Some Thoughts on This the National Day of Silence

This is a letter I wrote to co-workers which I thought I would share with you all:

Dear co-workers, friends, and allies,

Yesterday a friend sent me a Facebook link about an 11-year old boy, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, who hung himself on April 9th, after enduring bullying at school, including daily taunts of being gay. Needless to say this really hit me. As someone who has suffered LGBT-based violence and harassment, it pains me to hear our children continue to be threatened by this hatred and bigotry. Since today is the National Day of Silence, which tries to raise awareness about LGBT-bullying and harassment, I thought I would send out this invitation for further dialogue.
As K pointed out in our staff meeting, our lives continue to be affected by wide spread injustice and oppression. I have had a similar struggles to celebrate with a good friend who is engaging in growing the love between her and her male partner through marriage, while being barred from expressing my love through that same institution. There is amazing courage to be found in publicly committing one’s love to another person as there is in admitting to oneself and one’s loved one’s that in this society some of us don’t have that opportunity (at least not in the same way.)
This is an invitation to dialogue, so what do you think? What is your history of violence and oppression? How do you think we continue to struggle against this and all other forms of bigotry? How do we redouble and refine our efforts to help our young people find new ways, ways of love and compassion, understanding and opportunity for all people? These are a couple of the questions on mind this day of a heavy heart; and questions the Hegada teaches us are good things. I invite anyone to share with me any questions or ideas you might be having about LGBT issues (or anything else for that matter.)

If love, compassion, and hard work are the answers it is heartening to be daily in such inspiring company.

Thank you,
Eli

Success is Failure

I’ve been thinking a lot about success lately. How should I define it for myself? What is material success in the context of a life of service? Is there security in this context, and if so, what? These are some of the questions I’ve been thinking about.

Recently I read a 1983 commencement address Ursula K Le Guin gave at Mills College, in which she says that success is a macho term in relation to someone else’s failures. That instead of success, she hopes that people begin to make their homes in the (feminine) spaces of failure.

I do not entirely get what she is proposing, however, here are my thoughts. It is not so much that “failure” is the goal, that it is something so wonderful. Instead, it is understanding that if some people are going to live in “success” others must live in
“failure” and that, given those options, that which will be called “failure” is closer to how we should seek to live our lives. Let us take an example to better understand this. A “successful” housewife use to be (and maybe still is) a woman who kept her house, family, and life in such a way that promoted her husbands (material) “success.” Conversely, a “successful” husband* used the work of his wife to promote his ability to gain material wealth. All this “success” takes place ONLY because other people fail, living in poverty and despair. We must orient our lives away from “success”; away from dependence on other’s suffering; away from the subjugation of some people to others.

Instead we must find comfort and fulfillment in the “…helplessness, weakness, and illness, (in) the irrational and the irreparable, (in) all that is obscure, passive, uncontrolled, animal, unclean - the valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life (Le Guin, 1983).” Le Guin is right in that we do not really even know what this looks like. We only have vague “pioneers' tales” about this space (one I might recommend is The Fifth Sacred Thing). However, I think one big part of the puzzle is learning a kind of communalism. Doing away with our desperate grasps on our individualism, what we Sufis would call our nefs.

For me, a large part of this is reorienting my life towards being of service and away from being the problem solver, the Important One With Answers. It means viewing my life, and the work I spend it on, as a part of a whole that is larger, smarter, and more capable than “I” (the great individual) will ever be. In other words, whether I become a mechanic or a community artist I am still one person performing one function of a community made up of many individuals performing many different functions. Whether I keep my communities cars running or keep its eyes open to the world, it is all part of what keeps the community healthy. Thus, it is not about being important, but about being connected to a community I can be of service to and from which I can draw upon.

I do not think this is exactly what Le Guin was going for, but I think it is a good start. What do you all think?

My Links of Choice; and Why

So I look at all these weblogs and they all have links, but I always want a more specific understanding of what those links are about. So here are my reviews of my links. Enjoy!

