i describe my work as something that goes beyond that which is considered good and evil

I thought I'd take a break from blogging today and try to catch up with my email. No dice.

I decided rather to answer some of the tougher questions in public. (First I needed to get clear, get beyond feeling judged, and answer them in my journal first...so it'll be delayed by another day.)

I'd love to be able to move more of the dialogue out in the open as some of the issues and concerns and questions raised are of universal value and really would benefit many, many more people  in a public forum.

I saw Crispin Glover speak on a panel a week ago or whenever it was that Sundance was.

I totally fell in love with Glover when he said his cinema goes beyond that which is good and evil. (Well, actually, you gotta love anyone with Hellion for a middle name!)

beyond good and evil

there is a  field

I'll meet you there. - Rumi

My work does much of the same, including this blog. It challenges any binary view of the world. It may seem light and fluffy on the surface, and it is mostly airy, some say hot air, and it's at times intentionally provocative and many more times provocative without my knowing.

For instance, it is no accident that I use an image of my hero Jack Kerouac placed decades after his death in a Gap ad.

For instance, it is no accident that yesterday's post's image reads: "Shadow Play".

Actually I'm surprised more people don't speak up.

At the Sundance panel, many people were swirming in their seats after viewing Glover's new film's trailer. The interviewer asked Glover to address that unease and uncomfortableness. These are incredibly close to the words he echoed at the panel I witnessed, but it's actually from another interview he did with the San Francisco-based Film Arts Foundation:

CG: I describe it [my work] as something that goes beyond that which is considered good and evil. I feel that in corporate-funded filmmaking, any content that could possibly make an audience uncomfortable will be excised. Often times the things that make people uncomfortable are the very things that will give them new thoughts and ideas. To excise these elements is dangerous for a culture. I think it is stupefying our society and this is not a good situation.

TL (interviewer): Discourse promotes growth.

CG: Yeah! In order for people to really think you need to open space up for discussion. I've gotten some aggressive questioning from audiences, but I don't shy away from it because the purpose of my film is to open up that kind of discourse. Even with aggressive questioning it's not like people are trying to kill me or anything. They have their concerns and they're voicing them. To allow people to do this in a public forum is important, but it is rarely done. - "What is Crispin Glover?: The Enigmatic Filmmaker Explains Himself", Releaseprint magazine, January/February 2007

Bonus: I didn't see Glover's film, but I did see Pan's Labyrinth recently. Julian Walker has a powerful review, "Pan's Labyrinth: The Mythic Psyche Reveiled." It's certainly not all light and uplifting, but it is beautiful and it rings true in a way few films do for me anymore. As I wrote to someone today: "My path is a never-ending game of exposing the dark to the light of Awareness - and not shrieking in horror, not resisting release."

image Anna Eisele in her atelier; don't speak or read a speck of German, but I'd wager she is an artist in her labyrinthine studio. They say that in ancient times pilgrims wended through a long, circuitous sometimes frightening labyrinth (perhaps evoking the journey out of the womb) to reach the shrine of the early goddess and creatrix, Inanna, during Sumerian times.

Comments

[Dan]

"My path is a never-ending game of exposing the dark to the light of Awareness - and not shrieking in horror, not resisting release."

When you live from this vantage point, it means acknowledging the fictions at both the "light" end and the "dark end" of the spectrum. As Nick Smith at Life 2.0 said to me in a recent comment, Self is the "stepping back," which is about full seeing while staying present. And I also think of Annie Dillard, famous for her statement that we must learn to "ride the monsters all the way down," (sorry don't have the link), if in fact we want to really be ourSelves. The notion that growth comes from discomfort and discourse, externalized in film and in conversation with other people is one thing. But what's truly inescapable is the incommunicable inner discomfort and tension that we must learn to hold, the tensions of discourse with a fictional self, and the growing willingness and inner necessity to explore all the frost in the shadows -- that's the ticket. And, of course, gradually there's an emerging awareness that what's there, however momentarily frightening is exactly the lodestone we were meant to come into contact with. What do the Zen masters call it? Jumping right down the tiger's mouth, I think, the whole "secret" being the willingness to go to exactly the place that is "to be avoided at all costs." After a few trips to that dark place, energy changes. I suppose it could be an addiction, hunting down the haunted parts of the self, but if you don't get sidetracked by the sheer fascination of it, and let the flames subside a bit, there's always something, some return that cuts all the way through, and we see that there aren't easy distinctions between what is "conscious" and "unconscious." We begin to "get it," simply because we are learning to trust a truer notion of depth. And I guess what I want to say about that, at least for myself, is that it's a source of incredible freedom.

