way. Thanks everyone!
Hi Randy – Thanks for being here today. Like you, I am grateful and humbled by Bruce’s dedication to sharing his personal and professional wisdom with the community. I really appreciate what you have to say about his writing seeming like a “spiritual practice” – I know that I feel that much closer to enlightenment each time I read something he’s written.
I hope you enjoy your explorations of the writing of some of the women Bruce mentioned in his post. He, they, and all the other members of this virtual salon helped quell any feelings of intimidation or exclusivity I worried about when I first started blogging. Indeed, I have found this community to be a readily inviting place. Now if only I had endless amounts of time to explore it…
Hope to see you again. Cheers.
Hi Randy,
Maybe the good thing about this community, in contrast to the summer of love, is that the 60′s seemed to get stuck in hedonism and the 2nd chakra.
There were great ideas (and profound changes for women’s rights and civil rights, and influencing a war to end), but the full ideas are still only emerging into the world.
Sex (dressed up as love, but not really anchored in love) and drugs turn out to be good feelings that don’t last. Taking care of our kids and each other is much less immediately gratifying, but the good feelings in such connecting do last and prove self-reinforcing.
One of the things that led me down this path of daily writing as spiritual practice was the notion of parenting itself as spiritual practice; something many of us do every day.
If done with consciousness this terribly wonderful and difficult path is an organic path toward enlightenment—a universal path that unites humans across all races, cultures, religions and socio-economic circumstances.
We all love our kids, and as we expand to love each other’s kids we heal as humans and the promise of 1968 becomes potential reality.
Peace
Dear Bruce;
You commented on my wall and wrote that you were a big believer in synchronicity. I am too. I find myself here, in the protective field of Motherese, and I find you again, writing precisely what has been on mind the last few weeks.
It is truly an amazing place. One that makes my head spin. Connections that feel so real with people I have never met. The support, the thoughtful and thought provoking, the virtual salon.
I wonder if anonymity makes this all work. I don’t know. Are we more comfortable with strangers than with our friends? If we all met in person, would it change everything?
I had to laugh when you quoted Marshall McLuhan. I studied communications at UCLA and haven’t heard his name since 1980. I love that!
So glad I took the leap.
Terry, I’m going to BlogHer this summer and I admit that I have a flicker of concern about the issue of anonymity that you raise. What if I have the chance to meet some of these people and they don’t like me or I don’t like them? Then what? I have had the chance to meet one of our blogging buddies for coffee and I found her as delightful in person as online. I hope – and trust? – that my online instincts will serve me offline as well.
Yes, I too wonder if meeting everyone in person will live up to how I feel about everyone on the screen. I’ve decided I’d be SHOCKED if I was disappointed. I have to go with my gut and believe that the relationships I’ve built are ones that are REAL. Unlike online dating where there very well could be no physical attraction and then you’re likely to be disappointed, I just don’t care what anyone looks like… only that they are as wonderful as their words make them out to be! Whether everyone likes ME is another story! :)
Hi Becca – I’m with you. I fully anticipate that my suspicions about everybody will be fully validated in August.
As for you, I know I will like you as much in person as I do onscreen. I just do!
Hi Terry, I sense that we are indeed supposed to be chatting in this particular world, and more synchronicities may well follow.
When I think of the question about if we’d all like each other “in person,” I think of Martin Buber’s idea of relating in an I-thou manner, seeing to the soul of each other. I feel that this is an I-thou medium and I think it gives us time to read a comment, metabolize it, compose a response or choose not to respond. Being less on our guard, our better and kinder selves seem to emerge.
Real time relating is more challenging, but with the built-in foundation of our spirit sort of intimacy and respect already established, I cannot imagine not feeling thrilled to meet any one of you in person.
Of course you probably won’t like me, but what can I do about that? :) (and isn’t that core insecurity just another authentic point of connection… until one day our basic trust goes so deep we start to trust that we truly are likeable and lovable… without sounding like Sally Field at the Oscars.
I’m just hell bent on liking all of you.