Worldchanging: As many of my faithful readers have probably noticed this I love this site. This sight is dedicated to the notion that “a better world is here,” that the time for waiting for things to change is past and that we, as concerned and well intentioned people, have to start saving our world today. And the good news is that it is possible, today. The format is almost exclusively tools, ideas, models, and people which are moving us in the right direction. It strikes a nice balance between positive tools and alternate social models. The site is organized into seven categories; Stuff, Shelter, Cities, Communities, Business, Politics, Planet. Definitely worth a regular read. What I’ve used from Worldchanging: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Eyeteeth: This is Paul Schmelzer’s blog. He is always posting something interesting about the convergence of art and society. I also appreciate his ability to intertwine socially relevant art posts with other with purely political pieces. His posts short and to the point, which I greatly appreciate, if I want to know more I can follow-up with the links on my own. What I’ve poster from Eyeteeth: 1, 2, 3, 4.

We-Make-Money-Not-Art: This site is dedicated to exploring “the intersection between art, design and technology.” There is often really interesting posts about the ways artists are using new technology and reconceptualizing old tools to create really imaginative art that makes important statements about our world. I find many of posts really hard to get through. They throw a lot at you without much filtering, but if you can get through them you can find some real gems. What I’ve used from We-Make-Money-Not-Art: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Inhabitat: This is a great site for useful information of environmental sustainability. “Inhabitat.com is a weblog devoted to the future of design, tracking the innovations in technology, practices and materials that are pushing architecture and home design towards a smarter and more sustainable future.” This site because it does not deal with art, however, as artists we need to push sustainability not fallow behind and Inhabitat has clear, practical, and efficient posts on a wide range of environmental design and technology issues. They are also great about posting simple articles for people without science or engineering degrees. What I’ve used form Inhabitat: 1, 2.

Coco Fuesco: Coco Fuesco is the shit. She has done really interesting performing for nearly twenty years. You have probably heard of her performance tour Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West with Guillermo Gomez-Peña (who is also pretty cool.) In 1997, during the South African Biennale Celebration Fuesco performed RIGHTS OF PASSAGE, which was a cool performance interrogating the past and present iconography of racial oppression in South Africa. If you want to read something by her you should checkout The Bodies That Were Not Ours (2001)

Community Arts Network: This is a great site with tons of information about cultural organizing and art based community development. I used many essays from this site in my final paper last semester.

feels like i’ve been driving north...: This is my home girls weblog. We have similar areas of interest in terms of helping people take control and recreate our culture and use these skills to strengthen their communities. She tends to approach these issues from a more social documentation media literacy point of view.

Popularizing the Sacred: From the Maori to the Sufis

The pros and cons of the popularization of sacred symbols is a question I have been wondering about for recently. There are two interesting posts about this subject over at Eyeteeth. Urban Wandjina: Aboriginal Street-Art and The Face of Maori Resistance.

It seems common sense to me that cultures that don’t change disappear. There are many adages from my Western culture about this vary fact, “Trees that don’t bend break” est. I suppose the first question must be is this true? Is a culture more lasting if it is flexible or if it is more absolute? And does long lasting equal better? Or is there more value in a culture that does not change, even if it does not last?

What I wonder are the benefits, drawbacks, and responsibilities in popularizing an ancient and sacred culture. Last semester this came up for me in a directing theory class. I was interested in looking at ritual within theater and so drew upon my personal experience with ritual, which is Sufi Islamic (my order) ritual. So I decided to perform a scene from the play we were working on Insurrection: Holding History by Robert O’Hara, in a dhikr. I was worried that people would not understand the ritual because they did not have the cultural background (my class being almost entirely Western non-Muslim students.) However, what was surprising to me was how successful the piece was. What I discovered was that, although I’m sure the subtleties of dhikr were lost, much of (at least Sufi) ritual is universal. People not only understood that a ritual was being performed (an interesting question between performing and doing), they also saw and felt the ritualistic state that was being created. They also, most importantly, felt that the ritual had added to the quality and power of the performance.

However, this raises many of the questions above. For example, clearly this was not a sacred space (at least in the Islamic sense) and none of my actors had done their ablutions, a necessary part of a proper dhikr, so was this sacrilegious? Also, what is my legitimacy in using this culture “improperly”? On one hand I am Muslim and was raised so. However, I was not raised in a Muslim country with all the cultural knowledge that would endow. As someone who is questioning his faith and thus not practicing Islam does that change the legitimacy of my actions? Finally, and most importantly, what are the benefits and what are the consequences to treating religious culture in a none sacred way?