THIS POST IS STILL BEING WRITTEN
On Thurs. Sept. 4, 2008 I posted the start of a video idea I was playing around with that changed quite a bit by the end.
Pondering the journey to my interest in this piece, I looked back at this one "good bye metamorphosis" . I started it during the summer following the death of my father. It is a digital piece that I intend to explore as a deconstruction series.
The imagery was inspired by The Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into an insect. (source Wikipedia)
Flash back to 2006...
The question - after taking it all in and knowing that collaboration was the way - I understood that any hope of peace meant a transformative commitment to living in peace- The question was: "what can i do?" That was the one that pointed my Attention in the direction of the door.
Imagine that your fingers have been slammed in the door. To stop the pain you decide to tie off the lower part of your arm at the elbow to interrupt/stop the flow of attention to the pain. Is that really the best response when you consider the consequences and risk exposures that flow from that choice?
Now what if you allow the attention to move in the direction of the traumatize area? Your Attention would first flow to an awareness of where your hand is now. Before you make a move to heal, you need to first get your hand out of the doorway.
Then you might realize your actual intention had been to open the door and walk through.
Instead of seeing this through the lens of the problem (symptoms) we see from a higher perspective of flow where events and ideas converge to create realities.
This piece was connected to, was the precursor of Home vs. Place of Origin - not in any official genealogy of the work but according to that trail of tears and giggles that lead us to our inspiration....our awareness...and if with the right Attention our expanded consciousness. Our ability to see the interconnectedness of our life experiences and choices is enhanced by our willingness to do so.
Cultural Fusion emerged from the energy of the question "what is peace?" back in 2006 when Ron and I decided to pay attention to this.
On a personal level in what is peace I was grieving the many losses that were commanding my attention at the time. Interestingly, several of the people I engaged in the first couple projects of this work also had someone they had lost that they felt moved to express a tribute to through some clarity in life direction.
For me, it was the death of my Grandma Lottie (paternal grandmother) that dominated my attention. Recovery from that loss led me to see that I had used my connection to her to connect to my father. For example, I would look at a photo and say I have my Grandma's eyebrows. Well, not until after my father's death did it occur to me when looking at his photo that I had his eyebrows. He had inherited her eyebrows and been the one to pass them on to me, but I refused to see it that way...until I did.
When we started Cultural Fusion it happened because Ron's work with Attention (See: Bilocality and the inner world of attention) helped me start a new phase in the quest to heal my relationship with places of origin. See Bert Hellinger's work here and Ron's Attention Diagram here. As fate would have it Ron and I found we shared an interest in this work and Ron is a trained/experienced representative.
[9:18:37 AM] Ronald Wopereis says: once you see in in the diagram, the whole thing is easy to understand
[9:18:57 AM] Ronald Wopereis says: shortage of attention or love on one side, immediately affects the other side,
[9:19:14 AM] Ronald Wopereis says: and while attention flows through generations, it affects the next diagram
[9:19:30 AM] Ronald Wopereis says: ( = diagram of next generation in bloodline)
In SoulFood: Individual or Personal Level
To me there is the game and then there is the essence of this paradigm that supports healing. Soul food is depository of Love that flows forward through time to reach across generations.
In what is peace? series part of what I am interested in is reconciling my own conflicts to find deeper levels of peace so that I may contribute that to the world in which I hope to be a part of creating a culture of global peace. In terms of place this started with my concern for Human Rights which is where I cut my teeth in social advocacy with Amnesty International and homeless shelters. In the peace series, I found it was my relationship with the south that called for attention. During a disturbing research trip I was inspired to start "Surviving the South" as part of that leg of the journey.
The most obvious conflict was connected to the concepts explored in Home vs Place of Origin. It is no secret that I am still searching for a place that FEELS like a place you love to love - one I am happy to love as my hometown...a town I can fall in love with. When I find it I will consider that my hometown.
I have been working on a play about this for two years. My relationships to place in many ways mirrored a playing out of women who don't see their pattern of selecting abusive partners. When they first leave there is this sense of living in freedom that has to be discovered before one can really get on with living - thriving instead of surviving.
There is a relationship to this connection to place, the absence of it, an abundance or deficit in social capital ---->in relation to place---> that has an economic impact because it has an economic expression in its component. This expression is more complex than our narrow consumer behavior driven economic analysis would allow one to see.
Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed. - Albert Einstein
In the past it has been easy enough not to pay attention to this less obvious side of economic systems. However as more people are interested in solutions rather than band-aids to what is unfolding, some will start to see the wisdom of kind of art as art based solution research <---> Cultural Fusion Art as Philosophy is an application of Attention:Bilocality knowledge base and SoulFood model.
This morning I had my breakthrough!
Breakthrough: Chipping through a wall with no idea how thick it is. The breakthrough is the moment when you can see the light on the other side starting to peek through.
The play is about a woman who returns to live in the town where she was conceived and abused. While we learn about the community we also see how she has used her conscious choosing to transform wounds into triumph - and showing by contrast how genuine encounter with the sacred - transmutes the sinister and the tawdry.
I had been working on revisions to the opening for very close to a year and suddenly this morning I got it! I will share more about that later.
All of this is what I was/am expressing in this Home vs Place of Origin series...and the lesson that led to the video was that I am my own Home.
This is the most recent version of Home vs. Place of Origin.
The breakthroughs today are connected to Cultural Fusion in a profound way. Having made this personal journey through the work where the personal, social and the political are intimately related....What has changed?
The concept for the Cultural Fusion "business website" has finally come together!
In the works associated with Cultural Fusion I have come to see how these sources of inspiration are connected to a wide range of issues and I am inspired that I have these characters and art works through which to express my insights and conclusions.
When our wounds lead to breakthroughs that connect to the sacred through inspiration - healing is possible and growth is the natural outcome.
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