Make Art Not War

The opposite of War is not Peace. The opposite of War is Creation. I first heard that quote in a song from the Broadway musical "Rent". It made immediate sense to me. The opposite of war is truce. It is the end of military operations. But after the ravages of war it takes an act of God, congress and all the people to create peace which is a whole other thing.

We exist here, in a virtual, if not superficial peace. We don't see war, but there's the hidden toxic assault in our air and water and then there's our consumption and taxes that do make us complicit. But, What can we do? War seems to be a contagious epidemic, contiguous and amorphous easily adapting to the 21st century. It's got an assault weapons base and I've recently been informed there are close to 300 million guns in the US. Wow, how do you stand up to that? How do we address violence non-violently?

War is more sophisticated,profitable and personal. It still has the random clumsiness of a botched military operation where innocent bystanders are just "collateral damage" Yet, is more unpredictable because it can interrupt a casual Saturday morning shopping trip to Safeway.

I have dreamed and demonstrated for peace for years and years, like many in this listening audience. We've taken frequent trips to Washington DC to express our sentiments, we've marched, called, petitioned and still war drones on manned and unmanned. Peace will come, I believe, when we choose to express our needs through art rather than violence.

In my constant quest for peace I must look into the mirror and while I have not bombed a village, invaded my neighbors house, or put cross hairs over a political rivals coordinates. I still have a war zone inside of me. It is a daily battlefield of emotions that clash with common sense, intelligence, and self discipline. I still react to situations. My anger is ballistic. I am capable and active in my hate. Of course I hate the right things, but still the verb is combative and tends to leak. I have self judgments that reject me and I want to conquer certain behaviors, physical defects, deformities visible and in visible. So I've tried to make peace with all this, especially myself, because this kind of internal warfare doesn't help my marriage or the raising of my teenager, because I tend to blow up the village to save the town. Art is my only way out. Theater is my cure.
I know I am not alone in this and was confirmed again, last week when I saw the MTC's production of Catherine Trieschmann's play, "Crooked" directed by our own, young, innovative and talented Felicia Fratus. It is the story of Laney, a14 year girl, (played sullenly by Alex Scott) and her eternally patient, Mother Elise (Teresa Hurray) who return to Mississippi after the devastating loss of Husband and Father to Mental illness. Laney finds a new friend in Maribel the daughter of the pastor of an evangelical church. Maribel played with languid deliberation by 12 year old Isla Bowery, is convinced that she is suffering from stigmata, the invisible kind. She is the naive catalyst for conflict and redemption in this complex and fascinating landscape of family drama. Crooked examines the war between mother and daughter, believer and non-believer, Educated and Indoctrinated, Truth and lies.

What we are giving is a mirror of our hidden faces and we are not pretty we are amazing ugly lovable monsters. Watching and listening to the scenes between mother and daughter was a stark reflection of my life. And though I am prone to worry and struggle over raising a rebellious child, I had to laugh. And therein lies relief. A moment of peace. Believe me the play is not peaceful, it was loud, angst. It was art. It was a chance for Ms. Trieschmann to reach into her heavy arsenal and send up a flare. It screams, I am here. I have dreams and hopes and rage and I'm going to share them with the world. I am going to make my mark. I will re-create.

So, like Ms. Trieshmann and so many who make our homes in creative paradise, our job is to make the unbearable beautiful, the horrible inspiring, the obscene humorous, Put it into a monologue, a play, a song, a joke, write poetry, play guitar, splash the canvas with paint and use as much red as you. If we all participate that's one way Art will be bigger than War.

I Am A Queen in Honor of Dr. Kings' I Have a Dream speech

This was written on the occasion of Martin Luther King's Birthday with respect to his historic speech in Washington.

