14 VII 2002 - 22:53 - verba22

Another Alchera production.

OPTION NO. FOUR: This project comes in parts. The first part is to think of the four most important things in your life and record them on your website in the space allocated for your Alchera projects.

I do not walk in this world so much as I walk in spite of it. This, a reflection of my tendency to trip into everything and keep my weight balanced just before the balls of my feet, ready to spring into flight from the man who will be my undoing, puts everything else in my life after it.

What then are the four things most important to me in my life? At my tender age, it is not the material things or so much the ones of daily ritual which my mind wears smooth. Rather, they can be expressed as tasks and as categories, thus.

First, and I suspect most likely to endure (along with the next), is the concept of language, and my ability to use it in all its forms -- in my ability to write, to speak, to read, and more generally to comprehend. The thought is sublime that through this vehicle I may communicate with the great minds of this and previous ages. As long as I am able to speak, as long as I remain able to learn a language, I am not unmanned, I remain in full possession of my faculties, I am human.

Second, and again likely permanent, is the concept of music, but in this case of a very specific sort: music of the European tradition from about 1200 to the present day, that music commonly known as 'classical' although in truth, the term is used better to describe the music of the period 1750-1800. Music is a force in my life, both as I perform it and as I listen to it; as long as it is with me, as long as I can call readily to mind great pieces and play them also, I am human, with the capacity to feel, with the capacity to touch the minds of the men who wrote the music. Just as language is the final test of my reason, music is the final test of my emotion.

Third is a temporary task, but no less important for the fact that it is transitory: here sits the task of discovering my identity as it is bound to my family, discovering my identity as it is bound to my sexuality, discovering my identity as it is bound to my culture. Within culture comes ritual: who am I within the greater context, what role am I given to play, to whom is it right that I bow and bend, in what history may I take pride? Thus in these years the formation of my identity is crucial to me, to be held close and safeguarded.

So too with the fourth, the same quest on a more personal level, or the question: who am I? Under this, the search for and shaping of a God, who slowly begins to take shape in my mind; under this, the shaping of a belief system, of values, of what I hold most dear to my heart. Perhaps I cheat, being told to name four and naming identity-group and identity-personal as two separate concepts; surely they are closely bound. They are, but I remain convinced that the two are different tasks, difficult for me in different ways. And from this last comes my preoccupation with religion and God and just what his nature might be.

and then there were...
three
two

one