Loving Kindness

As we wrestle with massive incivility in the American public sphere and greater racial tension than in several decades, today I experienced a microcosm of the issues enmeshed in this current.  And it was helpful.

In my Kabbalah class, we talked about the Tree of Life.  The Tree has always been my deepest connection to Judaism, and each revisit, I learn something new or hear just what I need in that moment.  Today, I felt the cord between Chesed, loving kindness, and Givurah, the judgement and balance needed to most effectively apply our hearts.

Tree of Life

Tree of Life

We talked about our speech, the importance of what we say, and avoiding ‘bad speech’.  Words are the expressions of spirit ( as in, from God came the word), so our speech is holy.  You know that experience of speaking joyfully and how you then become filled with joy.  How different that feels from whining (all words used with intention).  Do what you say you’re going to do, and you will be filled with the deep satisfaction of integrity.

I left class feeling calm, recommitted to kindness, and ready for my encounter with Anna Deveare Smith and her new one-woman show “Notes from the Field.”  Long an admirer of how she makes political and sociological points by giving voice to everyday people, I was interested in how she would bring her reenactments of interviews to the raw topic of racism by the police, our schools, and the justice system.

Image result for anna deavere smith notes from the field

When the show started, I grew impatient with the retreads of recent events, the inevitable pain and outrage focused mostly on Freddy Gray.  Take me somewhere new.  I expect this is Smith.

But, I realized, this inhumanity to humans is not new.  Smith’s responsibility is not to say something new, but to be a voice for those not usually heard.  I heard the school principal’s shock when a young man said prison wasn’t so bad because he had enough to eat and could play basketball.  She vowed to stop the school police from arresting students.  Make them stay in school.  Break the pattern.

Image result for anna deavere smith notes from the field

I started to hear hope in the possibility of words and actions.  Not be victimized into inaction by incivility of wannabe leaders or cruelty from other forms of institutionalized power.  By Act 2, I resonated with the small uplifts–the prisoner who trains service dogs for the disabled, the teacher who focuses on changing one life, John Lewis who forgave the man who beat him in 1961, now calling him brother.  I spent much of the second act in tears.

We live in a very tough world, and I don’t want to be victimized by it with a continual onslaught of pain.  I don’t want to turn into teflon either.  The Kabbalah suggests a balance—to use good judgement and hold each encounter with loving kindness.  It sounds so simple, but for me, it is the work of a lifetime.

Nobody can tell you who you be

The very tall, slim man, with his hand on a short, plump woman’s shoulder, said as they passed me on the street, “Nobody can tell you who you be.”  That statement was clearly the theme for my day in New York.

Anticipating my professor’s panel discussion with Eleanor Antin, I went to see a show of her work from the 1970s on constructed identity.  Oh dear, you’re thinking, how boring.  Trust me, this show at Columbia University’s gallery is anything but dull.  Antin is known for the harsh diet she put herself on to “carve” her body, documenting her weight loss in photographs each day for a month.

This show has a different focus.  More in the vein of Cindy Sherman, Antin takes on new physical realities.  Unlike Sherman, she clearly remains herself, constructing new identities.  Hilariously, she teaches herself ballet from a book and is photographed as a prima ballerina, on pointe.  The video of her own choreography defies the idea of the artist’s ego.

I also really liked the various nurse incarnations as Eleanor Nightingale.  Her photographs as if from the 19th century definitely have that period feel, even as she comments on Vietnam, the senseless war raging at the time.

Me, 1854

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And the puppets on a hijacked plane and the accompanying video of playing with paper dolls sends up gender roles.

Here are the dolls inside the airplane.

 

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My favorite was probably Antin becoming a 1920s, exiled, Russian male movie director, shooting a film for the nostalgic Jewish audience in the US.  She got the silent film stereotypes just right as she played off 1970s political sensibility.2013-11-02 13.10.05

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The work that stood out to me as perhaps having a different meaning today than she originally intended is Antin as King of Solana Beach.  She riffed on Anthony Van Dyck’s aristocratic painting tropes to indicate disgust at her impotence protesting against the Vietnam War.  So she decided to become king of her own geography.  

 

 

Acting as a valiant but ineffective ruler of a tiny beach community was her way of coping.  I saw the series as a contemporary statement of how insular and self-oriented we have become. We’re each king of our own little worlds and as such, have no room left to make other people and their priorities important.

That cynicism was both tapped into and eradicated by the new musical version of “Little Miss Sunshine.”  As Tolstoy stated, each family is miserable in its own way.  In this family, each character is passionately and uniquely miserable.  Except for Olive, the tiny contestant for the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant.  Where do they find these children?  Goodness.  At age nine, this one has already been in fifteen different musicals.

Well, if any Off-Broadway production were more clearly headed for The Great White Way, then tell me.  I don’t want to miss it, just as you need to hurry and get your ticket for this one now.  The scalpers were already working the show.

This one is upbeat for such a dark, miserable bunch of characters–laugh out loud funny, with hummable songs.  A very feel-good ending that isn’t warranted given the action.  That contradiction is part of why the show works.  It’s tighter and crisper than the film, which I think is an improvement.

And you might just come away King of who you be, with just enough room for all the other Kings out there who matter most.