Dead Man Walking

Today I am floored by the power of the integration of arts and activism.

I had the immense privilege to read for the part of Sister Helen Prejean in a staged reading of the play Dead Man Walking. What's more, I got to read this part in front of Sister Helen Prejean! And she liked it!

But what was more inspiring was to be able to engage my heart and emotions, as well as those of others in the play and audience in the issue that several experts on the death penalty were about to address in a panel discussion.

Today exemplified why I study and am moved by the use of arts to engage and acknowledge that our emotions influence human rights, policy and the necessity of challenging the status quo.

Glowing,

L

Resilience

As inspired by Sherman Alexie's remarkable The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian:

• What is resilience? Can it be taught? Are we born with it? If it can be taught, how? How can the arts be used to teach it?
• Perhaps what the arts provide is space. Space that is not normally offered students in a structured or enticing way. Given more space, students and people have more opportunities to release and express themselves, as well as receive praise for their expressions. Like through a piece of art, a play, a poem, or even a blog.
  
• If you are in a burning house (a reservation, a low-income community), do you decide to leave? If so, when? Or do you remain and put out fires?
• If in that burning house, and you have limited time to save things, do you grab one person or thing to come along with you? Like saving that one brilliant student from the refugee camp, etc.? Why labor to save them rather than put all your energy into containing the bits of fire you can?
  

Strategic Planning- in very human words

"We can use strategic planning to help us think, act, and learn strategically-- to figure out what we should want, why, and how to get it. Think of strategic planning as the organization of hope, as what makes hope reasonable."
The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management, Ch. 8: The Strategy Change Cycle, p. 173 by John M. Bryson (2005)

Aesthetic

"And about that word aesthetic... it means 'to perceive.' The philosopher John Dewey once remarked that he was unable to define the word aesthetic, but that he did know its opposite was anesthetic. That is the aesthetic development teaching artists most value- waking people up from the somnolence propagated by our aggressively anesthetizing commercial culture, to see the beauty, meaning, humanity, courage and joy around us."

- Eric Booth "Teaching Artists in the Arts Learning Ecosystem" from The Music Teaching Artist's Bible, Oxford University Press, 2009. pp. 22.

It is not just the teaching artist's job to create awareness of aesthetics as defined by Booth. It is all of our jobs, when we become aware of such structures and confines, to draw awareness in a gentle and thoughtful way.

Professions

"We live in a time when you are a teaching artist if you say you are. That, incidentally, is the original meaning of the term profession-- what you professed a vocation rather than earned a degree or certification."

- Eric Booth, "The Music Teaching Artist's Bible," 2009

In the transition from the west coast to the east, one of the conversations with which I've most struggled is the "who are you, what's your job" one. I miss the west coast mentality that did not ask this question as though it was what most defined you. For those of you who feel aligned with me, I say we rally and take back the traditional intention of the word profession and choose to be what we profess. Not what our company-issued business card says.

Not learning.

"Not learning tends to take place when someone has to deal with unavoidable challenges to her or his personal and family loyalties, integrity, and identity. In such situations there are forced choices and no apparent middle ground."

"Not-learning and unlearning are both central techniques that support changes of consciousness and help people develop positive ways of thinking and speaking in opposition to dominant forms of oppression."

-Herbert Kohl in "I Won't Learn from You"

When have you witnessed someone actively not-learning? I know I have, at times, felt resistance to that which another said and kept that grudge, thus working very hard to reject all that they were saying. How interesting that not-learning is such an active process. How can we, when offended or wounded by the words of another work to create change with this energy? How can we redirect it to address the roots of the problems in the offensive or alienating words of another rather than actively disengaging? Or is this act of disengaging alone a strong and meaningful message?

Art is for... ?

Art for art's sake

vs.

art for something else.

This distinction has ping-ponged around my brain for several days. Is art-- for the beauty, catharsis, and space it lends its creator-- enough to justify it? Or does art need to be for something-- a community, a mission, a lesson, etc.?

Your thoughts welcome.

Decolonization. Of the mind.

"Representation is a crucial location of struggle for any exploited and oppressed people asserting subjectivity and decolonization of the mind." -bell hooks.

How has your mind been colonized? What beliefs are so entrenched in it-- in society-- that perhaps are tacitly stealing your power?

In reading a few bell hooks writings of late, I've increasingly taken note of sexist tones coloring language that roles off the tongue of well-intentioned individuals in my life. I've been asked to describe new concepts in layman's terms or to my "grandmother" or "mother." I've yet to be asked to break down a difficult subject "as though I was explaining it to my father." What is the subtle message telling those who hear these phrases?

