Free Use of the Proper

In 1970, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was released as an illustrated book and broke all hardcover records selling a million copies in one year. The book appears like a children's book with more illustrations than text. The story follows the life of a strong-willed seagull Jonathan who flies for speed and pleasure and does not "follow the flock" and its group think. The spirited independence matched the counter-culture ideologies of the 1970's. There are many phrases in the book that encourage the reader to "break free," such as "Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too." The idea is working with all your might toward total freedom, "The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other."

In his personal life, Bach lived out his ideals: "Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself." After having six children with his first wife, he left her because he publicly stated he did not believe in the binds of marriage. A few years later he married another woman he called his "soul mate," and about whom he created a series of similar books on love. They divorced and Bach is now re-married a third time. While it is subjective to connect book narrative and biography, there are ways in which we can see how in both the book and the life of its author, an ideal of unlimited freedom can be complicated. Though freedom seems like a philosophical breath of fresh air, it is like all things, with responsibility.

At first read, I fell in love with Jonathan Livingston Seagull. As time as passed I have learned how the book uses a very basic premise. It presents the dialectic of conformity versus freedom, as the only choice we have. Bach first established the other seagulls as mindless: "Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight - how to get from shore to food and back again." He then distinguishes the birds of reason by name and associates them with aspects of speed and progress. This post-enlightenment dialectic not only fails to represent the true nature of freedom, but also encourages an abuse of the privilege. Obedience and freedom are not necessarily in opposition as one can freely will to obey.

Freedom, a much larger topic than this brief post, is something for me that is best briefly expressed by Friedrich Hölderlin above. He explained, in concern to facing the laws of grammar and language, "The free use of the proper is the most difficult." We have not mastered a language for example until we first know the rules and then with wisdom, can break them when situations allow it, or in a manner of play such as a joke. If we think for example approaching a musical instrument driven by a desire to be free. With no knowledge of the rules of how the instrument is properly played, only by chance (another larger issue of freedom) can beautiful music be made, most likely the sound will not be pleasant or be unable to endure pleasantly.

Instead, to one who already knows the instrument and how it may be best played, they can then show freedom with it and improvize and mix the sounds. This is to know when obedience creates the best result and when a gesture of freedom may be better. This relies on subjectivity, but also a respect of both law and free will.

To enjoy freedom, we have to control ourselves, Virginia Wolfe