There comes a time when women get tired
Yes, a woman does get tired
Tired like a Bengal tiger pacing back and forth at the zoo
Tired like the Mama Polar Bear swimming for hours trying to find a little piece of ice
Tired like the Gorilla running from explosions deep in the congo or the Queen Salmon swimmin' upstream to a dry bed.,
There comes a time when exhaustion is an improvement over her weary existence.
A time when sleep is yet another drudgery because her dreams have become nightmares
just a pause in the reality of daylight yet a fragmented imitation of the constant threat of violence and violation
A woman gets tired of the institutionalized degradation she faces simply because she has the physical form of the feminine.
Yes, she is tired. this is not only the struggle of an elderly neighbor, or the young girl studying in high school on our block,
but of a world wide epidemic that infects the very fabric of our woven existence.
It frays the careful stitching that provides the blanket of our lives.
A woman is tired of the unrelenting fist of poverty striking her pregnant belly.
A woman gets tired of being bought and sold, stolen from the life she deserves.
She is tired of being skewered and flayed at the rough hands of dangerous armies, she is tired of being thrown on the funeral pyre,
Stoned to death in the municipal stadium at halftime, yes, she is tired of being owned, possessed, enslaved by cruel husbands that shroud her in darkness even in the early morning light.
She holds a secret longing beneath of burqa that she will one day walk freely, dance in the street, sing out loud and adorn her silky flesh with satin and lace and declare
I am a Queen.
You will bow down for I am a Queen.
I am initiated as the maiden, go on to bare my children as the mother,
but before I am set before the hearth to cloak myself in memory.
I will claim sovereignty over me.
For I am a Queen.
The seasons have brought me to Brilliant Autumn of my life and I know that I have survived the lofty pain and sacrifice of childbirth.
Though much time has passed I will not be relegated to to your divorced, sexless, disease ridden, abyss.
Where I am called displaced,widowed, sentenced to an empty nest.
My nest is warm and feathered with the magnificient plumes of the Pheasant and even the down of the humble chicken
There are over 60 million women in America who are rowing in this same boat.
We are not priviledged by our color, or station, we remain subjective, objectified and judged by the carriage of our bosom beyond the quality of our mind or soul.
Yet together, We are the ones who will change the world.
We are ready to come together and outlaw the behavioral of Fraternities of a secret brotherhoods that would Rape a woman and then confine her in a shipping container and deny any wrongdoing
There will come a time when the WORD of all women will be heard even if they whisper from the highest mountain top.
Justice will strain her ears to listen and compensate for what cannot be compensated.
There will come a time, when a woman will no longer look over her shoulder in fear,
run for her life
hide her children
and she will rise to a stunning power
that is her birthright. For she is the Creator.
How do I know this?
because I am a queen.
I am a queen and I know that all women who have carried life in their wombs,
all women who have endured the loveless marriage,
all women who have raised children only to lose them to despair or the ravages of war,
all women who have suffered the loss of their own mother and father
who have separated from their husbands, who
have lost their jobs, or house, or a breast or her very womb.
have come to a time of life when they sit upon the thrown of experience,
of passion, of grief, of knowledge, understanding, forgiveness, of patience, of beauty beyond the recipe dispensed on the magazine racks of America.
Some may think this time is a Renassaince for women to excel in the marketplace, the opportunities our mothers would never dream of.
Yes, there is something within our reach though
It is not the happy meal of the corporation that we will feast upon,
but the poetry of our existence, the force of our very nature,
the sustenance of our organic harvest,
the laughter distilled of our tragedies and passionate pleasures that roll down our thighs like a mighty river after the damn has broken.
I am a Queen and I know that one day All Women will eat the true fruits of our labor leaving a taste fragrant and sweet
delighting our bitter tongues.
We will sit upon our thrones and bathe in respect and glory and be sanctified in the power That God almighty has granted us to give birth to a new day.
I am a Queen.

A moment of Silence

The president of the US asked the entire country for a moment of silence today in response to Saturday's massacre outside the Safeway in Tucson, Arizona. The target, Congresswoman Gabriella Giffords now fights for her life, 6 yet others are dead. A federal judge, a loving husband, a little girl named Christina- Taylor Green among others.

