"What you writing a book there?" says the Canadian Katrina Relief worker (I only know this because the gathering of men's T-shirts announce such) as I sit to write this post.
"Naw, that'd take way too long to come out," I shoot back from my chair at Caffea.
And in a hyperdrive world, ain't that the truth. I'm not sure I'm the same sack of cells, tissues and sinews that I was last week. I'm pretty certain some moments that it's only because you tell me it's so that this moment's bead is strung together in a rainbow link chain like the beaded necklaces thrown yesterday on Royal Street to the next moment's, but I'm not really so sure. And I definitely don't believe what I did in 2006.
It's not just me. Look around. Thus I believe this is an age appropriate to ephemeral art. (And I'd rather not define that. Let it be it be an open mystery for a while.)
Ephemera can reek of negative connotations. That which is not lasting, or worth lasting, perhaps. (Have you ever noticed cut flowers in a vase in your dining room are ephemeral?)Cultural critics hurl the epithet "ephemera" as a degrading term.
"This Web 2.0 thing has been brewing for fifty years ever since Marshall McLuhan, the subversive founder of digital media studies, told us in 1964 that the medium is the message. I believe that all the most corrosive ideals and moral assumptions of the last thirty years -- the soft, druggy relativism of the Sixties counterculture and the libertarian Nineties exuberance have merged, in the Web 2.0 movement, to create an ideological cult of individual empowerment, creativity, and community...[Oh, no, not creativity and community!] But the truth of this "authenticity" is the cacophonous din of ephemera: The self-authored content on the contemporary Internet is either irreverent, narcissistic or pornographic (or, as in Web 2.0 sites like Voyeurweb, simultaneously all three)." - SF Chronicle Guest Blogger Andrew Keen
Yay, long live ephemera!
In New Orleans, I meet artists of all kinds everyday. It's not everyone that protests, but I have given up defending blogging as an art form: "That's not writing," shoots back the poet at the gallery opening a few weeks ago. He doesn't read blogs though. And he's still pissed at a friend that wrote something about their dinner on her blog for the whole wide world to peruse.
Whatever. I'm doing this no-writing thing or whatever ya callit anyhow...
sure and (and not that I measure up to the Beats) Truman Capote accused Jack Kerouac of "typing, not writing."
"What if you lost all your blog archives?" I'm asked.
I shrug: "There's more where that came from."
Anyhow, that's a long winded way of introducing the topic and my love affair with ephemeral art. I'm sensing this exchange says a lot about the present future of 'art' too:
Doug [Aitken]: The weight of film production is a heavy one. We're coming into a new era of lightness and nomadism, where a sixteen-year-old with a Mac can direct, shoot, and cut a film. I'm interested in seeing how this changes the Hollywood studio system.
Matthew [Barney]: Hollywood blockbuster films are so over the top, they have become something else entirely. Like you, I am interested in either end of the spectrum. It is everything in the middle -- the straight-on storytelling stuff -- that I am not really that interested in, like so-called independent film. - from Broken Screen: 26 Conversations Expanding the Image Breaking the Narrative With Doug Aitken, by Doug Aitken
p.s. It's surreal to read a comment today referencing one of my posts written way back in September 16, 2004. Well, had I submitted a manuscript on September 16, 2004 there would be a good chance that it'd be on bookshelves now. And Whoa! it'd be off the mark in terms of what I'm into these days.
Also, the feedback loop dynamism of this medium is vital. I'm not communicating to dead compressed piece of wood chips chemically treated to look like flat ivory parchment as when I write in the journal, nope, I'm communing with you. And I actually know a lot of you face to face. Yes, that makes all the difference in the world.
Tucked in that ancient 2004 post are two quotes that also reveal that at the core essence of our soul purpose, "the more things change, the more they stay the same". Those quotes are:
"After all is said and done, after all of our grand self-actualization and accomplishments, our self-esteem and degrees, our meaning-making and our financial success - we still feel lonely. What drives us in the world is our attempt to move from our loneliness to a place of relationship, connection, and loving. Our soul prints [our essential unique selves] seek to reach out to the prints of other souls - to touch them, and to be touched by them in turn. The more our soul prints connect, the sharper their signatures, and the more sustained and expansive our souls will be. Our soul prints are driven to other soul prints... Nothing is more important to us than the need to share our lives with another...to imprint and be imprinted upon." - Soul Prints, by Marc Gafni
"We have faith in the potentialities of others, of ourselves, and of mankind because, and only to the degree which, we have experienced the growth of our own potentialities, the reality of growth in ourselves, the strength of our own power of reason and of love." - Erich Fromm
images Joan Cox' Angel Trumpet Dance - the ephemeral angel trumpet flowers are lovely here (yep, still in New Orleans); Georges Clairin's Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt (seen at current NOMA exhibit) I admire Sarah Bernhardt, something about live theater has totally captivated me of late; so I was happy to luck into a six-week ten-minute play writing class taught in the Quarter
And there's Buckminster Fuller's notion of ephemeralization, the tendency in nature to do more with less. Synergy, tensegrity, and ephemeralization. The unifying forces of the age.
Posted by: arkieology | Apr 09, 2007 at 04:07 PM
Ephemeral is the way of the nature...
Anthony de Mello said:
"Some people write to make a living; others to share their insights or raise questions that will haunt their readers; others yet to understand their very souls. None of these will last. That distinction belongs to those who write only because if they did not write they would burst... These writers give expression to the divine - no matter what they write about."
There is nothing wrong with ephemeral as long as it attempts to be an expression to the divine.
