Whimsical Innocence

The Art of Peter Ferguson

Illustrations of Innocence

Mari Lomo's portfolio

Vanity Fair says Michael lost his Youth

I happened to catch sight of a memorial article to Michael Jackson in Vanity Fair, "In Memoriam: Michael Jackson". The article celebrates Jackson's career and then pop-psychologizes him toward the end (no pun intended). Here's what it says:

He was different from all the other celebrities. He dressed different. He looked different. He even walked different. He did it backwards. And he aged backwards too, or at least he tried to. And that was the great tragedy of his life. His youth had been sacrificed to the music industry, spent in recording studios, and dealing with the trappings of fame. He would spend the rest of his life trying to recapture that innocence, receding into the William Randolph Hearst-like seclusion of Neverland Ranch, seeking for his own Rosebud. He surrounded himself with candy, toys, and other children, with whom he would never have normal relationships. Beginning in the early nineties, accusations of child molestation and troubling reports about his private life would overshadow even his own sublime music.

I was poking fun at Vanity Fair for reducing Michael Jackson's entire life to a psychological drama of lost youth. However, this sort of mythologizing is common when we are trying to understand a larger-than-life figure. There may be some truth to what Vanity Fair is saying here, but definitely not enough to put on a man's gravestone. "In Memoriam" means "in memory of" in Latin.

Why did I choose to pull this clipping of all the millions of other clippings of Michael Jackson floating around the Internet? Because it relates to my theme, the theme of this blog . . .

Was Michael innocent or guilty according to Vanity Fair's assumptions? Did he know better? Or was he pure-minded?

I'm guessing it was pretty murky for Michael if he was addicted to painkillers. But there is an innocence to him in the Jackson 5 that totally gets replaced by another image. "Off the Wall," "Thriller," and "Bad" demonstrate a sort of defiance, not innocence but lack of innocence.

Read my ode to the King of Pop here.

Preface to the Blog of Innocence

I like to think of myself as someone who is drafting and re-drafting his life until it makes sense. Life, being irrational, never fully makes sense and so I am continually making up new stories about myself in a creative and naive way.

But this is how children think. Nothing is absolute. Everything is provisional for a child. Tell the child one story, she will believe it, because any story to a child has the possibility of being true.

Adults on the other hand conform to a rigid set of beliefs, true or untrue only according to their own reality.

I write because it is a door I once opened and I continue to go back and forth through that door. I explore the byways and the tunnels of myself.

Whatever I write always has the possibility of being true--at least to me--and to write down my reality is satisfying.

The question of whether what I do is art or not. Sometimes I am intentionally creating art and sometimes I am just writing. The best writing comes out when I am not intentionally doing anything--in fact the best writing comes out when I don't know what I'm doing or saying. But I think I like to write because it feels like someone is listening. It feels like what I am saying is not only true to me but true to others as well.

In a way, I am a compulsive writer. I will write because it's a drive.

Maybe I should stop.

Sometimes I do. But when I stop writing, I read a lot and reading activates my imagination and soon I am writing again.

Whatever I've been saying in the last few paragraphs, I'm not aiming at anything. I'm circling around the mood and the moment of my experience, gladly touching the borders and playing with the edges.

Everyone has their own secret life. We all have minds which are islands--between those islands flow the rivers of our hearts, but the mind itself is lonely. Which is strange, because we retreat into our minds so often. We retreat into our thoughts, our ideas, our beliefs, and we find solace in them even though they are ridiculous.

But there is safety in one's private mind, the thoughts of which no one can read. Because they are private entertainments of the self.

If you have pets, then you know the comforts of having non-human company. The human-animal connection is unique, and for obvious reasons, animals are incredibly loved by humans.

Ultimately, I think what we are stuck with is habit. Whatever habits you cultivate within your lifetime, those are the heavens and hells of your existence. Many habits fall between these two extremes and that's why our lives are pretty mundane.

Most of our habits are mundane in the everyday sense. We go to work, we eat meals, we tend to our homes and our families, we do chores. Perhaps that's why novelty is so interesting and stimulating.