Bruce, what a fabulous post! A virtual salon? Perfect. And you describe it so well throughout your post. I am not married and I am not a mother, but I still as though I can connect with many of my bloggy friends in the “virtual salon”. As stated in your post, we cannot not connect. :) Love it!
I think that’s a really important point, Kenzie. Our virtual salon allows us to make connections that the trappings of our offline lives don’t always facilitate.
Welcome Kenzie, It’s great that you’re here. By “parenting” I really mean an attitude of caring about the world and not necessarily having kids.
And if you should happen to need a little love along the way of your writing journey, this Salon has a truck-load.
Hi Bruce,
My friend Terry told me I had to check out this site and to read your words. She said I’d find comfort here. She was right.
I was stunned to find someone speaking about being a parent the way I think of it—as a life path, one that has changed me more than I could ever hope to change my children.
I was also curious about your references to the feminine. I believe a balancing is possible—where honoring what we love and loving what we love is encouraged.
Thank you for your vision. Here’s a quote I like–
“Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.” – Berthold Brecht
Here’s to shaping the future– all of us together!
Kathleen
Thank you for stopping by Motherese to read Bruce’s guest post, Kathleen. I am glad you found his words as resonant as I do.
Hi Kathleen, and so glad you’re here. It’s so affirming to link up around these threads of parenting as spiritual path and art and self-expression as tools to shape our consciousness, which in turn shapes our world.
Since we have our hammers, we’ll hammer in the morning, we’ll hammer in the evening… all over this land (by which we mean our planet)
Kristen and Bruce … I found both of your blogs through Five for Ten, and I’m glad I did. I love the metaphor of circles, but what brings me the most wonder is that while we perceive our own “blogosphere” as a circle, it overlaps those around us in random and unpredictable ways.
Thanks for a wonderful way to describe the medium … you’re right … we cannot not connect … and it’s wonderful!
Sort of like a Venn diagram on top of a Venn diagram…
Thanks for joining our conversation, goofdad.
Yes the expansiveness of it compels us to realize that none of us have the big picture, yet all of us together make up the big picture (by a few degrees of separation, as a group there is probably not a person on this planet who does not connect with someone who knows someone who knows someone in this very Salon).
If we choose to love, even what we cannot fully see, we further and make more conscious our shared situation even in the “real” world.
Nice to meet you through five-for-ten, a perfect example of the connecting impulse rippling out to engender yet more connections (made conscious, that is)
First of all, you’re damn right about the uninterrupted time thing… and creativity and mothering… (I kind of got into that a little today in my post actually, great minds ;) ) I look at what I’ve done, what all these other women have done (and men!!) and think, wow, what could we actually come up with if we had uninterrupted time and blocks and chunks at our disposal. But in one way, what we do here with our blogs, with our bits and pieces, is add honesty and our thoughts (though sometimes just fleeting) to the mix where with a bunch of time would come more editing and thought instead of feeling.
(I’m exhausted, hence the ramble…)
I could write you ten more paragraphs about your post. I adore it, and am so glad to have met you through Kristen, Bruce! And honored to be included in your Salon. This community that feeds our souls, appreciates who we are and honors our intentions, whatever they may be.
Lovely, lovely read.
I like it, Corinne, this idea that with time and polishing and editing might come lack of authenticity. Embrace the truth inherent in typos!
It’s ten fifteen p.m. in LA as I happily, but with some fatigue, read your words and (great minds :)) resonate to exhaustion, interruption and also second your intuition that more carefulness and polish would bring more brain and less heart.
Maybe this Salon is also a sort of collage that is the blending of many shapes, colors, textures; maybe it is a beautiful coral reef, our posts like leavings of where we’ve lived and talked, yet the life spirit pulses in the spaces no one can see, but which we can all feel.
I like the idea of being part of a tribe as it resonates with me. In part because I feel like I am in between tribes.
I have wandered away from where I was and am bouncing around on sort of a blogging walkabout.
