Month: October 2020

The sun is well on it’s  way to the southern hemisphere. The first snow sticks to the branches and the last leaves on the trees. Temperatures fall as the sun hangs lower in the sky.

In the Celtic tradition, this is the turning of the wheel to begin a new cycle. The New Year.  Things begin  to freeze and solidify. The growth of Spring and Summer are now the harvests of a year in turmoil… the wheel wobbles along. This year the date of the full moon and Samhain coincides with an election that hangs so much on participation in the outcome of ideologies and political direction. It is marked by long lines snaking about in some slow motion snake- like spiral dance. The metaphor of transcendence and and transformation…. shedding the old…. the skin that no longer serves. Releasing one’s self from the delusions, perceptions and thinking that has been the underlying cause of this country’s current state….

This snake of humanity feels the constricting of the year’s struggles and the internal growth that has become the awakening. The skin of old ideologies becomes irritating. Useless. The eyes become blind for a time…. the senses dull… and then the skin tears… the renewed snake slips out. Shiny and ready for the winter.

Sheading. Leaving behind the things that no longer serve. Taking the harvests of ideas and actions into the cave of winter dreaming to build the architectures of a new humanity.

An Ocran opera in 6 parts

There is a brutalist cement structure in Doylestown Pennsylvania called the Mercer Museum ( https://www.mercermuseum.org/ ) It is a fascinating place filled with all things American from Conestoga wagon, whaling, blacksmithing, lace making…. to the tools of glass blowing and every other type of invention or industry that was birthed, evolved or died between the shores of this country. It is a tribute to imagination, problem solving, efficiency, the short lived trends of American life, culture and the diversity of ideas that were born here.

It also speaks to the growth and adapted nature of this country as it grew into a global super power. Some of the best minds came here to get educated, freely think, and build a foundation and future to the generations that came after them.

For most of this country’s time line though, it was racist, misogynistic and classist. Based on the flawed sciences and regions beliefs that divided and decided the fates of human beings. Owning or the exploitation of others is not acceptable publicly today. Yet it was during the growth years of this country, leveraged for economic gain until it could no longer be tolerated. That began the changes that have taken too long and still fall short of correcting the issues created by the these original governing structures and beliefs.

As hard as that is to accept, we live in a country that does have the capacity to change, and evolve to a better version of itself. Civil rights, Women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, Environmental laws, all these were fought for and won. One would think they would not have to be proven. Human beings are human beings…. rights are for all. The united together, equal under the law and yet these ideas of separate, inequality persist.

Right now in this country the antiquated obsolete beliefs about the value of someone based on class, religion, gender, and the color of their skin is creating a defining moment with this election and the Supreme Court. The will to take action in order to change the entrench behaviors of hate in order to form a perfect union requires the disruption and destruction of these ideals.

Like the many objects and tools filling the walls and floor of the Mercer Museum, these ideologies that lead us away from our humanity need to evolved out. Find an end for being used in the governing of people. That should the short and long term goals of this country. Because until we stop dividing each other, the future will always be based on the same principles that nurture hate over love and the idealogical cracks that are built into the system will widen and weaken bringing us back to this same place of wreaking this country.

In a couple of weeks I will be settling into my new space in Littleton New Hampshire. It begins a direction towards creating art, building my practice and settling in for the winter dreaming. I have been looking forward to this. So much to process, create… more to come.

My work requires a certain amount of social awareness. Trends. Politics. Arts. Sciences. Norms. The edges where these grind together in order to create the mortar that binds the bricks of daily life into the structures of order and sustainability. Buildings of education, institutions of law, the ebbs and flows of human tidal drifts in living life. These streaming movements cast through the hierarchical nets that sift humanity into heaps and piles defined by class, race and social acceptability.

Most days this is challenging for all the obvious reasons. As a collective of individuals we have managed to provide (whether intended or not) the fertile soils for some of the most destructive behaviors towards each other. In the last few years hatered and intolerance have flourished under a man some seem to think is God’s chosen one. We grapple with the injustice of power in it’s most abusive expression. Some call it a battle between good and evil.

I sit with the definitions I learned for “humanity”, “humility”, “human” and I wonder about how this social evolution of us has shifted our sense of self and service. On one side we seem to be de-humanized as we grow in a monetizing of social value. This grinds our human dignity into a mud of confusion and in this slurry as it covers the ground and permeates the soil of our consciousness wakens the seeds of a deeper more complex ideolgy of what humanity is and can do. Goodness. Kindness. These are some of the natural states of the human spirit. These traits win even in the darkest of places. They find ways to push beyond the circumstances of their conditions.

To borrow from gardening…. it is easy to till up the soil and plant the same seeds. Dismiss the new green unidentified sprouts as weeds. Or slide into a phobic place of calling these unknown seedlings poison. This metaphor is I think, where we are now as this country careens towards an election half drunk to not feel and prepared for violence in order to find its collective center…. humanity.

Blame is an easy outlet and a false direction to change course. We must root our vision and take responsibility for what we build next. The world is changing and we are being sqeezed through a threshold that requires we are open to working together, taking care of each other and creating something that is nothing like we know. That requires finding a faith in ourselves that is not defined by money, fashion, social trends, consumption, greed, power, etc…. It will be defined by our creativity, vision, determination, compassion, science, arts, willingness to design outside of what we know and are familiar with.