I seek novelty. If I am not seeking novelty in dramatic and bizarre ways, I am seeking novelty in the miniature sense.

I do appreciate a well-ordered life, everything manageable and in its right place. This stems from the pure gratification of a sense of control. But as far as I can tell, control is something that most people try to exert over themselves and their environments.

My habits are deeply fulfilling mundane rituals that I carry out, such as going to Borders every morning to have my coffee and read the New York Times. To me, the Times is my mainstay to a normal, functioning adulthood. I am not saying the specific paper has the same magical effect on everyone. But for me reading the paper is very soothing and it reaffirms my sense of self.

I admire the quality of the writing in the Times and I believe it improves my own writing. But there is something else about the ritual which stabilizes me.

And yet, I seek novelty.

Women provide men with an immediate burst of novelty and distraction. If you are ever bored, start a romantic relationship and you will find how interesting your life gets.

But I believe that I ultimately retreat back into my own private mind, and that shared space between me and another person gradually lessens or dries up and dies.

I believe in long-term relationships, I am cynical towards permanent ones.

Right now I don't know where I am in terms of the opposite sex. Do I want to get married? Do I want to have children? Would I prefer to stay single?

The opposite sex is delightful. Loving can also be a doorway to a higher potential for one's being, but in most cases, we are not mature in love for long enough. We stop loving and I cannot explain or understand that.

Love gets degraded over time, diminished, and terribly distorted until it is not even love but something representing its opposite: hate.

Now my cats are quiet. The heater has stopped humming and the only sound in the room is of my keys clicking.

I think about my past life, my life in Spain and Las Vegas. I think of the adventures I once had and now being here in this moment of early, untainted adulthood.

I'm making the right choices now. Thank God. I am rational about things. I am aware of habit and how it has the power to lull me into a state of unconsciousness.

We grow ourselves. We grow our personalities and our behaviors. Like a garden, we grow ourselves--and once we were sick gardens but now we are growing healthier. Once we were patches of weeds over a dusty mound of dirt, but now we are seeking wholeness and fruit.

We want to bear fruit. For ourselves, for others.

We learn in time to survive, and even better, we learn to thrive.

It is the unfortunate fact of being human that we are constantly working against ourselves. We like to be our own enemies. And I think it is better that we just accept this as a matter of fact, that we accept the demons inside of us which want to destroy us, even if that destruction is a slow-going poison.

Because, ultimately, we must die and we know we must die. So the destructive force inside each one of us is familiar and close. We know the destructive side as much as we know the creative side. We know when we do good to ourselves and our bodies, and we know when we do bad.

Good and bad are only relative to our own individual experiences. Doing wrong to others is doing wrong to oneself.

But it is almost impossible to escape the cloud of unconsciousness that hovers over each one of us. And in an ironic display, we can see everyone else's flaws but not our own.

It is like the inability to smell one's own scent. The smell is palpable to others, but not to yourself.

I don't repress the mystery about myself; I form it.

I also celebrate it.

I have been called naive before, and after all, this blog is called The Blog of Innocence.

We are all innocent in life. We are innocent to the radical mystery of it.

No matter what we do, what errors we make, what horrors befall us, we are all human, we are all innocent.

Read a recent essay, "Loving Her" . . .

Flight: Part Two

I have had this dream ever since I was a child. The dream has become a sort of refrain in my life, endlessly repeating and replenishing my interest in it.

I am trying to pry into my subconscious; I am trying to decipher one of the many mysteries I hold inside me.

Waking from my flying dream is one of the most pleasant sensations I know. Upon waking I am reminded of my secret powers, and I go about the rest of my day with a foolish grin on my face.

The interpretation of dreams may be a provocative and stimulating pursuit, but one never arrives at a final solution—or the key—to his or her dream.

I suppose I can look up the symbol of “flying” in a dream-encyclopedia and find a generic, albeit satisfactory, explanation to my night-visions. It might even shed some light on the variegated herds of animals that haunt my African savannah . . .