As most of you probably know by now. Ms. Giffords was one of the members of congress on Sarah Palins "Hit List" a map of 20 congressional representatives that Palin wanted gone and emphasized that desire with emblazoned cross hairs over their districts on a map. 18 were ousted in the last election, that left two on the list. Giffords was one of them.

Some believe that hate speech leads to murder. Given that one may deduce a clear connection between Michele Bachmann's call to arms, Sarah Palin's hit list, Sharon Angle's suggestion that it is a good idea to shoot your opponent to death if you lose an election, and so on, with the Tucson Massacre, it might be a good idea to make that kind of hate-mongering activity illegal. Robert Brady is moving on that: the Democrat from-Pennsylvania, said he will introduce legislation making it a federal crime for a person to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a Member of Congress or federal official source. I will ask my representatives to extend that legislation to us all.

The truth is that everyday thousands dies. A lot of them are children, innocent people, and animals, whether it is through the madness of war, the starvation of poverty. Habitat destruction, chemical toxicity,The suicide of the hopeless, the ravages of disease, or the senseless random violence that devours our lives on a daily basis. It is time to turn the tides.

It is particularly on these occasions I take refuge in the bosom of our gentle habitat. sitting on the coast at Todd Point with our grandson,this past week in the warm sunshine watching the whales passion' through was a divine opportunity. This act illicits a state of reverence for life to which we are all invited. It's the connection that I spoke about while in Costa Rica with the crazy monkeys waking us up in the morning. It is the feeling that I'm part of this world. I am connected to all this.

When the birds starting falling from the sky on new years eve and continued all through the week, Starlings, grackles, red winged black birds, honey eaters, and tutle doves in Italy. My empathy meter flew off the charts. I was devastated brought to my knees in sorrow. I need now also acknowledge the death of two million fish in Chesapeake bay. 40,000 velvet crabs. Tons of bird and Fish death from Sweden, Kentucky, Britain, Brazil, New Zealand.

So far There are no logical explanation for these die offs. What are the reasons? you may wonder as do I, why we are not as obsessed with the untimely death and perhaps murder of massive wildlife as we are the murder of a few people. Some theorize that birds were scared to death, they were stressed out, they were hungry, it might have been cell towers, fireworks. As far as the birds falling down dead in Brooklyn and Queens,, we were told, "There were too many and were fed poisoned seed by the USDA".

There is a the theory that the death of the Arkansas red wing blackbirds was caused by the great boom of fireworks at midnight. Then there's hushed up news that the little Rock Air Force base was testing a chemical dispersant called phosgene and may have accidentally released it into the atmosphere on a test flight. (Coincidentally the Base has been shut down as of today). No one has mentioned the possible connection to the BP oil spill and the dispersant use Corexit that by now has evaporated into the sky and may now be death raining down.

Of course the major news media completely tracked the Arizona story all day and night and continue to investigate motive and impact on our culture.

Yet, There was little press coverage of the deaths of so many innocent creatures, Most went on with their daily lives without a pause. But, what if it were 2 million people instead of fish that washed up on shore, Or 5,000 folks that fell from the sky. or the USDA had put out poison spinach patches to thin our herd.

Is it true that we do not value the lives of these innocent creatures? We write it off to a general die off that is just part of nature. This is an arrogant stance that removes us from the reality of the web of life. We are so obsessed with the world wide web but not the reality of the web of life. It is a sad reflection on the consciousness of the human race when we have no reverence for the life around us. To think that we are immune from the implications of these dramatic events leaves us more vulnerable than ever.

Perhaps this is our pivot. Where we, in our moment of silence, as a nation, recognize cause and effect. Where we examine our cultural tendencies toward violent or poisonous solutions to political, philosophical, environmental and emotional disagreements. While I appreciate the President's call for a moment of silence. For all we have lost, sacrificed, wasted of precious life, we could all use a serious and thorough period of national mourning to truly digest, reflect and reconsider. For now, I think black arm bands are in order.