From your posts, Jack, I know we often share taste in music so I’m wondering if you know the late 1980s album “In My Tribe” by the 10,000 Maniacs. It came to mind when reading your comment. Whether or not we share a like of that particular set of songs, I hope you know that I consider you to be part of the tribe here at Motherese. We’re a wild and wacky group; I think you fit right in. ;)
Hi Jack, I love the walkabout… initiatory, transitional, transformational—you’re always welcome in this Salon.
And Kristen, I know that album well… synchronicity striking again: “Hey JACK Keroac… I think of your mother.”
Kristen/Bruce,
Thanks. I appreciate it. I have that album- first stumbled onto it in college. Am I giving away my age if I say that I have the tape, record and CD. ;)
HI Again,
I’ve been chewing on this today and here is what I consider a modification on the old feminist perspective. Perhaps women’s attention span is actually not as interrupted as we might think– in a big gigantic sense– we are driven, focused, will almost die in the process of creating– maybe it isn’t a symphony, maybe it isn’t a skyscraper– but it’s something else, something as exquisitely intricate, beautiful, delicate, individual and unique as life itself. In fact, it is life itself. We create babies, families. We give birth. I think that in tearing down old barriers, ones that were necessary to tear down, we as women forgot that sacredness of femaleness, of motherhood, that preciousness of life that we embody, literally, figuratively, daily and nightly. WE are connected in this wisdom, this knowing that life is truly amazing in all of its specificities, in all its details, in all its blogposts. Without a woman, none of this would exist. Cheers!
I like this, Kathleen. Obscurely, it brings to mind a line from an old Louis Malle film “Murmur of the Heart,” in which a choir boy is munching on communion crackers when the priest is out of the room and his more sanguine friend says, “Blasphemy is for those who still believe.”
Maybe “art” as we know it is for those who cannot create as you so beautifully frame the ultimate creating. As a male, but not quite in the mainstream of anything, I feel that we humans make things because we are a made thing; we love because we are loved—by forces bigger than we can grasp (be it each other or something “higher.”)
Even as a man I feel that I am trying to write myself to the end of words. It might be a little cheesy, but I also think of Springsteen’s “Jungle Land”: “The poets down here don’t write nothing at all they just stand back and let it all be.”
While neither Springsteen nor I have birthed any babies, we sure wouldn’t be here without that primal creating of the mother, and nothing we ever make will hold a candle to our children.
Yet, in the margins between interruptions, male or female, it’s fun to make some stuff up.
Cheers to you and creating in “a big gigantic sense”
Bruce, what beautiful metaphors you weave here.
I agree — it feels a lot like a salon. It has been an honor to begin to dip my toe into this swirling world of ideas and thoughts and images.
Your writing is an inspiration.
And Kristen — you are so warmly inclusive and endlessly interesting. Thanks for this post, and for linking so many ideas and people together.
Hey Luana,
It’s you and me about now—east coast long asleep, but you’re in the bright of day over in France—a Salon where someone’s always rambling about and energies circulate far in excess of the comments which are tips of icebergs of reading and thinking that is also felt, even if not tangibly seen in a comment box.
Thanks for hanging with us here—and for inspiring us with your fascinating and richly lived adventure over there.
Launa, I’m so glad that you decided to dip your toe into these particular waters. The more voices, the more toes, the merrier!
So aptly named, this space we return to again and again, meeting new faces, sharing thoughts: the virtual salon. I’m thoroughly impressed with — wish I had an artsier word for it — your analysis of it in this post.
And Kristen, you do make a wonderful host. I know I can count on meeting excellent company at your place.
It’s perfect to have a Troubadour in our midst, to sing of love and chivalry. I’m about ready to stop posting comments and kick back and enjoy the tunes and let conversations waft over me.
So glad you came by, loving this place all the more.
Thanks for being here, CT, and for being part of this great company.
Wow. This was an AMAZING post. I just read and reread it three times just to digest it a bit so I could comment. I wrote a bit today on this community. This world. This PLACE that I have grown to adore in the year I’ve been a part of it. What you’ve written here, Bruce, is so much more eloquent than what I wrote (or could ever DREAM of writing!) but I couldn’t agree more with your words.
“But how could I have ever envisioned this place? This Virtual Salon where I feel so oddly at home, free to come and go, deeply moved and encouraged by what I have found, and continue to find, here.”