On wisdom.

"We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." - Marcel Proust

This quote rings very true. The other day I was sitting with a former colleague who expressed a desire to truly narrow what he wanted to do professionally in his life before going to graduate school. His words were familiar. I said those words last year before making this grad school leap. What I didn't realize was just how much that didn't really matter. Sure, I'm not studying chemical engineering, but I've discovered that as long as one throws the ball in the general direction of the field there will be many beautiful and interesting things along the way.

I told my friend this. I told him also that I'm starting to understand that life is, in fact, long (should we be lucky in health and safety), and that we do, in fact, have time to do loads and loads within all those years (even if they do get faster as we go).

Thanks, grad school.

Embracing the accepting/ criticising conundrum

A common theme in my readings thus far:

• Open your mind to what's in front of you. Drop judgments and conventional lessons in questioning.

AND

• Question it all, dammit.
  

To literally go from one reading espousing one of these things to the next is a comical experience. Just as one author has convinced me to be open, just as I nod my head in appreciation of their brilliance, I delve into the waters of a a view telling me to be as critical as possible.

This leads me to wonder: is there a synthesis of these two things that seem rather divergent? Can I be open to ideas, experiences, precious moments in my life, while also exercising a level of questioning that is appropriate to maintain the freedoms I hold dear? Is this even the point of criticism-- to keep my eyes open through questions? To protect myself by distancing myself from the material through doubt?

Or should I approach this the other way: to doubt, and then when I accept the information at hand, give it a big old bear hug?

Laura the Artist

Learning to be Something

I Do Not Want

to Un-Be.

“Creativity is relational; it needs to be approved in order to become a shared asset. Too often, however, we are afraid of this creativity, even our own, because it makes us ‘different.’”

- Carlina Rinaldi (2006)

“I’m an artist,” says the young woman sitting beside me in the hot, crowded mini-van as its engine roars into motion. She speaks to me in English amid a sea of Thai tones. “An artist,” her words repeat in my head. I have never met an “artist.” The sound of it makes me want to be closer to her, like there is some radiating force of confidence that will ooze from her creative soul to mine.

“What do you do here in Sangkhlaburi?” she inquires about my small Thai town on the remote border shared with Burma.

I want to tell her that I am like her, that I have been involved with performance for as long as I can remember, that my approach to situations is unconventional. I want to say that I, too, am an artist.

“I’m here on a fellowship.”

I later find out that her name is Robin and she comes from Philadelphia. On this four-hour bus ride, colored by rice fields and banana trees, we become fast friends. In the weeks that follow, over Thai teas in the morning market I learn that an artist can be very much like me, and not a distant name on a museum plaque.

* * *

Three years later I accept a job as a “performer/educator” with an educational theater company, touring Northern California and conveying health messages through theater. Despite my job title, I am still unable to identify myself with its language.

I ask my colleague what she says when people ask her what she does. She has been in this job for a few years. I am fishing for the word “actress.” Apart from wanting to name my creativity in this way, I think it would be immensely sexy to say at dinner parties.

“I’m a road manager for Kaiser Permanente’s Educational Theater Program,” she replies to my inquiry. Ugh. That sounds so… stiff.

“That’s what you say to people when you first meet them?”

“Oh. When I meet people from outside of Kaiser I tell them I’m an actress.”

An actress! Finally affirmation of the label I crave! A wave of excitement pulses through me and I try to hide a delicious smile. I go home and practice saying, “I’m an actress.” It doesn’t roll off my tongue easily. “I work for an educational theater company.” Eh. “I am in a theatrical show everyday.”

It all still sounds like a bit of a stretch. What’s more, it feels like one. And I know exactly where it comes from.

* * *

Growing up in a wealthy, mostly white Boston suburb, despite its liberal leanings and my parents’ openness to and acceptance of all types of people, somewhere along the culture train I picked up the view that in life one must pursue a track. Perhaps it is in the legal field. Or maybe: real estate. Whatever it is, it definitely involves a desk and benefits. Being an artist, unless that entails becoming a Frida, Diego, or Picasso, does not fit into this category.

I find my thoughts surrounding the definition of what it means to be an artist incredibly confusing. The messages I have picked up about artists are: 1) artists are invaluable cultural agents and those who rise to fame shall be revered and their work will be replicated and awed by masses, and 2) those who spend time on arts but do not rise to a level of notoriety have either failed or are blithely pursuing a hobby. (“Laura, Have you met Bob? He does a lot of community theater,” followed by a demeaning smile and knowing arm squeeze.)

