False "Realism" and a Culture of Possibility

 Thanks to my friend Barbara Jaspersen for forwarding this article by Arlene Goldbard to me, and I was so struck by what she had to say that I felt like sharing it here.  Struck because that spirit of resignation is to be found in me as well, that inner virus she calls the “internalization of the oppressor”.  Certainly confronting the proposed  loss of ACCESS TUCSON, which has served the community for over 30 years,  (see below) makes this article all the more relevant.  

“Realism” and Its Discontents

by Arlene Goldbard

 "I focused especially on the way Corporation Nation has consigned artists to a trivial and undernourished social role, instead of understanding artists as an indicator species for social well-being......................What does it mean that in many places cultural allocations are less than a hundredth of a percent of prison budgets? Who are we as a people? What do we stand for? What do we want to be known for: our stupendous ability to punish, or our vast creativity?"

This has been a strange time in my little world: I’ve been traveling for work while my computer stayed home and lost its mind.  I’m glad to say that sanity (i.e., memory, software, and general order) has been restored, and while I still have the sort of compulsive desire to tell the tale that afflicts survivors of accidents, I will spare you most of the saga.  What both journeys—mine and the computer’s—have given me is the opportunity to reflect on the workings of human minds, including my own. In particular, I’ve had a close-up look at the desire to believe, especially to believe the reassuring drone of those in authority.
Earlier this month, I gave a talk at Harvard that focused on some of the key ideas in  "The Culture of Possibility: Art, Artists & The Future" (http://arlenegoldbard.com/books/two-new-books-by-arlene-goldbard/the-culture-of-possibility-art-artists-the-future/). 

I focused especially on the way Corporation Nation has consigned artists to a trivial and undernourished social role, instead of understanding artists as an indicator species for social well-being akin to the role oysters play as bio-monitors for marine environments. I pointed out how arts advocacy has steadily failed (e.g., President Obama asked Congress for $146 million for the National Endowment for Arts [NEA] in the next budget, $8 million less than this year, when he should have requested $440 million just to equal the spending power the agency had 35 years ago). Yet advocates keep making the same weak arguments and pretending that losing a little less than anticipated constitutes victory. There’s an Emperor’s New Clothes flavor to the whole enterprise, a tacit agreement to adjust to absurdity and go along with the charade.***

After my talk, a student asked me what arguments should be made instead. I pointed out that what we are actually spending our commonwealth on seldom gets engaged in this conversation. What does it mean that we spend more than two annual NEA budgets a day, seven days a week, on war?*** What does it mean that in many places cultural allocations are less than a hundredth of a percent of prison budgets? I posed the questions that ought to guide this debate:

Who are we as a people? What do we stand for? What do we want to be known for: our stupendous ability to punish, or our vast creativity?


The student nodded vigorously as I answered. I could see that she was with me: that the curtains of default reality had parted, affording a glimpse of the truths beneath the charade. And then something happened, something I’d seen before: some students’ excited expressions began to fade, shoulders slumped a little, breathing returned to normal. “Realism” had set in. What I mean by “realism” is the self-ratifying notion broadcast by every power elite: the message that the existing order of things is so firmly entrenched, so well-funded, and so effectively guarded that it is pointless to resist. Be realistic: surrender!

This is the real obstacle we’re up against. The pull of “realism” is felt in nearly every mind, even the minds of those whose lives are devoted to righting injustice and expanding liberty. Paulo Freire called it “internalization of the oppressor,” pointing out that when we hear often and insistently enough that we are weak, that we should cede our power to others who know better, we start to mistake that voice for our own.

There is one skill that every power elite possesses, and that is the ability to persuasively assert its own mighty rightness. But there is one power that each of us possesses, and that is to cultivate the ability to recognize and reject this propaganda. It takes awareness, commitment, and choice to hack through false consciousness and begin to see clearly. It takes all those capacities to recognize that the voice of “realism” is generally propaganda for the existing order of power (and powerlessness).


arlenegoldbard.com 
http://arlenegoldbard.com/blog

*** Remember that 59% of the national budget goes to the military, and the corporate interests that profit.  The NEA, along with the Food Stamps administration, is not even 1%.  Not much sustenance for inspiration, or hunger, with those patriarchal priorities.