I sighed a long, sigh when I read this because it so encompassed all I’ve tried to explain to those who don’t GET what I do here. YOU get it. We here, ALL get it. It’s home. It’s comfort. It’s like the ski lodge at the bottom of the daunting mountain. EVERYONE wants to keep going back to the lodge to warm up, feel comforted, feel welcomed.
That’s how I feel here. Like I belong.
Thank you so much for this and I will be by to check out more of what you’ve written for sure!
Hi Becca, I’m glad my post came across with heart today. Perhaps it’s because I wrote it to all of us, and for all of us and my ego didn’t get too much in the way. Please don’t put your own voice down (not that I’m not always hovering between self-effacing and self-critical)—the first tenet of Buddhism is something like “comparison is odious.” I’ll try to be nice to myself and own my voice, but only if you’ll do the same.
All our voices are wonderful, but together they are an Om that is more than the sum of its parts.
Thank you for standing with us, for affirming that you too feel connected with this hard to describe feeling we’re ALL getting here.
And I love the ski lodge analogy—the cozy feeling after the exhilaration of the mountain, the hot cocoa we feel that we have earned, that lovely mingling of jagged mountain tree-line nature and human-crafted, big-beamed comfort.
So the Salon is also a ski-lodge, perhaps the ones I dream to visit in the Alps some idyllic Christmas—and still find this Salon level of authentic discourse.
I am clearly the last one at the party! But the upside is that I’ve just eaten the morning-after breakfast with all of you, and this profoundly thoughtful conversation is much more stimulating with my second cup of coffee than the NYT online would have been. Bruce, you are quite something. You popped into my life out of the blue, to introduce me to Lindsey, and I’ve been reading and learning from you both ever since. For me it is all about finding the balance; this on-line salon is pretty seductive (no bad hair days, no need to decide if I should wear heels or flats), but sometimes I look up from reading and writing, and realize that the sun has moved across the sky, the bird feeder is empty, the lilacs have bloomed. . .and I’ve missed it. Trying to remember: live life, mostly, read about life a little. But it’s all good, and I wouldn’t have missed your beautiful post today for anything!
Hi Katrina – You’re not late; you’re right on time. The hours at this particular salon are much more flexible than those at my hairdresser’s (my long absence from her chair makes me as glad as you are for the non-visual nature of this gathering).
I found this line of your comment particularly resonant to my own struggles to remain connected to the world in front of my eyes, and not just the one on my screen: “Trying to remember: live life, mostly, read about life a little.” The trouble is, I’ve always been someone who’s gotten lost in words. As a kid and up until about six months ago when I found this community, books were the place where I hid out, sometimes, I’ll admit, tuning out the world in front of me. But now, lo and behold, a place to come and read and then respond and be responded to? What a thing that is!
But my kids? And my husband? And the peonies? And the robin hatchlings outside the window of my office? What things those are! And what a privilege to be able to have them all, all at once. Oh, and books too.
You’re right: “it’s all good.”
Thanks for being here, Katrina.
Hi Katrina, Great to see you here. I completely resonate to the issue of presence to life vs. presence to this world. I know that I plan to adjust that balance once I complete my self-imposed year of blogging mindfully (on a daily basis) on the summer solstice.
I have been thinking that this world has been so alluring and inviting because this level of authenticity and kindness and encouragement doesn’t yet seem to fly in the “real” world. Well, it does in the garden, with the insects, birds and flowers. But with humans… well we seem like orchids in a windstorm when we run into each other on the road and in the market.
I’m hoping that we can seek refuge and nourishment in this Salon, but not hide from the world here, nor miss out on life as the sun moves across that sky.
I’m hoping we’ll all fine-tune as we go, but there is so much I’m learning and loving here that I know I’ll want to carry that sense of this group with me as I go forward.
Kristen, when you responded, “because I find this community to be an almost sacred space,” I sighed. I called my website altared spaces because I have been elbowed out of many religious institutions. I am constantly looking for those places where we practice moments of the sacred. I think I ask too many questions and that makes many uncomfortable.
