Thursday, September 2, 2010

2016 ART: VIDEO: Believe --An illustrated poem

Believe --An illustrated poem 
Updated 6/11/2016
A poem about believing.  I call it Existentialism 101.  Written and voiced by Selby Evans (Thinkerer Melville).  Art work by Antonio Alza A. (elros Tuominen in Second Life).


Believe -- a prose poem for voice 
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Outline: 

  • The comfort. 
  • The call. 
  • The challenge. 
  • The hesitation. 
  • The leap of faith.
  • The resolution. 
  • The closure.
Believe. Believe? They told me to believe.They told me what to believe.
And I believed them... But...
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"We are the Truth" they said.
"We give you the light” they told me. “We show you the way."
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I listened. I believed.
I was comfortable with my believing. I was at peace. But...

-But then... I saw. I see. I see not what they told me to see.
I see what is.
I saw that they are like me.
They can see Truth no more than I can.
I do not know the Truth. I do not know the Way. I do not have the Light.
Nor do they.
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Nor do they. 
They are blind men preaching to blind men.
They are men who do not know preaching to men who do not know.
I am one who does not know. This I know.
I am naked in not knowing. This I know.
I have watched my floor vanish before my opened eyes.
The empty chasm of why has opened below me.
I have felt the chill wind of not knowing.
I was blind, but now I see.
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They had told me who I was...
They had told me what I should do.
They had told me who I should be… and why.
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They had given me the safety of belief.
They had given me the floor to stand on.
They had given me the answers to hide the empty chasm of not knowing.
They had given me the answers to cover my nakedness of not knowing.
As, they believe, the answers cover their not knowing.
Now I understand the comfort of belief.
Now I understand the chill wind of not knowing.
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I do not know who I am.
I do not know who I should be.
I do not know why I should be.
I do not know, even, who gives out the shoulds.
Or whether there are any shoulds
beyond the shoulds they make up.
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I do know the chill wind of not knowing.
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Alone, alone, all, all alone,
over the chasm of not knowing.
I do not know.
I do not know.
I do not know. And yet...
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And yet I must choose. That I do know.
I must be the One Who Chooses.
That I do know ... and now I know who I am.
And now I know what I must do.
Nobody else can go there for me.
I must go there for myself.
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I am the One Who Chooses.
I am the One Who Does.
I am the sleeper who has awakened.
I am the chooser of my fate.
I am… here… now…in this moment... the
One Who Chooses, and the
One Who Does, and the
One Who Judges.
Nobody else can go there for me.
I must do that for myself.
I must do that for myself. And…
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And I am one who can do that for myself.
I cannot know, but I can choose.
I do not know, but I will choose.
I do not have the truth, but I do have the choice.
I do not have the light, but I do have the choice.
The one truth that I do know is that I must choose.
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But I speak not only for myself.
Some of those who hear me are also Choosers. Or will be.
They will know the chasm.
They will know chill wind.
They will know the power of choosing,
the power of doing,
the power of judging their own acts.
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And what of the others? They who already know what to believe?
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Quiet. They are asleep. Do not awaken them.
They, too, have chosen. It is finished.
We, the choosers, have not finished.
We must be about Reality's work.
If we choose. If we choose.


Art


Video-Machinima
      

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2 comments:

  1. Nice illustration Thinkerer! (You read very well btw...) I'd love to see the poetry readers do similar things more often at Friday Plays Around.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Madame. I hope to see this kind of thing grow in SL.

    ReplyDelete

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