"Animal Farm" Book Cover: Pen and Ink
Published in 1945!
A study of political revolutions using talking animals on a farm.
Today, on this long weekend, I am beginning something new. As you can see from the title of this blog, I am going to delve into my past, my life from the very beginning. Which happened, I'm glad to say on a farm. I know it may be hard to believe but I do appreciate the fact that I began my life on a small mixed farm in Saskatchewan. I'm am very grateful that I had the "ambiance" of a farm to grow up in. There is nothing better for ones health, for the joy of life, and for the wonder of growing up in nature. It was a fantastic natural classroom learning about the intricacies of life.
Also, my kids have no connection or real understanding of my farming experience, listening aghast at my stories, wondering how I survived despite for example, "eating dirt" as a kid. I'm aware that this was a unique experience, one that cannot be replicated and that is gone today. So right now, I feel like the "old guy" in the room. But, I also feel humbled and privileged to share some of it with you. I hope that it will be as fun and therapeutic for you the reader as I know it will be for me.
Before I begin, I must explain a few things. This will be life from my experience, my feelings and my vantage point as a young kid. It will be largely, on purpose may I say, told from my right brain. You see, I have become convinced that we in the "enlightened west", live way too much in our left brains. By ignoring the right brain we actually destroy the joy, fulfillment, creativity and meaning of life as it should be experienced and enjoyed. Our whole educational system and culture honors the left brain, putting down the wonder of the right, castigating those who by nature operate more than usual from the right side of the brain.
Let me explain something I have learned. You see, children do not employ the left brain at all until they begin to speak. All that time during their non-verbal months/years of growing up they are operating (non-verbal) out of the right brain. This then is the time where feelings of safety and trust are established. This becomes the foundation of how this person will respond to life later through their left brain as an adult! I know, it is scary as usually we think nothing is happening during those early months and that we can be loving, angry or even violent in front of them or towards them and it won't make a difference. Big mistake. Guess what, it makes a very big difference. For rest of their lives their responses to stress or love are based on what feelings they experienced in their right brains as children! We don't of course think of that when we as adults are in the now, responding to life as it comes our way. But is explains why we often wonder why we cannot beat issues like, this anger thing, when it all began as a child. That is where the foundations for life are laid. In the right brain. So scary. What have I done to my kids when they were young?
Once the child begins to speak they begin to move slowly into the left brain. Then, in grade one, our educational system takes over and rips us totally into the left as quickly as possible! And, they want to be sure that we stay there for good.
So, please be aware I will not be getting a map from the "Great Deer" district office in Borden, Sk. to get a map of my farming neighborhood confirming the distances between farms, or from our house to the school or church. From the house to the neighbors dugout I swam in, or from the barn to the manure pile where I dumped shit every weekend! In those days everything was measured by the mile, and I was a kid, so a mile felt a certain way. Now we are into "kilometers", so, there's no way I can get a read on that when I was a kid growing up with "miles"!
Also, know that memory plays tricks, even for us as adults. Two witnesses in court can see the same thing, yet their stories are different, often very different. Over time the memories of an experience work in the brain like your image in the ripples of the water trough. Some things are out of focus, and some not. In a moment it changes and now what was fuzzy is clear. Many things affect our memories. First, memories of instances change and morf as the years pass. Secondly they also change with whatever it is that evokes the memories. If it's a smell, it will look different than if it's a face that brings the memory to the fore. So if you were there when I tell a story of my experience in school for example, it will probably be my truth, and will be remembered differently by my friends who where there. So, if you were there, tell me your angle and we can talk about the differences and the lessons we learned.
Regardless, all of our past experiences taught us something. Even if the facts my not be perfect, the feelings and lessons are very real and are instrumental in what we believe, how we think, and subsequently how we live even to this very day.
So, it's a real joy at this late stage of my life to pass on some things that I experienced and learned in a very unique but rich situation. We cannot chose where we will be born nor the environment we are born in. I am very thankful for how God set me on a small mixed farm in Saskatchewan, with Ernest and Mary, my parents, me being the oldest of one sister and two brothers, in a small Mennonite community in central Canada.
Therefore, let me begin at the beginning. I will now reveal the most difficult thing about my life, my age. When was I born? It was the marker year for a new season in Canada and the world. I was born in 1945, the year WW2 ended!
I never realized till now what a turning point that year was. It was tough economically as everyone had suffered helping the war effort, but it was over and life was going to be different. And, we all know, it was different from then on, socioeconomically and politically.
But it was also a year of note "artistically", a very unusual and creative book '"Animal Farm" was published that year. Here I'm going to share "farm stories" with you and now discover that in the year of my birth, a best seller was published with a story based on the farm! How weird is that?
George Orwell used talking farm animals and farm life as a metaphor of the revolution of 1917 in Russia and later with Stalin It was and is an amazing idea and book. Very controversial at the time. He had a hard time getting it published but once it was published, it was a huge success.
Here's a quote from Wikipedia "In his essay "Why I Write" (1946) he wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he had tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.""
I liked that phrase and it occurred to me that my art is similar. It's not necessarily political but it is trying to fuse other, different worlds. I like to take a Biblical story and mix it with today, like "Foxy David" sitting on the roof with a modern spyglass ogling Bathsheba. If I transferred that phrase into my art experience I would say it something like this; "I think my art is an attempt to fuse Biblical and present day culture/spirituality plus a feeble attempt to include artistic purpose, all into one whole!"
Wow! Now that sounds rather pompous I've never heard myself say that before and I think I have to think about that a little more! I don't think it's actually quite right.
Warning! Move over, lightning could strike anytime
But I do really like the book cover pen and ink drawing. Look at that face, dictators are very unforgiving! And, the shocking red color, indication of blood and the sinister side (injustices and deaths) of any dictatorship and revolutions in general.
"Then Hezekiah repented of the pride of his heart, as did the people of Jerusalem; therefore the Lord's wrath did not come on them during the days of Hezekiah." 2 Chron. 32:26
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