Posted by: Peter | Apr 10, 2007 at 02:37 AM
Dear Sister,
I would advise you to be more careful of whose words you are posting on your personal blog.
Marc Gafni is a long time known sex offender.
He molested 2 minors as well as sexually and emotionally abused many women from within his community.
Last year he fled Israel to avoid criminal charges after 3 women from his community submitted complains against him in the police.
Posted by: Sister | Apr 10, 2007 at 11:23 AM
Sister, I am not aware of the criminal charges and allegations. What I am aware of that Marc's book, Soul Prints, spoke to me in a time of my dark night of the soul (the quote I pull from a Sept 2004 post) and that is why it is included above. Yesterday, I happened to run across a book Erich Fromm wrote about the Karl Marx, a very effusive book of admiration for Marx. Not that I would condone Marc's behavior and I feel a connection to the women having experienced some sexual aggression and attempted 'date' (more like friend) rape, yet I cannot my self any longer sit in condemnation of any sentient being because the truth is I no longer see Sister, Brother, Other out there, only the Child of God. Last year, people would tell me I was a lightworker, the funny thing is that what that means in practice is doing shadow work over and over and over again. Mother Teresa was once asked how she could be so selfless and compassionate: "One day I saw the Hitler within me." Although we are coming to the end of karma in this age, it is an very enlightening read to pick up "The Law of Love," by Laura Esquivel. I read it when I first arrived in New Orleans five weeks ago. & it is no accident that this city has its lion's share of the dark, and I am here.
Posted by: Evelyn Rodriguez | Apr 10, 2007 at 01:05 PM
Arkielogy, I love Bucky. I was not aware of his concept of ephemeralization, which isn't exactly what I was thinking, but even there is a minimalistic sensibility to ephemeral-ness.
Peter, Another great hero: I adore de Mello. Sometimes I wonder whether we need any record of or any capture of art? My concept of ephemeral art has a subcategory for art one that is not possessable....which is true of the divine. But express rather than possess, yes, there is a divinization of matter happening, and maybe there is something eternal, immortal there?
Posted by: Evelyn Rodriguez | Apr 10, 2007 at 01:14 PM
Are you willing to accept words of truth from someone who is not living that same truth he is preaching?
Many of the materials appearing in Soul Prints, the majority of his personal experiences shared in this book are in fact not his own…. I should know for I helped him collect many of them….
I guess this comes back to the ancient question: "should we separate the message from the messenger"?
(And please don't label Marc's sexual behavior to "aggression" or "date rape"…It is far from it…)
Posted by: Sister | Apr 10, 2007 at 02:47 PM
Sister, then it is sounding then that Gafni did not in fact collect, and perhaps not even write, much of the messages in that book? I resonated with the message, and I do not know the messenger as an individual expression. Perhaps the message came from another source. Do you think I, Evelyn can even claim to write my most inspired writing?
Yet I do know a lightworker does not witness to a sinner, but a fellow angel in a dark place who needs gentle reminding of the light. This is the talk I walk and I don't really veer any longer. As my teacher says, one person that truly sees the Buddha-nature in you is worth more than 10,000 books of scripture.
Rare is the person that walks their talk now that you bring that up. It is advisable to follow a Master's living example than any of their proported scriptures or sutras.
Posted by: Evelyn Rodriguez | Apr 10, 2007 at 04:04 PM
the comments suggesting that Marc Gafni did not write Soul Prints are crazy. His former wife chaya did some research for the book very little of which was used. I was in touch with Gafni at that time and afterwards. Gafni has been teaching and lecturing about Soul Prints since he was twenty eight, many years before he met Chaya. Anyone who has ever heard him teach knows he is a warm loving and beautiful being. And like many great teachers - complex and working it out.
The stories about sexual abusing mimors are absurd as well. One story comes from a girl gafni met when he was 19; the girl was 14 in the first year of highscool. To not mention that in your post sister is a terrible thing to do..and the second is distorted in a really big way as well. I went out with Gafni and had a relationship with him some years back. The idea that he would ever sexually abuse somenoe is just like saying that Clinton is a Rebublican or whatever. The stuff on the web from Luke Ford Vicki Polin and the like is distorted crap. Google them and find out who they are. Is Gafni flawed -I am sure of that but not more then Zalman Schachter, Arthur Waskow or his former wife whom I have met. You just have to read his formers wife's publically posted attack on him to know why he divorced. Who would want to be married to that.
Posted by: Chaya | Sep 28, 2007 at 01:17 PM
What happened to freedom of speech?
Posted by: Sister to Cary | Dec 11, 2007 at 02:19 PM
This isn't a public square for flogging and hangings, sorry "Sister to Cary". You have entered a personal blog, like a personal journal or diary, by an individual which is pretty darn close to walking into someone's living room. Except there is a "open house" sign placed out front. Like even neighborhood gathering places and cafes and pubs, there is a "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" policy. We're about creating and life here, not destroying and death. It's impossible to create from a space of unforgiveness and the holding of past grievances. I'm about Bryon Katie's The Work, and looking at our own projections, not spreading defamatary remarks about others (as if "Other" really exists outside "Self").
It's common for a blogger to close comments and trackbacks after a week or a few weeks max. This post is from April 2007.
The past is over the very next minute....one day this will be clear.
I wish that each of you involved with Marc -- whom I don't know whatsoever and he doesn't know me, nor read this blog, and this entry had nothing whatsoever to do with Marc -- are able to know the peace that surpasses all understanding.
Freedom of speech in the 21st century means you can voice your own voice in your own space, and become a creator, too. They're free at www.blogger.com.
Posted by: Evelyn Rodriguez | Dec 12, 2007 at 03:43 AM