Wondermentalist

I’ve just posted about the Wondermentalist Cabaret – an evening of poetry, comedy, music and pleasant surprises – whose blog this blog now is. Now I want to tell you about another blog, a blog yet to come…

Once upon a time this very Wondermentalist blog was maybe going to be called, among other things, Topless Thinking. It was to have multiple contributors and be a cheeky ‘unconscious living’ companion to ‘conscious living’ blog Soul and Soil. Next year there will be a Topless Thinking blog, and this is what it’ll be about.

Topless Thinking

“Contains produce from more than one chakra”

Topless Thinking is Soul and Soil’s slightly immature yet well-meaning younger sibling. It’s concerned with the same subjects and issues but is less likely to educate and inform more likely simply to entertain and provoke. It is an opportunity for imaginative bloggers not just to think outside of the box but to box outside of the ring, to burst outside of the bubble, to sink outside of the pond, to dig outside of the allotment. It’s a place for meaningful mucking about – a chance to push the envelope of muddle-headedness through the letterbox of inappropriateness and extend metaphors beyond health and safety guidelines.

Where a Soil and Soul thread might discuss the pros and cons of small-scale education and the re-introduction of indigenous plant varieties, a Topless Thinking thread is more likely to debate who would win a staring contest between Shirley MacLaine and Deepak Chopra, or whether Hildegaard of Bingen would beat Stephen Fry in a pub quiz. (She would.) It might ponder whether tattoos really make you happy or, since the unexamined life is not worth living, whether the ungazed-at navel is really worth piercing.

Topless Thinking has its head in the clouds, its feet on the ground and its finger up its nose – foraging for truth and beauty in the least promising of places.

Topless Thinking is a celebration of unconscious living.

It is not very sensible.

[End of Topless Thinking concept note] 

There you have it. If, having read this far, you think you’d like to contribute to the above blog, write and tell me, either here at Wondermentalist (at the end of this post) or write to me at matt.harvey@copperstrings.com or matt@mattharvey.co.uk

Welcome to wondermentalist. What is a wondermentalist? I don’t know.
I put the word wondermentalist in Google, it said that thing it says: “Your search - wondermentalist - did not match any documents. Do you mean fundamentalist?” No, I don’t. That’s part of the point.

Does this mean I coined the word myself? It’s possible, although I’m probably not the only one. I want to tell you where the word comes from, of my coining of it, anyway – I’m sure other people have thought of it too, it’s that kind of word. But I coined my version when I was asked to write a piece about the paranormal – which I happily agreed to. I was told there’d be a yes-piece, a no-piece and a don’t-know-piece, and it was assumed I’d write the yes piece – because I’m that kind of guy – but I politely declined and said I’d prefer to be the don’t-know. I’m not sure why.
This is what I wrote. And I stand by it. It’s called…

The Paranormal

I don’t know. To believe or not to believe….is not really the question. In fact the word ‘paranormal’ isn’t in my dictionary. Not because I’m dismissive but, ironically, because I left my dictionary overnight in a crop circle, and next morning the words had mutated in bizarre yet strangely meaningful ways.

The word ‘paranoiamal’ for example – another word that’s not in Google but is worth a 50 point bonus in astral scrabble. ‘Paranoiamal’ admirably conveys the almost sixth sense of persecution often experienced by people discussing the paranormal. Mud seems to sling itself. Goalposts shift position, then dematerialise. The heat generated sets off smoke alarms – yet no fire is found.

Which, let’s face it, it won’t be. Not under laboratory conditions, where paranormal kindling won’t ignite. And no matter what smouldering evidence is found elsewhere, no matter what sincere and eloquent testimony is provided by scorched psyches, proof is elusive. The paranormal is unreliable. Believing in it is embarrassing, investigating it is frustrating but to dismiss it out of hand calls to mind another evocative word in my doctored dictionary ‘smugma’.

‘Smugma’ suggests the satisfying set of assumptions - stopping pleasingly short of dogma – which self-professed rationalists evolve from the received revelations of science. An interpretation of science reminiscent of the Borg in Star Trek, whose motto ‘We will absorb you’ becomes ‘We will explain you’. And what we can’t explain doesn’t happen – you credulous ninny/charlatan/disturbed person. (Tick as appropriate)

But when my friend confides in me about the time his mother appeared in his caravan the night she died on another continent, I don’t have to say to him, Sorry, you’re clearly sad or bad or mad. And likewise when my other friend tells me he dreamt the name of a horse which is running in the 2.30 at Kempton Park, I don’t have to rush out and put a substantial sum on it.

Although I did.

I’m a Don’t Know with ‘wondermentalist’ tendencies. Wondermentalism is the third and last word from my crop circled dictionary – best expressed by the Red Queen (from Through the Looking Glass) telling Alice ‘When I was your age I used to believe six impossible things before breakfast.’

Not to be willing to believe beyond the evidence is defensible but somehow barren. As if our very ability to love were dependent on the qualities of who and what is out there, rather than an inner capacity which can be cultivated.

Not that we can believe whatever we like, construct the world from a DIY David Ikea flat-pack reality kit. I’m not saying that. Not at this point.

But it’s as if we believe beliefs arise solely from the three R’s of reason, reflection, repetition and arithmetic, uninfluenced by the three T’s of taste, temperament and tradition. Some would add tidiness to that list. I am not among them – although as a Virgo I’m partial to tidiness – but I like my fundamentals left open ended and raggedy-edged.

I don’t know much about reality, but I know what I like.

So, I’m a Don’t-Know. Not a hedge-your-bets, hover-politely-over-the-fence Don’t-Know, but a Can’t-Know Won’t-Know Don’t Know. Shine the pure light of my uncertainty through a prism and you get a: No. Yes. Maybe. Sometimes. None of the Above. All of the Above. Leave me alone. And when we go to the polls to vote on what’s ultimately real I’ll wear my Don’t-Know rosette with pride. Spike Milligan said, ‘One day the Don’t-Knows will get in, and then where will we be?’ To which the answer, and I feel passionately about this, is ‘I’m not sure.’