Reconciliation

When I spend too much time surrounded by this civilization, with its endless screens, ads, geometric architecture and trite, sterile lifestyle recommendations, I loose touch with the greatest source of meaning and solace I have ever found – the world of nature. Indeed, I think a lot of people spend the majority of their time caught in urbanity and the media worlds and feel quite existential with no sense of meaning or foundation, and feel we have nature on the run and our civilization is much stronger than the natural world. However, I feel it is humanity and its creations, and not nature, that are the fragile ones.

The centuries long march of modernity and industrialization has produced a society well versed in reason and science, that functions like a well oiled machine, but sadly has dissociated itself from the true wellspring of existence, with the modern reliance on logic, facts and numbers. Perhaps the task facing humanity after the 20th centuries’ orgy of left brain thinking and ubiquitous statistics is to reconcile our egos and our society with its traditional grounding in the natural world, that includes not only visible nature, but also our imaginations, our souls and our deities.

While immersed in this society it may seem our culture reigns supreme, with its electronic wizardry and massive urban sprawls, but on further reflection it appears our little egos are surrounded by the depths of our unconscious, the timeless seat of our souls and our deities, which like the natural world will always eventually assert its compensatory response to our unbalanced reliance on left brain logic, statistics, and the physical world, and the atheism this  frequently produces.

Like an old Japanese print, where man and his creations are presented in balance and harmony with the natural world, so too as this coming century moves along our civilization may meet the need of reconciling with the mysteries and power of nature, both outside in the woods and mountains, but also within us, with our personal and collective souls.

Tough to see when you’re trapped in this society, but then again so were the other major revolutions in human history, including the fall of the Soviet Union.

Forgive me for waxing philosophically, but if any of this appeals to you, may I suggest you check out my work at http://www.kloschinsky.com. There you will find songs, poetry and photography that express this vision, as well as other themes such as love, adventure, spirituality and melancholy.

Thank you for your support of my music.

In song and in spirit,

Paul Kloschinsky