Wild & Disobedient, Oh, My!
I’m constantly dreaming up new life shops. It’s in my creative blood. Sometimes I offer the same life awakening experience twice. More often, I take the “best of” material along with me to a new gig and give it a twist of creative lime or lemon.(Interestingly enough, I do the same thing at karaoke. The thrill of doing a new song, get’s my adrenaline pumping. And travel. Like to keep going to new villages and sites. Almost like I’m a modern day Lewisitta and Clarkitta).
Once I started guiding writers at Story Circle On-line classes, it became a great venue to test out my new ideas. I must say, “Write Prose So Juicy, Your Readers Will Eat It” really hit the mark. Most writing classes are just about getting the words out. “Juicy” encouraged the writer to first defrost his/her juicy side. It’s easier for words to escape when the body/mind has de-thawed.
Of course, I’ve got a brand new summer mini-writing rush planned for folks in the Greater Boston area.
Wild & Disobedient Writing. Unleash your Kick-ass Personality! The response has already been fantastic. It’s sparked a lot of curiosity in folks. That’s when you KNOW you’re onto something well, juicy.
Like other animals, humans have been domesticated by other humans. I’m gonna say “over-domesticated.” You know how animals stick their noses into the wind and seem to see/hear/smell/feel something you can’t see/hear/smell/feel. I’m convinced we’ve blocked out anything we can’t “measure.” In fact, our “measuringitis” has gotten absurd. Take school testing and medical testing and personality testing. A friend who’s super creative and a marketing genius, failed an employment personality test. They wouldn’t tell her what she failed, they just said her personality wouldn’t fit in. (Hmm. Were they measuring conformity?) So, she’s doing her own thing and it’s working out really well.
How do we measure the things that really matter like kindness, creativity, enthusiasm, love, enjoyment? I find that folks who want to measure want to control us in some way, to make us fearful. School testing is not about measuring learning it’s about creating fear. The kids, the parents, the teachers, the administrators, yet few speak up about stopping the insanity. Why, because we’re all too tame and obedient.
The only way to return the Earth to its original Garden of Eden state is to free the human animals in the human zoo. You may not see any cages, but they’re there. When children are young, we encourage them to get into the invisible cage, pretend lock it from the inside and pretend toss the invisible key through the non-existent bars. Then our handlers never, ever mention the key to us again. They want us to forget the key exists so we’ll stay in the cage and perform “tricks” for other folks in other cages.
But if you’ve been to a zoo of any kind, you know those animals start exhibiting some really weird behaviors. They pace back and forth, hit the plexi-glass with their bodies, pull out their hair, develop repetitive movements – they’re bored to death. And so our most humans. Most self-harming behavior occurs because folks don’t know they can let themselves out of their make-believe cages. (If I’d chosen to be a mother, I’m sure the thought/behavior monitors would have hauled me down to “disobedient’ mother court on a daily basis.)
Well, you can. I stumbled on my own key quite by accident and disobediently put it in the lock. Viola! it opened and I slipped out.
This new writing/living life shop, Wild & Disobedient Writing, will encourage you to get out of your own moving human zoo and back into the wild, where humans belong. The natural inclination is to roam around, feeding our bodies, spirits and souls. We need to take off the “designer-labeled” four-point restraints and get back to that. Otherwise, we’ll all continue to be insane.
Live in the Framingham area and want to join me? The pilot program will be a small group of four. If it goes well (and it will!) I’ll expand it and bring it to folks in other parts of the world. Be disobedient and check it out here.
Are you ever disobedient?
Giulietta
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“Wild & Disobedient” – I LOVE it! 🙂 Sounds like a great adventure and I look forward to hearing how it goes. 😉
I love your analogy of the zoo and humans being locked up in cages. It fits so damn well! I feel like I’ve found my key, put it into the lock, turned it and am about to step out through that open door… Can’t wait to see what I will discover! 😉
Being disobedient is sooo much more fun and freeing! 🙂
Glad to have you back here Jessilicious! Will send you a tweet when it’s finished. Happy you found your key and have turned the lock. You’ll love the freedom you find outside the cage …
Yours in disobedience! G.
If I lived in your area, I’d sign up for your “Wild and Disobedient Writing workshop. What’s more, that name and this post is giving me ideas. What the hell, I’m going to write a Wild and Disobedient blog post and see what happens.
I agree that most of our lives we spend in cages of a sort, and if we get out of them, talk about weird behavior – or so it may seem. There was one decade perhaps, the 70s, when I made it out but others, perhaps threatened by my free spirit and liberal ways, forced me back inside. Now I think I’ve spent too long in my cage to ever escape it again.
