Legos and the four friends

We had a lovely intergenerational service today at church where these two topics came up, reminding me of some notes I made awhile back and never shaped into a post.

Briefly: the four friends were walking in the forest. They came to a tall tree and stopped to look up in amazement. The elephant said, "Ah, I remember tending this tree when it was only half as tall as me, and look how tall it's grown. And that was a long time ago, maybe fifty years or more." The monkey said, "Ah, I remember tending this tree when it was only twice as tall as me, its beautiful leaves shining in sun and shadow. And that was a long time ago, maybe a hundred years or more." The rabbit said, "Ah, I remember tending this tree when it was a sapling, swaying in the breeze. And that was a long time ago, maybe two hundred years or more." The bird said, "Ah, I think I planted this tree, planted it here in the ground from a seed I carried in my beak. And that was a long time ago, maybe three hundred years or more." And as each one spoke, the others nodded thoughtfully. They were so moved by the conversation and by their fondness for the great tree, they decided to plant another tree like it nearby, to commemorate the tree, that day, and their friendship...

A young woman told this story from memory; she noted that we might have heard other versions, or would find others if we looked, as it was very widespread. She also said we might spend hours or days or years discussing it if we were studying Buddhism, but that for her it suggested how good it is to share what we know and to listen compassionately, and how diversity can contribute to creativity.

Then the pianist played "Everything is Awesome" for the offertory. The sermon was titled The Power of Legos, touching on their equal appeal for boys and girls, their teaching of cause and effect and physics, and about compromise, starting over, breaking and rebuilding, apologizing and having to work together to make it better, playing, making unexpected discoveries, and something John Green said about imagining people complexly. We could go on and on with stories about the toys and about the kids playing with them--a version of this was repeated again--but that was the main thing. Plus, they're fun!

We watched a short lego movie in lieu of a benediction, but the sound wasn't working. I can't find it now, but it was along these lines.

I'm not sure why spell check thinks legos is a misspelling. It must have something to do with marketing.

What, would you say, is the greatest story ever sold?

Basically, now that creative work is collapsing into advertisement, the story you tell about your product comes to have precedence over the product itself, but also over every other story.

There might be an analogy here between this and the stock market, except I don't know how that works: the huge fees companies pay to advertise themselves is like a futures market of insane greed and optimism, an investment in the advertiser’s ability to seduce the minds and influence the actions of statistically significant and specific portions of the global population. But could it also be a concession to the beautiful, to aesthetic delight, in some cases?

The good news: we are readers, not only consumers. There is a kind of power this gives us to influence corporations by our actual purchases, but then there is also the business structure of streaming websites which now make actual artistic content available for free thanks to the revenue from advertising--or the fact that this artistic content is itself advertising. The alternative models, paid subscriptions or targeted donations tied to a relationship with the artist or to bonus special content, seem to be really more for status or convenience, when leaks and ad-blocker are so ubiquitous as to make even what should cost money become free in no time.

Think also of the cost of producing the artistic creations of our time, films and video games, and the advertising portion of this which consists in sections of the unfinished work itself: trailers. They are their own advertisement; they collapse into one another in that way, too. It may be that the experience feels somehow less real without the honest possession by fair exchange, but this may be only a convention of thought, a metaphor of legitimacy deriving from ancient custom. Patriarchy, virgin births, matter for faith.

And as for the building that the kids did together the other week during the fundraiser, when the legos were all spread out on the floor, samples of their creations were on the tables, with little index cards bearing their names--one name on each card, as an older woman pointed out, and many of their products bearing swords or guns or lightsabers. In her time it was cowboys and indians, she said apologetically, but it's the same old story. She wondered if we'll ever get beyond it.