I was facilitating a very difficult process last week with a complex group. Over three days, my plan for the work changed constantly, responding to the internal and external pressures that were flowing all around us. At the end of the second day, I felt slain, as if anything I tried to do had the opposite of its intended effect. It was a tough day for all of us.
On the third day, during which some remarkable transformations came forward from the group, one group member told me a story in a break. He was a commercial fisherman, who has fished salmon his whole life out in the Georgia Strait and around the mouth of the Fraser River. He described a time once when he cast his net and it got taken by the current and hung up around the jetty at the mouth of the Fraser. Thinking he was going to lose his net (or worse, capsize his boat), he carefully began to bring it in and was relieved to find that the net was not only intact, but it was also full of ling cod.
He was thankful for his good fortune, and has always had half a mind to try and do it again, but worried that he would lose his net. In short, it’s not the kind of good luck that can be easily repeated without major risks.
It took me close to a week to fully understand the reason for this story (sometimes Elders teach so subtly, THEY aren’t even aware they are doing so! And sometimes, the students are so preoccupied that we’re plain THICK…not sure which was the case here!)). So sometimes we make mistakes and once we realize them, a little attention and care can save our basic tools, and perhaps, even gather in a completely unexpected catch. It’s all about being open to the situation you are in RIGHT NOW, and not getting cocky when you pull out of it with a hold full of cod. For it is not always US that controls these things…sometimnes it is just the flow of the currents and the group mind of the ling cod.
In case you’ve always wondered where all those performers at Cirque de Soleil come from, check out Cirkids. Located in Vancouver, I have known about this group for quite awhile, due in no small part to the fact that they have a whole day of training for homeschooled kids every Wednesday.
Today our family went to see their annual show, this year based around a theme of mermaids, pirates, and love lost and found. The show is a full on professional circus performance in the spirit of Cirque de Soleil or Cirque Eos, except done with kids, some of them pre-teens. It is heartstopping watching young teenagers dangle from a trapeze 30 feet above the floor, or tumbling end over end in an elaborate undoing of an aerial tissu.
But what was amazing was the absolute purity of spirit and discipline inherent in these kids. They are strong, confident, fearless young men and women, and powerful reminders to all of us about what we can all be.
Silence by Valentin Bazarov
John Cage’s piece 4’33” – the infamous four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence – is commonly thought of as a joke. Even serious music criticism has a hard time treating it as little more than a novelty:
“At the first performance in 1952 it was played (if that’s the right word) by a pianist who indicated the movements by raising and lowering the piano lid; and it made an arresting point about the nature of silence – as something other than an absence of sound and a way to make the human ear aware of the persistent universe of sonic activity that surrounds us – the universe that Cage called Music.
However, 4’33’ demonstrates both the strength and the weakness of Cageian method. It was a great idea that still packs a certain punch as theory – but does it live as a piece? Hardly. Like a comedian’s joke, you can only use it once per audience and that’s it. Done.”
Chuckle chuckle.
In a concert setting, one is naturally inclined to focus on auditory sensations. In most Western cultures this is actually work for many people, and so listening is a good way to focus one’s attention. What Cage has done is to use this setting to introduce this kind of attention, not as a one off joke, but as an introduction to a practice.
Here is what I think is implicit in 4’33”: it is an invitation. It invites us to notice what fills the spaces we leave in the world when our awareness frees itself from a predictable fixation and travels around our environment. In this sense of course, 4’33” will be different every time it is “performed.” Four and a half minutes of silence is never the same. In fact, take that time right now and sense what you hear.
Beyond the noises, beyond what is “out there”, is the noises “in here:” thoughts, self-talk, reflections, insight. The next level of awareness can be about our reaction to the silence. Are we uncomfortable? Do we squirm? Or can we rest into what is around us right now and pay attention to the questions and the thoughts that arise in our mind as we navigate the relationship between our minds and our environment.
In fact, experiencing 4’33” over and over will develop in us a capacity to reflect with pointed and deep awareness. As a performance, perhaps 4’33” is a bit of an unrepeatable joke, but as an invitation, it might actually be a quick way to introduce the practice of introspection, whether in a concert hall, or sitting in front of a computer. Repeated over and over, our appreciation of the silences between events grows, and perhaps our need to fill space lessens.
Dave Pollard got the idea a few weeks ago to run a “Great Canadian Song Contest” and I agreed to be one of the judges. The results are in and posted at his blog, and although this is just about as unscientific a poll as you could imagine, the final list would still be a wonderful introduction to non-Canadians to ourselves and our land.
Canadian Railroad Trilogy tied with A Case of You for fist place, by the way.
Lately here in British Columbia, we have been in some major labour strife between the government and the public sector unions, most recently the hospital employees union. (HEU) A couple of weeks ago there was a strike that escalated and then ended with legislation that was perceived as illegal by some union workers who stayed out on strike, gaining support from other unions and nearly precipitating a general strike in the province.
I was talking last night with a friend of mine, an emergency room nurse who is, by all accounts, left leaning, but who doesn’t like strikes in general in the health care system because they do end up hurting patients and leading to blocked thinking on both sides, entrenched positions and general bad will all round. She does acknowledge however that our health care system is under brutal attack from our current government and radical action needs to be undertaken.
I agree with her. I am most interested by how these kinds of civil actions evolve and change. With crises like this, there is often a flash point, where one side takes on the other at the level of engagement that it perceives of the other. For example, anti-globalization protesters have over recent years engaged in violent protests which mirrors the violence they perceive to be coming from pro-globalization corporations and governments. This is always a first stage response to a crises in civil society. What comes next is always interesting to me, because after the bluster, there is always a chance to transcend the current reality, find some common ground and move on, with both sides changed. It doesn’t always happen this way, and sometimes the cycle of reaction continues for a long time before any progress is made.
But last night, talking to my friend, we wondered if there could be a better way. And we started thinking about the best way for the HEU to make their point, claim high ground AND not hurt the people in care that suffer during strikes.
We decided that what was really at stake was CARE. The HEU was protesting the government’s privatization of their jobs, complaining that it would result in a lack of care in a system that is already perceived as underresourced and unable to treat [patients humanely. In many ways, nurses are the last bastions of care in a whole area of civil society that was founded on care.
So we started wondering what nurses could do to make their point, and we came up with a radical idea that brought to mind Vaclav Havel’s politics of living in truth.
What if all the nurses went to work instead of striking? What if every patient had three nurses looking after them instead of just essential service levels of “care.” If the issue is about care, what better way to demonstrate that then to show the world what a fully functioning system would look like? Instead of marching outside for a pittance of strike pay, take a week of protest and show up for work and simply take care of the patients in the system. The nurses could even set up large tents outside the hospitals, reminiscent of a disaster scene, as if a large earthquake had hit and everyone’s hands were needed to care for the casualties. That would send that message that the health care crises is approaching disaster proportions and that it’s all about care and THIS is what care looks like.
It would get really juicy if the employer started preventing nurses from coming into the hospital to work. The government wouldn’t stand a chance against this expression of the truth. To be put in a situation where they were preventing caring professionals from caring for people would be untenable.
The government is privatizing jobs, so having nurses OUT of their workplace is exactly the image that the government wants to see. Yelling, angry protesters don’t send the message that these people are actually caring professionals, and that level of anger plays into the government’s hands as well.
But actually ignoring the government’s plans, recognizing the real need which is that people are not receiving a the care they need, and going to work without the government’s sanction…THAT would be powerful.