Hey Penelope!
Will have you writing with us in spirit. It’s really speaking to folks. Get as close to the edge as possible in your writings/living. Much wilder out there.
Would love to read your post. You are more out of the cage than many. Just a few more steps … Thx, G.
What Penelope J. said — I am bursting with ideas due to your juicy (grin) post!
What a fantastic sounding class! And what fun for the luckies who get to be encouraged (by YOU!) to live outside their cages.
Your question: “Have you ever been disobedient?” Who, ME? grin
Hey Karen,
Just thinking about being disobedient frees folks to try new things, doesn’t it?
Best wishes for your continued disobedience!
G.
Giulietta,
We must be on some kind of mind meld vibration of something. Earlier this week I was ranting on Facebook about being more “provocative” in what people shared if they wanted to use social marketing effectively. And then along comes your wonderful Wild & Disobedient ..
I’d encourage you to think of offering this as a teleclass or online workshop sometime.
Thanks for being awesome!
Paul
Hey Paul,
Happy to be part of the mind meld. Rants are good. Shows some passion for the subject.
Way too much wishy-washy syndrome plaguing the nation. Despite, what they say at graduation ceremonies, everything leading up to that and after that promotes safe, dull, on-the grid living. Thanks for the encouragement! Can do that pretty easily for a teleseminar. G.
Hi Giulietta,
I wonder who or what exactly decided to impose us behind our invisible cages.
What is the gain? You example of the zoo animals is so dead on.
I believe many people feel that something is not right with this world yet they do not understand what it is.
We all are meant to be free and not domesticated.I wonder how long it would take to adjust to freedom once it is restored.
I don’t own pets nor do I intend to. They become almost helpless once they are domesticated.
Hi Justin,
From my educational research, I believe it was the early industrialists who got folks into cages. They wanted “factory workers” who’d be content doing the same thing obediently for long stretches. So, they pushed for the mass schooling model we’ve got today.
Our economy runs on folks buying consumer items they don’t need. Free folks could not be trained to buy tvs and then buy the stuff the see on tvs.
Just today I read the economy has once again stalled because middle class folks are not buying enough stuff. They forget the last bubble fueled itself by people mortgaging their homes. That’s no longer possible. Anyone who has read the structure of scientific revolutions may recall that every model eventually gets replaced with a new one. The economy will j.too.
My take. Maybe there are others? Thx, g.
> Like other animals, humans have been domesticated by other humans.
Too true. I like it when people get unleashed and show their inner-tigers … or Tigger too.
Hey J.D.,
Inner Tiger and/or Tigger, love it! Thx, G.
I agree. I dig Tigger. And kick ass. Kick ass is my absolute favorite word(s). 🙂
You kick ass, G. Keep raging against the institution. This post made me think about how my kids and I are spending the summer. I keep thinking that I need to be doing something more “educational” and now that we are in the new house, all they want to do is play, outside, all day. Isn’t that wonderful? That’s what we used to do! And you’re right, the guilt I feel is not coming from my own intuition. It’s coming from the zoo keepers. 🙂
Hi Angie,
Yes, it is wonderful they want to be outside romping around, all free and fierce.
I’m thrilled you wrote about feeling like you need to do something “educational.” I’ve finished my op-ed column on education/schooling and this gets to the heart of it.
Play is true education! It’s key to children learning about themselves and life. You nailed it when you said the zoo keepers made you feel guilty.
“Let’s get the kids in seats so they can learn.” No one learns much of anything in a seat unless s/he voluntarily sits down there.
Our schools are based on the Prussian military model! Yet, so few no that.
Go with your own gut here … Enjoy the new house and the backyard, it’s teaming with life out there.
thx, G.
Holy cow, I LOVE the title of your class. I wish I lived in Boston.
I’ve been fiddling with a story forever. I love everything about my idea, but something’s been missing. I read “wild and disobedient writing” and just knew you’d found me. Thank you for the unintended rescue!
xo
Hey J,
Thanks for stopping in to leave a comment. Happy the title appeals to you.
Always honored to be a muse for a fellow writer’s story! Sometimes, if it’s not going quite right we’re trying to make the story conform and it doesn’t want to.
g.
This sounds like fun! One thing I discovered, many years ago, is that when I let loose with my writing – didn’t try to button it up and restrain it with niceties – people liked me just as well, if not better, than before. It also inspired them to open up more honestly.
Hi Holly,
Glad you stopped in. I get such great commenters here!
I agree with not trying to button up our writing and make it all nice and polite. Who really wants to read something that protected? If I don’t feel naked after writing, I know I haven’t gone far enough. Many thanks! G.