This is dedicated to the quiet ones – the often silent ones, the dreamers, the we predict a riot ones (but softly, from the sideline).
The loud ones get all of the attention. The loud ones demand a mention, they initiate the intervention and insist they’re the elite – they can alleviate your tension. But they are only people too. They have anxieties. They’re not just trying to please you, there’s an agenda, a motive, an inner beast to feed. There’s nothing awkward but normality’s a mask for truth. Sometime’s normality is not the perfect mask to choose.
It’s strange, because.. the louder they speak – the more you feel like it’s your weakness they are speaking to. We’re told it’s safer to follow the crowd. Well, it used to be. Not so much nowadays, we hide in twos and threes, we sample every summer breeze as we drink, dance, and bruise our knees. Who are we, now? The quiet ones, ah yeah.. the ones who hope you’ll speak for us. The ones who think you know, you must know, what we’re thinking – fix it please, before it’s sticks and freezes, before it mixes freely with our own kicks and we’re queasy from it. This.. is dedicated to those quiet ones.
Tell me how you feel, the microphone is yours, for several minutes, live your dream. I hope you haven’t worried your way here. I hope you know that shouting isn’t something people like to hear. Your volume is your thought process, perception and presence. The loudest part of the picture is not the vast, grassy field, but the small, blue, tree, convincing us it knows something we don’t. Paint it, be part of it, whatever you feel is you. But don’t shout. There are far too many people shouting as it is.
You got up on that stage and you didn’t see the crowd, you didn’t hear the feedback, you didn’t feel the heat. You stayed inside your head, and that was the most interesting you there could be. Nobody can see me here, I can be how this art makes me feel. I made this. I’m making it again. You barely spoke to us; a great show, really, but then we want some humanness. We want to be seen. We want to be appreciated. It is very difficult to please the world. But, atleast.. if you find the right group, the right audience; you will find it much easier to be yourself.
Speak less and say more, they tell us. (They’re everyone outside of ourselves.) Write more and work it out. Think more, and know. Maybe you don’t know the way, but know that you’re moving, and know that you’ve grown. You know. The quiet ones who speak the loudest are often in our minds, and often in our view; whether we notice them or not. They had the real presence when all was said and done. In music, in art, in education, in science, in society, in substance (having, being of, using). But only some. Maybe today, there’ll only be one. Maybe we could listen more closely, and see that we’ve been wrong. That would be ok, too. Just don’t blindly follow the noise. The things that make the loudest noises, are often the most badly broken. They need you as well, but they have you already, and everybody else. Find your way through the noise. Find what needs to be said. Say it how you feel it should be said. Whatever happens, there will always be more. There is always something else.
To be continued..
