A meme, pronounced to rhyme with crème, is a “postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, and is transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. (The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word mimema for "something imitated.” This whole official definition is very engineer speak in confusing me.
Wikipedia’s explanation left me even more confused. I needed something so simple that even my brain could understand. “What’s a meme” tells me that meme’s on blogs are often questionnaires. If you get five other folks to do one, it becomes a viral meme. Not a lot content here….but I understand “questionnaire” and “viral," "passed on" or "evolve."
Blog writer, Tabor, who is off on another adventure, left me this meme’s words to ponder. Instead of pondering, I seem to have been free associating:
- Play: Throw wide your arms and let inhibitions fly free. Let loose the cultural norms and have fun at any time of any day. Dance madly in the streets at three am; play stick ball deep in the inner city; let good cheer dance among the canyons of the buildings or in the shadows of the tallest trees. Let time halt, let laughter reign. Free yourself of cares….just for the moment. Be a child again and let loose the imagination. Fun…..play is fun.
- Impact: I pound my drums, and my rhythm reaches out to others. Some of us have more of an impact than others. I pound my drums.
- Ambient: Completely surrounded by sound, weather, music, voices; encompassing; enclose, envelope, to go around on all sides while surrounded by…..which leaves me wondering who else is out there among the stars. What sounds can be heard deep into the country side. Silence certainly must be ambient. Here in the inner city, life is never silent.
- Pretend: Do I do that any more? I used to daydream every day leaving behind a world where I did not quite fit and certainly didn’t understand. Instantly I could leap into my pretend world I’d built and become anything I ever wanted. Success. No failure here. No reality. When did I stop pretending. Is denial the opposite.
- Gorgeous: I was, we all are, and now I understand that even wrinkled, worn and tired is gorgeous too. But boy, in my arrested development it took me forever to understand this. I’m a product of my culture. I’m an echo of my past and my damaged thinking. Art could be beautiful but not gorgeous. Humans never. The elegant richness of that word never reached my heart. The free passion of that word went right over my head. There was nothing brilliant about me in my youth, for the clarity of that word never reached me. Oh, to confess such shallowness.
In the end, perhaps a meme is just truth passed on.
I don't understand at all. But I loved your essay.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is just the truth, isn't it?
ReplyDelete