When people feel uncomfortable with their lives they like to blame the "world". It's such a big idea, it's like saying nothing at all. "The world" is a catch-all term meaning anything about America/Earth/the Cosmos we don't like. "The world" is...shallow paparazzi. It's those doctors on Grey's Anatomy, always sleeping together and guzzling tequila. It's New Age spirituality, gangs, the commercialization of Christmas, floppy-haired Donald Trump!
If someone is materialistic, sexually errant or unaware of the correct ways to talk about God, that person is "worldly". The term is subtler (and less blatantly condescending) than "sinner" but it means the same thing. It means there's something wrong with them. Worse than what's wrong with us.
Sometimes I too see the world as antagonistic; the spiritual, emotional and physical equivalent of a dark, hanted forest. I stumble through the night like Snow White fleeing from her murderers. Tree trunks frown and gnaw at me. Branches tear my clothes. Roots rise up to impede me. Owls are demons. Logs are ravenous crocs. Bats are, well, they're just bats. I run but it's no use! I fall hard. I pass out. Then the spell is broken and I awaken in warmth and sunlight. In the morning, the world hasn't changed much but the way I see it has.
What is the world?
Is it hostile? Does it want to thwart us?
Is it hostile? Does it want to thwart us?
Is it friendly? Does it, as the people in The Secret say, support us?
Does it even give a damn about us?
Is it full of inherent meaning?
Or is it a blank page, waiting for us artists to write our stories on it?
I find all of these views compelling at different times of the day.
I used to try so hard to be unpolluted by the world. Now I sometimes worrry about the world being polluted by me. I no longer want a priest's purity. I don't want a scholar's distance. I want to dance with the world, to push and be pushed. To be a rebel and a follower. A star and a team mate. I want to change the world and I want the world to change me.
Here is a new one-minute song ('Change the World') with some ghostly, adorable vocals by three-year-old Snow White fan Lillian Kate. Song two of the two-song piece is coming soon...