***
My astirisks.  Currently artists in Tucson are disgusted that the city of Tucson, although raising salaries once again, are proposing doing away with ACCESS TUCSON****, selling the building that has housed it, and ending the program that has enriched the community for over 30 years.  I myself was able to produce and share a video presentation ("When the Word for World Was Mother"") through ACCESS in the late 80's.   We keep losing things, one at a time.  We keep becoming impoverished, and going along with agenda this author speaks of resignedly.  

 
*****What is Access Tucson?

Access Tucson was established as an independent, non-profit, membership based organization for the management of public access in 1984. Access Tucson provides the training and facilities for Tucsonans to communicate with the community utilizing electronic media. Public access producers provide the ideas, information, and diversity to create the most visible part of our organization, the programming.
Access Tucson is funded by cable subscribers in the form of franchise revenue fees to the City of Tucson, by corporate and individual donations and fundraising efforts. Public access television is the only forum where individuals can express their opinions and perspectives to the community through cable television. Access television provides the community an important venue for First Amendment rights, the right to free speech. Public access television makes the use of electronic media possible for many groups that are under represented, or not heard or seen at all in conventional broadcast television.

• Production classes.
• Youth after-school programs
• Access to production equipment.
• Cablecast of programming produced locally or outside of Tucson.
• Stand-by Scholarships for classes
• Project consultation.
• Production opportunities for non-profits.

SIGN THE PETITION: 
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/dont-let-access-tucson

Poetry, Interludes

a butterfly,
hovers before me,
in a parking lot
no less messenger
of hope, 
vanishing

into some blue distance:

whole, winged,

always going home.

 

Struggling with unexpected fate
my tropical imagination
carries me still,
wanders 
among volcanic archipelagos,
remembers the Island of the Gods
in mango season.

Here, heat rises
from waterless pavements.
I walk to the "Memory Care" unit
the long beige hallway, too familiar now.
Bewildered eyes
sometimes regard me from wheelchairs.

The old man says,
"Take me home. I don't belong here".

If I could,
if I only could,
I would take us all home.
Instead, I bring fruit,
to share

imagining for them

mango season

in all its splendor.

 

 

"Nicky's Family" - A Wonderful Film

Lately I've been feeling it's so important to remember, be inspired by, and model the best of what human beings can be., in the face of such a concentration on the worst in the media.  In other words, I need good news before I fall into cynicism and despair.  So I decided to remind myself of the many unknown heroes and heroines, amazing people most people will never hear about.   This wonderful documentary has lingered with me for weeks, and I felt like sharing it here.  

During part of the year, by the way, I rent rooms in my house like a B&B. I sometimes, but rarely, have Europeans visit.   Strangely enough, in the way of synchronicity, as I write this I have  no less than 3 travelling German women staying here, and a woman coming from Austria next week!  None of them know each other, but they are all enjoying the unexpected opportunity to speak their native language in, of all places, far off Tucson!  These women, an artist, a scholar, an alternative healer, are perhaps the children and grandchildren of the people who witnessed Hitler's rise to  power and the horror of Nazi Germany.  They are also contributing to the beauty and knowledge of the world................I don't know the meaning of this synchronicity, only that the film, and the synchronicity, leave me awed and reassured.

Sir Nicholas George Winton, still alive and over 100,  is a British humanitarian who organized the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War.  Winton found homes for the children and arranged for their safe passage to Britain. The UK press has dubbed him the "British Schindler". Just before Christmas 1938, Winton was about to travel to Switzerland for a skiing holiday, when he decided instead to travel to Prague to help his friend Martin Blake, who was involved in Jewish refugee work, who had called him asking for his help.   A young, successful business man not even 30, he single-handedly established an organization to aid children from Jewish families at risk from the Nazis, setting up an office at a dining room table in his hotel in Wenceslas Square. 

This film, created by one of the children he rescued,  documents not only the rescue work, but also the lives of many of the children he rescued, the contributions they made to humanity themselves, the thousands of people who came into this world, and contribute to its betterment, from his work.  "Nicky's Family"...........an expanding circle.  Remarkable!