A New Years Toast

I am deeply aware of the omens, the symbolism in the world especially around the New Year.

The first image that came to me on January 1st was the swearing in of the New President of Brazil Dilma Rouseff, the ex Marxist Guerrilla, imprisoned and tortured for years, now the President of one of the largest countries and economies in the world. I thought to myself this is going to be a good year for women in their prime. I'm glad I'm one.

There are more women than ever in powerful positions in the world and I am thrilled at their success and pray it continue and multiply. The largest demographic in the world today are women 50 - 75 years old. We are the missing chapter in this ever unfolding story. Women of our age have been largely ignored throughout history, dismissed, invisible, unimportant. Of late we have been branded with menopausal angst or ennui, empty nest syndrome, sometimes losing our 20+ year marriages, children leave home, go off to college. and we are often epitomized as abandoned, sexless, unattractive, old. Yet, in fact we are in our creative and very political prime.

Though I am not endorsing the likes of Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorna, Sarah Palin, Lisa Murkowski, Hillary. I must say they are dynamic, endlessly energetic, smart, crafty women. It could be the time of our lives. And for the sake of humanity, it better be. We have all heard of The trio of "maiden, mother, crone", the three stages of a woman's life, but there is another side to it.

The queen; the one who is past mother and not yet crone. She is phoenix rising. She is Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Julia Guillard, Prime Minister of Australia. She is Christina Kirchner. She is Laura Chinchilla, president of Costa Rica She is Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Angela Merkel of Germany. She is Oprah. She is Amy Goodman. She is Vandana Shiva, Wangari Mathai and Benjamin. She is me. She is you. ,

So, here's to the queen. God save the queen. Smart, fearless, savvy, experienced.

I'm reading the autobiography of the Grandmother of Punk, 62 year old, Patti Smith's, Just Kids. It chronicles her time in New York in the 60's and 70's and her relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe. There is a brilliant quote that seems significant in this way. That the priest humbled in the face of god turned spells into prayers.

In these times it is appropriate for us to return to the casting of spells, the bending and shaping of things in order to preserve them. Calling on our ancient wisdom, or earthy connection to plants, animals and minerals. We can do this individually, collectively, silently or audibly. We will use the laws of nature and attraction to address the common good. The way things are going, in the end women, will rule the world.

We are at a pivot point and It is the feminine who will be our salvation. Our survival instincts are shouting in our faces. It is not a matter of choice, we have come to that fork in the road that is our final destination. As women, mothers, queens, having brought life through our bodies we have an innate compassion for the living and the sustenance there of. With our eyes wide open we see and feel what is going on. Our decisions are based on the safety and survival of our children. What we need is power to make those decisions. It seems that power is at hand.

Men have raped and pillaged this earth and are no longer in control. The weather and the elements are in charge now. We all know it. We don't need a scientist to interpret constant floods, quakes, freak hurricanes. Five thousand birds fell from the sky on new years eve. 100,000 fish died along the Arkansas River. Our path is obvious, It is time for us to rise in power and nurse this aching, dying world back to life. Because this future is dangling precariously before our eyes and though hindsight is 20/20 we can and must see clearly now. Here's to that vision substantiated by a past that requires us to pay a toll in order to cross safely into our future. It is something we do over every bridge. So raise a glass and here's a toast to 2011

Here's to the birds
Here's to the fish in the rivers and seas
here's to the frogs
here's to the bees
Here's to the bears and the wolves and the trees
Here's to the sloth
Here's to the ape
Here's to the chimp
Here's to the whales, and the great manatees
Here's to the dolphins, the crab and the shrimp
Here's to the plankton, the turtles, and the rest
Here's to the reef, the mountain the nest
Here's to the earth, fire water and air
Here's to the people who act like they care.
To all the world a happy healthy new year.