In this division of artists between the famous and the others, only those who rise to fame are on a “track.” Only they can claim the title “artist.” And the strange thing about this is that often fame comes posthumously.

Therefore, the thought of “being an artist” felt wrong to me. While fame would satiate my ego, it was not the reason why I pursued work in the arts. When it came down to it, following the arts was something that simply felt right and moral. But if I was not going for fame, how was I on any path that would lead me to health benefits?

As I settled into my work as a performer/ educator for Kaiser Permanente, I slowly came to embrace the “actress” term. It happened through practice really. At first I said it meekly to the family friend at dinner, then more robustly at a bar, then finally with confidence at a birthday party. I found that people did not question the veracity of my claim, nor that they humored me by nodding along incredulously, but rather that their eyes lit up when I said it. It was as though we were back in a minivan traipsing around the Thai countryside and this time I was Robin igniting something deep in the heart of all these Lauras. By stating that I was an actress boldly, I invited others into the world that Robin had shown me: a world where our traditional definitions do not need to apply.

When I moved on to other work that no longer involved stages and audiences, I continued to define myself as an actress. I even became courageous enough to say I was an artist. In fact, I cannot imagine the day when I will no longer be able to describe myself this way.

What strikes me about the evolution of defining myself as an artist is how complicit my own beliefs were in this situation. When I combated what I felt were societal pressures by connecting myself to the words “artist” and “actress,” I watched as others melted their beliefs into my own and delighted in these labels. When I claimed that I was this entity, they acknowledged me for it. When I felt distance from being an artist, the notion of it indeed felt far away.

In recently reading work by Carlina Rinaldi, it becomes clear that this desire to share one’s creativity with others and experience authentic acknowledgement in return is a shared value. (Rinaldi, 2006) This is so not only for humans, but particularly for artists who often dip their toes into water without first knowing its temperature. By having others affirm an identity that is frightening or at one point presented as the “other” is essential in the personal growth of any creative individual.

The value of being an artist to me is having the confidence to declare this identity. It feels like a political move. It feels radical. And to undergo this process of claiming such a label is a tie that binds those of us who have made this leap and create a community.

What Robin gave me four years ago in a crowded, too-small-for-long-western-legs-minivan was an invitation into greater self-confidence and, most importantly, an invitation to critical examination of my beliefs about what was and is acceptable on my journey.

References

Rinaldi, C. (2006). Creativity as a Quality of Thought. In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia: Listening, researching and learning. New York: Routledge. 118.

Creative outsiders.

"Creative thinking can also lead to solitude. Creativity is relational; it needs to be approved in order to become a shared asset. Too often, however, we are afraid of this creativity, even our own, because it makes us 'different.'"
- Carlina Rinaldi, In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia, p. 118

Q: When have you felt most creative? Was it affirmed by others? Have you ever felt a strong pride in your creativity without the approval of others? Or even if others rejected your creation as negative?

Happy Nuns.

Did you know that happy nuns live longer than unhappy ones? Or that the positive emotions expand creativity and holistic thinking? Check it out!

Human Rights and Social Movements

By screwing in an energy efficient lightbulb, are you making a change? Are you a part of a transformative social movement?

That's exactly what I had the pleasure of exploring yesterday through the Harvard Kennedy School's study group on Human Rights and Social Movements. This subject is of great importance to me as I consider myself a member of the Free Burma "Movement." This discussion stirred up many thoughts about what it means to be an activist, where our energy goes, what it is to be part of a movement, and why we care.

Questions ping-ponging through my head:

• Does engaging in change in a small way (say, through screwing in an energy efficient lightbulb) detract energy from a larger social movement and provide something for people to hide behind instead of taking larger, more engaging action? And if so, what is larger, more engaging action?
  
• What kind of commitment are we looking for from people who want to create change? How successful is it to hold high expectations for these individuals?
• Is a movement more productive through having one simple goal or through proposing 3, or 5, or 100?
• To what extent does the ego drive the movement and the victories? When does the movement stop being about the objective and start being about us?

Your thoughts welcome.

And we're off.

Here I am. Sitting in my lovely, deep blue room overlooking Preston Rd. The trees have lush green leaves on them and I can just imagine myself in a few months' time staring upon naked boughs when the green morphs to brown and dried hojas litter the drains and crunch underfoot.

What a phenomenal opportunity. The opportunity to write. For myself, for others, for the ether of thoughts. To write about all the new and exciting ideas bopping about in my brain. To muse on the musings of so many others. I am fortunate to be able to record them, process them, engage with them and with others about them. And how fortunate I am to share them with you.

Please join me as I wander through this year of inquiry at a formal masters program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. You are most welcome on this ride.