 

http://youtu.be/PGEXoXkDgqk

The Equinox and Persephone

 

The Big Thaw
starts with a trickle
water running through silence
as innocuous as breath, a slight relaxation
at corners of the mouth.

Just when winter has become a habit,
an old coat the sun peels off with a touch.
Your foot leaves a signature in new mud,
shiny as a new skin or fresh, primed canvas.

You notice a blade of grass:
green, defiantly green.
Inhale, you take your coat off
a crocus opens
in the blue iris
 of someone's glance.

Lauren Raine 

Somehow the Spring Equinox has arrived, this winter, as other winters, has been survived, the drumbeat of Mother Earth beneath feet bared is quickening, the hum of life vibrates, the budding of trees is again a cyclical magic. If I still lived in Vermont, as I once did,  I would be hearing the sounds of snow melting in little trickles, a kind of underground budding and quickening  reflected in the eyes I look into.  The Equinoxes are all about the constant Balance of life's seeming dualities, the serpentine movement from Death into Life and Life into Death, light and dark, yin and yang.  To me, Persephone is the Goddess of the Equinoxes, because her journey from the underworld into spring is the transformative journey of nature. 

Before she earns her name, Persephone is Kore, the youthful aspect of the Triad Goddess, the naive Spring Maiden.  In Greek myth, Kore,  the daughter of Demeter,  is seized by Hades, and taken into the underworld.  Demeter, in her grief, causes the world to die - no plants bear fruit, no bees pollinate, no flowers bloom.   At last an agreement is made in which Persephone can be returned to her mother........but because the youthful Goddess has eaten 6 pomegranate seeds, she must return to the underworld for part of the year to be the wife of Hades. It is Hecate, with Her two torches, who assists Kore to return from the darkness into the world of light, and Kore matures into  Persephone, the dual and integral Goddess of both life and of death.

"Light is the left hand of darkness"

...........Ursula Leguin

This myth partakes, and is probably derived from, the much earlier Sumerian myth of the Descent of Inanna, wherein the Goddess descends into the underworld realm to encounter her Dark Sister, Ereshigal, Queen of Death, and it is the husband of Inanna, Dumuzi, who must travel for part of the year into the Underworld realm to become the husband of Ereshigal as well as Inanna.  In both these myths there is great wisdom about not only the cycles of the natural world, but our own participation in these cycles, physically, emotionally, psychically.  Without the sleep of winter there can be no exuberance of spring,  without incubation there can be no birth.   If we attempt to remain in perpetual youth, we cannot mature into the empowerment of adulthood.  If we refuse to allow ourselves to grieve, we cannot heal and move into new ways of being.

"Persephone did what Inanna did. Persephone's myth is about moving into a new state of being in the eternal cycles of life. 

 All the soul riches, the knowledge, the art, everything was running down the drain into Hades and it stayed there.  It stopped circulating.  This was the myth of the descent of Inanna as well; everything went down to Ereshkigal, the keeper of the Underworld, and got stuck there in the universal unconscious.  Ereshkigal, the mind of the underworld, was on strike - she refused to process.   We can look at both of these stories, the stories of Persephone and Inanna, and see that these two Goddesses are pathfinders.  Pathfinders to the unconscious, to the other worlds.  Persephone, Kore who becomes Persephone, creates something new that was not thought of before her journey.  And that's a very important myth for our time.  And it's also why the Eleusinian Mystery, which was about Persephone and Demeter, was the defining experience of mature spirituality in the Mediterranean basin for 2,500 years."

    ......Elizabeth Fuller, The Independent Eye 

 

 So today I, along with the shades of an ancient world and the unborn children of the future, honor the return of bright Persephone to the bright fields of her Mother, Demeter, Mother Earth, who is also the Mother of us all.  May a deep understanding of Balance enter our world on this sacred day, to enrich the fertile seasons ahead, may that same Balance bless all our lives.

 

 

"Resurrection", Ellen Burstyn, and Roselyn Bruyere

For some reason I remembered a movie from the past that I loved, "Ressurection" starring Ellen Burstyn, and in trying to find it, which is very difficult, it brought to mind the groundbreaking work of Roselyn Bruyere and the Healing Light Center in Glendale, California. 