But, on second thought, I don’t care to know the true meaning of this dream. I simply want to carry the sensation of flying. I want to carry it until I die, never knowing what the dream means or why I had it so often . . .

There is no doubt that our dreams are trying to tell us something. If you believe in the subconscious, then you’ll admit to the importance of this crystal bridge between worlds--

The vaguest memory of our dreams suggests we have access to them; a doorway, a brief crack of light. In rare occasions, a person might awake within her dream, which is called lucid dreaming.

Once I had a lucid dream. The world (of the dream) was totally fantastical, and yet I had some control within it, to move around and uncover things. I moved inside the dream as if I were playing a game, like a video game, but there were also some aspects I couldn’t control.

Don’t tell me the meaning of my flying dream. You’ll reduce it to psychological mumbo jumbo. For life is greater than psychology and its theories. And interpretations, like judgments, reduce individuals to abstract concepts. If I were to accept any interpretation of this flying dream, the mystery would be gone instantly, and the dream would lose its power of enchantment.

Sages continually remind us to “enlighten” ourselves. But the language of dreams is darkness and half-light.

What if I prefer my dreams to so-called real-life? What if I’m enjoying this ongoing hallucination, this overflowing stew of desires, dreams, and drives?

Besides, I prefer flying to walking long distances.

I will always vote in favor of dreams and darkness. I feel comfortable in the shade. I’m more likely to wander at night than during the daytime, and to follow my true desires in the wildwood. There are no pretenses at night. In your dreams you are never pretending to be someone; you just are.

During the daytime I feel the burden to be someone. I’m playing a highly-skilled part with expectations to fulfill, and there is always something that must get done. At night, in contrast, time loses its grip on me and my sense of inferiority melts away.

What is commonly called “real-life” is usually a mere trifle. I get worked up about the smallest things. Items I label with greatest importance and greatest consequence turn out to have minor importance and minor consequence.

All of my fears can be summed up: my real-life will fall apart.

What’s beautiful about dreams is that there’s nothing to fall apart because nothing has ever been static or fixed together (as we pretend to make life during the day). In a dream, the pieces are scattered to begin with. Dreams are wild, fitful, mutable, and delirious. Time does not exist, at least not in any ordinary conception of the word. And because of the emptiness and formlessness of this world, we tend to have more freedom.

But really there is no difference between real-life and dreams. Real-life is also wild, fitful, mutable, and delirious. One can even argue that time doesn’t exist here . . .

Flight: Part One

When I dive from the cliff, nobody catches me . . .

I can barely conceal the smile on my face as I glide--

The joy of being able to launch myself at once into a separate sphere, gives me a supreme satisfaction, an indescribable feeling.

Levitation is a consummate thrill. Floating is even wilder and more insane to imagine. And flight is beyond comprehension.

While I’m flying over giant clusters of people just as if they were pixels on a vast screen, I realize that my secret ability to fly has come to me in the time of an emergency.

Flying is not a part of my daily routine, you see.

I realize that something was threatening me on the ground, and that’s why I suddenly took flight. An impression of the primal scene still haunts me, vague pictures floating restlessly in the back of my mind, distant as memories.

The crowds on the ground are trying to keep up with me. They’re running after me as if they too might bolt into the air. They don’t look like pixels anymore. More like gazelles, running in loose herds; the undulant rhythm of their hind-legs beats like a drum on the African plain.

The beasts of the savanna are chasing me with delight.

For the rest of the dream, I soar over the majestic sweeping continent. Thorny acacias and palm trees spread throughout the vast swathes of grassland and marshes. I look down at the elephants which appear pensive and sad. They are monuments of sadness. Grey lugubrious figures with heavy-thick skin, brooding eternally over the land.

Then: long-necked giraffes carrying messages to the tall trees, whispering all sorts of secrets to the leafy vegetation; they chew in serene self-possession. White rhinos are transfigured into kingly creatures who command respect from the tribes.

The striking zebras graze indolently on the pastures. From my birds-eye, their vivid stripes evoke a mesmerizing contrast to the dry, parched lands.

Flying seems to be the simplest thing in the world.