Here it seems encouraged…maybe??
Bruce, you speak of “parenting itself as a spiritual practice” and later, “By ‘parenting’ I really mean an attitude of caring about the world and not necessarily having kids.” I feel at home. When we make Love and Nurturance our bottom-line, we can hardly go wrong.
This way of viewing things IS sacred. How could it be anything else? Thank you for this wonderful way of summing up and putting a loose frame around it. Not too tight… that seems to be when things get strangled, right?
Hi Rebecca – Thank you for coming to the salon today and for your thoughts about the sanctity of this space and the spirituality of parenting. I am always pleased to have you (a modern-day Anne Hutchinson?) here, asking questions and offering interpretations. You’re right: the frame is loose. And the net is wide.
Had you met Bruce before, Rebecca? I hope you’ll visit Privilege of Parenting and that he’ll visit you at Altared Spaces. I see so much resonance in your thinking and writing.
Hi Rebecca—it’s great to meet you here at Motherese. I’m still working my way through the many great voices from five-for-ten and now I zipped over to your site and see that it’s a place I’ll want to explore. For now I’m just glad to feel that kindredness with you here in this loosely but lovingly held space.
Bruce, this is lovely and absolutely brilliant! You are right, we are creating something together, figuring things out as we go, but finding connection and meaning and inspiration in each other.
I love the idea of our own Salon!
But do I really have to sit next Toklas? I’d much rather hang with Dorothy Parker–she has all of the good, snarky lines. :) Switch seats with me?
I do believe I am in charge of place cards, so, sure, TKW, we can work out a seating switcheroo. :)
Hey KW—consider it done. And by way of further synchronicity: in my first draft of my post (that was too long) I included something about when my New York artsy friends and I met weekly at the Algonquin Hotel, trying to conjure up Dorothy Parker and the other denizens of that round table. I love that you bring her into our Salon, and you most certainly get to sit wherever you like. Your own wit is much on par with her spirit—wherever you sit, and you bring much life to our Salon.
Just so glad to see you here.
Kristen, thank you so much for hosting Bruce – this post was fantastic.
And Bruce, I’m not sure how to say this, but I feel strangely validated by what you wrote. Sometimes I feel a little silly about how much time I spend connecting with other writers and artists through the medium of blogging. And yet it inspires me, it makes me feel (really feel) and it pushes me to create. “Virtual Salon” is the perfect name for it, because as a mom with two small kids, I live my life in sound bites. I can only connect at odd hours of the night or for a few minutes here or there. But the need to create doesn’t just stop because I can’t brainstorm with other writers in a public place. But “Virtual Salons” doesn’t care when I come by. The ideas are always flowing…
And here I am… late at night, circling back because I sensed a straggling comment and wanted to respond to all of them.
I have so many questions about what to create, and why we create… but questions and the mysteries are what drive this process, so I send encouragement to you, and look forward to comparing notes as we go.
I did meet Bruce in the May-hem of Five for Ten but this post helped to solidify that I will need to be a regular visitor.
My day yesterday was crazy. We’re preparing for graduation here as well as big parties and a week long trip. But as I ran errands and scurried, another lingering thought bubbled up: Bruce you managed to give some validation to me and to my gender with your utterances about creativity needing uninterrupted time.
It took me 10 years to put my husband through school. He began the change while I was pregnant with our second babe. I wanted to be a mother on my own terms for the healing it would bring to me (and that has been large!) but the flip side is that my personal creativity has suffered.
The way you said it, and those words coming out of a man’s mouth, helped. Thank you.
There will again be time for uninterrupted life. In the meantime, I’ve learned to create something different and that is indeed quite artful.
Hi Rebecca, Yes, the busy life, the interrupted life… with me just making it back here after a couple of days—and I’m so glad you found a bit of kindred spirit and affirmation in my words.
I keep toying with the notion that what we are creating in the aggregate, or perhaps what is driving us to create, is a sort of consciousness.
As work in progress, I’m just glad to be toiling along-side you and everyone else in our Virtual Salon.
Namaste
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