24 April 2020 - Permission
Getting permission - Michael Hewerdine
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.Go and no-go, Gruff wasn’t it, the Billy Goat from fable days who guarded that bridge, those childhood books of amazing feats, that blew your mind, stopped you from sleeping, all that imagination running riot.
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Wanting something you can’t have drives people, goals, daring bold efforts, all because of permission. It has a lot to answer for.
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In extreme, the sadists of the yes-no are the enforcers, the judgemental people who say no, the bridge is this wide, that long, no goats allowed. ‘Look, it says so here’, and my purpose in life is to stop you. We are the No people, the critics.
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Of course the No people have to stay there and watch, to make sure nobody gets past a No without getting a Yes, that only they can give, so they think, or they arrange it that way best they can. So they don’t create, they don’t move; they can’t. It’s their choice.
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And it’s our role, as the anti yes-no people, to ignore the goat watchers and go and do it anyway, it’s called life. No need to establish a position and rigorously defend it. We’re all about open landscapes, wonder and expansion, sail those seas.
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Around the edges then, where the two bump up against each other from time to time, at the Yes-No boundary, is where a lot of fun happens. Anytime you put a stick in the spokes of control, is bound to get attention.
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Burnouts are wheels spinning on abrasive, solid metal, maybe that’s why we love them so much, sustained loss of traction. Traction to what? The rules? Somebody else’s rules? What does it matter, that someone’s tyres skid a little, why all the fuss, the blue lights, the chasing. Creative versus enforcer, the eternal circle.
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I’m an expert in goat goading, a parent’s nightmare, just enough to bump the edges. Step on the bridge to play, experience all the freedom possible and a little beyond. It’s not about the boundaries, it’s about the adventure, being the living version of chaos.
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Of course there is a theory that chaos isn’t random at all, and the whole thing is about intention. Which is exactly why Goats and the Yes-no people should go find something else to do, because that chain of watching, that fine line, doesn’t really exist at all.
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It’s just an illusion of permission.