Friday, May 20, 2011
dressed like a con artist carney magic man with rainbow suspenders and jangling bangles, packing up possessions to relocate and filter from scene to scene, promising a story, a promising narrative, a binding role play with inclusive notions of living together and caring for one another. when we were on the road we split our take evenly and shared the bagel with avocado in the morning, no matter what we had, we all made use of it, kept each other alive for another day to return to the spring market fair, settling in to the sidewalk with suitcases stuffed full of art, the women displaying decorative bits of handcrafted jewelry and modified pieces of clothing, romantic nomad charms hanging from strings. the artist with his mixed media photographic prints on found reclaimed wood, burned copies of experimental films, a visionary discipline negotiated over chatter of influences and the long explanation of how we got from here to there. the poet standing at the corner banging public sculptures to rattle the metal frame and reverberate big drum percussive pulse while shouting out lyrical cries of inner child hungering, on edge on the hinge of turning a corner and disappearing, etherial, ephemeral, ghostly, like a figment of imagination spied out of the peripheral corners of eyes. stop to listen and take in the characters, slumming it with real street artists, real life modern day beatnik hobos living this mode of performance that represents authentic counter-culture still alive and timeless, good to eat longer than most worst artificially preserved industrial slop and grime everlasting. people hunger for spiritual sustenance thru creativity and magic wonder defying reasonable description. illusionists and theatrical players take note: accentuate the positive, leave some mystery to the imagination, don’t explain the trick. walk by the smell of jasmine in the berkeley dusk time. so many pleasant neighborhoods to contrast with the dingy street life of half-crazed homeless persons and weird crust punk hippie run-away kids and that whole seedy underbelly, or the all night strange times of the underculture of San Francisco, sitting at a bus stop eating ice-cream with a young woman telling me about the sexual politics of couch surfing, how it’s completely reversed for a woman rather than a man. a man is looking for a girl to take pity on him, want to shack up with him. a woman has to protect herself from what these lecherous boys may want of her. what would be appealing to me would be potentially threatening to her. the contrasts of our comparative experience, the differences stark but the sensibilities of life lessons learned surfing the slack and living on the road are of a common thread. big dreams and big plans, trying to stay focused on the most manageable tasks. gonna take some ongoing amount of time to get your personal religious movement off the ground, to occupy the new church and start your own gatherings where artistry is the act of worship and we are the spiritual leaders we’ve been waiting for. even as I grapple with questions of cultural appropriation and syncretism, wondering where the appropriate line is, even as those questions swirl in my mind as people tell me that it really is a sign of respect for one people to emulate another, even if it is a misguided sense of respect. of course I don’t want to deny any serious earnest seeker of wisdom the opportunity to explore a tradition foreign to themselves, indeed, I take my own ideals piece meal from where I can source them. but there is an offensive point it can be taken to, I’m sure that sensitive people would understand that and if they were aware of the history and struggle that underlies the cultural interactions that proceeded the day we find ourselves in, they could appreciate why someone would be protective of their own birthright that may itself remain elusive to them. yet I know that nationalism is a failed approach, that the identity politics left to us from the previous century are too limited in scope to bring together the human family. I am sure that isolationism and xenophobia are dead ends. the new mythology is global, the new story is one of a world with no horizons, no people just over the mountain range to punish. only us, our brothers and sisters and the hardest thing to do in the world, to care for one another and love and dream and dare to reduce all the old boundaries to dust, and bootstrap a hip growing worldwide sensibility to the new world empire’s long shadow casting over land and sea.

dressed like a con artist carney magic man with rainbow suspenders and jangling bangles, packing up possessions to relocate and filter from scene to scene, promising a story, a promising narrative, a binding role play with inclusive notions of living together and caring for one another. when we were on the road we split our take evenly and shared the bagel with avocado in the morning, no matter what we had, we all made use of it, kept each other alive for another day to return to the spring market fair, settling in to the sidewalk with suitcases stuffed full of art, the women displaying decorative bits of handcrafted jewelry and modified pieces of clothing, romantic nomad charms hanging from strings. the artist with his mixed media photographic prints on found reclaimed wood, burned copies of experimental films, a visionary discipline negotiated over chatter of influences and the long explanation of how we got from here to there. the poet standing at the corner banging public sculptures to rattle the metal frame and reverberate big drum percussive pulse while shouting out lyrical cries of inner child hungering, on edge on the hinge of turning a corner and disappearing, etherial, ephemeral, ghostly, like a figment of imagination spied out of the peripheral corners of eyes.

stop to listen and take in the characters, slumming it with real street artists, real life modern day beatnik hobos living this mode of performance that represents authentic counter-culture still alive and timeless, good to eat longer than most worst artificially preserved industrial slop and grime everlasting. people hunger for spiritual sustenance thru creativity and magic wonder defying reasonable description. illusionists and theatrical players take note: accentuate the positive, leave some mystery to the imagination, don’t explain the trick.

walk by the smell of jasmine in the berkeley dusk time. so many pleasant neighborhoods to contrast with the dingy street life of half-crazed homeless persons and weird crust punk hippie run-away kids and that whole seedy underbelly, or the all night strange times of the underculture of San Francisco, sitting at a bus stop eating ice-cream with a young woman telling me about the sexual politics of couch surfing, how it’s completely reversed for a woman rather than a man. a man is looking for a girl to take pity on him, want to shack up with him. a woman has to protect herself from what these lecherous boys may want of her. what would be appealing to me would be potentially threatening to her. the contrasts of our comparative experience, the differences stark but the sensibilities of life lessons learned surfing the slack and living on the road are of a common thread.

big dreams and big plans, trying to stay focused on the most manageable tasks. gonna take some ongoing amount of time to get your personal religious movement off the ground, to occupy the new church and start your own gatherings where artistry is the act of worship and we are the spiritual leaders we’ve been waiting for. even as I grapple with questions of cultural appropriation and syncretism, wondering where the appropriate line is, even as those questions swirl in my mind as people tell me that it really is a sign of respect for one people to emulate another, even if it is a misguided sense of respect. of course I don’t want to deny any serious earnest seeker of wisdom the opportunity to explore a tradition foreign to themselves, indeed, I take my own ideals piece meal from where I can source them. but there is an offensive point it can be taken to, I’m sure that sensitive people would understand that and if they were aware of the history and struggle that underlies the cultural interactions that proceeded the day we find ourselves in, they could appreciate why someone would be protective of their own birthright that may itself remain elusive to them. yet I know that nationalism is a failed approach, that the identity politics left to us from the previous century are too limited in scope to bring together the human family. I am sure that isolationism and xenophobia are dead ends. the new mythology is global, the new story is one of a world with no horizons, no people just over the mountain range to punish. only us, our brothers and sisters and the hardest thing to do in the world, to care for one another and love and dream and dare to reduce all the old boundaries to dust, and bootstrap a hip growing worldwide sensibility to the new world empire’s long shadow casting over land and sea.

Posted at 12:42 AM