The Many Changing Proteus
Men must be free from boundaries, patterns, and consistencies in order to be free to think, feel and create in new ways.--Luke Rhinehart
A thousand minds require a thousand methods.
One soil doesn’t bear all crops: vines here
are good, olives there: this teems with healthy wheat.
There are as many manners of heart as kinds of face:
a wise man will adapt to many forms,
and like Proteus now, melt into smooth waters.
—Ovid
The comedian Louis C.K. would attend open mic comedy shows long past when his fame had eclipsed that circuit. He was not there for the anxiety-ridden newbies who sweat and forget their lines though their audience consists of other amateurs waiting for their turn. He was there for the mystery of the crowd.
What was this fickle beast that one day applauds your performance and the next day tears off your head? The performance has been nailed and perfected but what difference the Thursday and Friday crowd makes. Is the guy before you too funny? You are screwed. Is the guy before you not funny enough? You are still screwed. Your material exists in a paradigm that ebbs and flows in an ocean of millions of factors you can never know.
The King invades the village and is surprised by the bravery of its defenders. Though the battle is won and slaughter imminent he decides to spare the brave defenders. Somewhere off in another land, another King invades another village and what could be called bravery is depicted as ferocity and arrogance. The village is wiped out to the last man and salt is sewn into the fields.
But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my neighbor feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine.
—Emerson, Compensation
It seems to me that I can control my actions. And it also appears that I have these desires and needs. Some benevolent and some not so. My mind cannot instantly manifest what it wants—I must go out into a festival of unknown if I wish to match the picture show in my head with the picture show I’m experiencing.
The comedian wishes to come face to face with the unknown factor of the audience and the human wishes to understand the unknown factor of living a life. The writer learns that he only knows what he thinks after he has finished pouring it from inside to outside. This process of written externalization turns outside-inside and inside-outside. Ahab can’t tolerate the calculated malicious intent of a whale whose whiteness is supposed to represent purity and innocence. He will need a large pen to solve this problem.
Man needs his concepts to make it through the day. If I perform X then surely Y must be my reward. But how could Z happen when I was trying my damnedest to make sure it didn’t and following all the steps that had always worked before. If a turkey bases his happiness on all the previous days he will be in for a surprise when Thanksgiving rolls around.
My favorite part of the television show Whose Line Is It Anyway? is the beginning. The camera focus on Drew Carey who welcomes us to the show and lets us know that what we are about to watch is a comedy show “Where everything is made up and the points don’t matter! That’s right the points are just like…”
The talent portion of a beauty contest
A suggestion box at Tiananmen Square
A degree from an online university
Friday afternoon at work
Your chiropractor’s medical degree
The word international in International House of Pancakes
The host of Whose Line Is it Anyway
The novelist Luke Rhinehart wants us to know that for too long we have admired Prometheus and Mars. Yet our God must become the ever-changing Proteus. For how else will we invent new rituals, new philosophies and new concepts in our never-ending game of trying to enclose that which never may be caught.