[Mike]

From Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil:

Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Hi Mike, Thank you thank you thank you. My next post is on love. People ask me to take sides all the time, what do I think about what corporations are doing, what do I think about capital punishment. This love that I cannot control knows no way to withhold love from either side.

Hi Dan, I guess I'm aware that dark and light, good and evil are fictions. Mostly feeling the sensation of resisting some portion of experience of what is happening. BUT in the midst of emotions, it might be trickier and appear quite real. I was feeling what seemed like REAL fear yesterday, and "I should know better."

What I meant by 'dark' is that which has been surpressed, been unmet, kept hidden and tucked away, kept unconscious, unrecognized, unloved, unwanted.

As I wrote in a recent post:

This birth, this soul, is dedicated to gathering in my arms and celebrating each and every seemingly fragmented broken scattered speck of stardust:

"We cannot storm the gates of heaven. Instead we must allow ourselves to become more and more disarmed. Then the pure consciousness of being becomes brighter and brighter, and we realize who we are. This brightness is what we are.

When it gets very bright, we see that we are this brightness, this radiance, and then we start to realize from our own experience what this human birth is all about. This brightness comes back for all itself, for every bit of confusion, for every bit of its suffering. Everything that the me tried to get away from, the sacred Self will come back for. This bright Self starts to discover its true nature and wants to liberate all of itself, to enjoy itself, and to truly love itself in all of its flavors. The truly sacred is the love of what is, not a love of what could be. This love liberates what is.

The true heart of all human beings is the lover of what is. That's why we cannot escape any part of ourselves. This is not because we are a disaster, but because we are conscious and we are coming back for all of ourselves in this birth. No matter how confused we are, we will come back for every part of ourselves that has been left out of the game. This is the birth of real compassion and love. For too long it has been said by spiritual traditions that you have to slay so much to get to love. But that is a myth. The truth is that it is love that really liberates." - Adyashanti, from "Emptiness Dancing"

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Hmmm, re-read Dan's comment: 'and we see that there aren't easy distinctions between what is "conscious" and "unconscious."'

There is a lot of truth there. Feeling my way there, though, I can tell difference between a peace that surpasses all understanding and feeling inexplicably shitty. It's not about what's going on externally, but internally.

That's the game: I entertain the possibility that when I'm feeling off or contracted or fearful or whatever that I might want to relax into it and be curious about what is going on rather than dig my heels further.

[Franklin Mint Julip]

What do you say to those who label you arrogant?

I believe we have found the male video equivalent of Crossroads Dispatches: "the rest are fatty oils."

Click the link ;-)

"When I create my opus.... "

It sounds vaguely familiar!

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Hmmm, I say, "You spot it you got it."

[Dan]

Well, the video's fabulous, and after that, anything else in this thread is likely to sound just a tad pompous...

I would say there is a "practice" of noticing our fears, jealousies, regrets, angers, shitty feelings of all kinds, etc, and of stepping back as witness. That always has seemed to me to open the possibility of creating a connection to peace -- but it might require holding those negative feelings in our arms for awhile, staying uncomfortable long enough for the door -- and the insights -- to open, for transformational stuff to occur. In this way, things "dissolve."

"If a grain of salt would like to measure the degree of saltiness of the ociean, to have a perception of the saltiness of the ocean, it drops itself into the ocean and becomes one with it, and the perception is perfect."
-- Thich Nhat Hanh

One of the things I like best about reading your work, Evelyn, is that it seems each new posting is precisely this grain of salt (you) dropping itself into the ocean (of your actual experiences). E.g., your latest post in which you don't shy away from "aggressive questions" and critical feedback. You jump in, put it out there, model the melting into the waters that surround you -- and us. To me that's a kind of "practice," and maybe exemplies what Thich Nhat Hanh meant by "peace is every step."

[MiPToocacit]

I hope, it's OK

[Bert]

Take care,