Resurrection is a 1980 film which tells the story of a woman who survives the car accident which kills her husband, but she awakes to discover that she has the power to heal other people. She becomes an unwitting celebrity, the hope of those in desperate need of healing, and a lightning rod for religious beliefs and skeptics. The film stars Ellen Burstyn and Sam Shepard, and was written by Lewis John Carlino.  It was nominated for two Academy Awards; one for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Ellen Burstyn).

I remember hearing that the film was loosely based on the life of acclaimed healer Rosalyn Bruyere. While I can't confirm this, I do know that Bruyere was a consultant while the movie was being filmed, that Ellen Burstyn studied with her, and she and Burstyn remain life long friends.

Roslyn Bruyere, circa 1978

Rosalyn L. Bruyere is a clairvoyant and medical intuitive. Dual involvement in research and healing has provided a primary inspiration for Rosalyn's work. Using her skills in perceiving and interpreting auric phenomenon, she was instrumental in research conducted at UCLA with Dr. Valerie Hunt in which the existence and significance of the human aura was first proven and measured. It was here Rosalyn's capacity to "read" the human energy field was first noted. Her ability to see patterns of disease and behavior in  detail and to energetically transform tissue at a cellular level has brought her worldwide attention and a reputation as one of the nation's most successful healers.

So I was delighted to discover that the entire movie, a true classic, was to be found on UTube (hooray for UTube!).  And here it is, well worth watching if one has the inclination or time. 



 http://youtu.be/kXC1kHIo_TQ

Artist Residency at Cherry Hill Seminary!

www.cherryhillseminary.org/

It's my privilege to be the current Artist in Residence for Cherry Hill Seminary, the only accredited Pagan and Earth Spiritualities Seminary in the U.S., and I'm delighted to have this opportunity to participate in this important Center of Learning, epitomized by Hypatia**, teacher and philosopher of Alexandria. 

In the many years that I've been involved with the Pagan movement, and diverse Earth Spirituality, I've seen the Pagan movement "come out of the broom closet", braving often tremendous religious intolerance, to become at last accepted as a valid religious path. With the advent of Cherry Hill Seminary, yet another milestone has been passed, and I'm grateful indeed to the faculty, co-creators, and students of Cherry Hill for their accomplishment, and for the wisdom and learning that goes forth from this exciting collaboration.

Cherry Hill Seminary is the leading provider of education & practical training in leadership, ministry, and personal growth in Pagan spiritualities.

Cherry Hill Seminary supports Pagans and their communities by:

• Providing an extensive education in diverse aspects of Pagan philosophy, practice, and skilled ministry;
• Supplementing existing ritual and magical skills with training for professional ministry and pastoral counseling;
• Serving as an ongoing resource for individual continuing education; and
• Providing a forum for scholarship and community

Summer Intensive - for information visit this link

**Hypatia of Alexandria was a 4th century C.E. astronomer, mathematician, teacher and philosopher of international reputation. Socrates Scholasticus wrote that “she far surpassed all the philosophers of her time: and was greatly respected for her “extraordinary dignity and virtue.” Hypatia’s house was an important intellectual center in a city distinguished for its learning. Damasius described how she “used to put on her philosopher’s cloak and walk through the middle of town” to give public lectures on philosophy. Admired by all Alexandria, Hypatia was one of the most politically powerful figures in the city. She was one of the few women who attended civic assemblies. Magistrates came to her for advice, including her close friend, the prefect Orestes. In the midst of severe religious polarization, Hypatia was an influential force for tolerance and moderation. She accepted students, who came to her “from everywhere,” without regard to religion.   (read more here) –Max Dashu

Cherry Hill Seminary gratefully acknowledges the kind permission of artist Max Dashu to reproduce her haunting painting of Hypatia. Click here to order a printed poster of Dashu’s painting. 

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Rodeo in Wickenburg?

On a much more prosaic note, I went to Wickenburg with a friend, just missing, thank goodness, the Rodeo.  But couldn't resist this picture by a statue of a famous old cowboy.