To the List ,
Here are some thoughts. I hope the ramble is worth it. If too busy just
delete. REH
I watched a show on the Discovery channel about the Neanderthals and art
the other day. It seems that they were perfectly fine with tools but
couldn't "get" what art was about. The Cro Magnons used art to carry
information across space. Today we are again in that place where so much
of the world is about the tool of technology while the creative is assumed
to be an accident and therefore meaningless unless it furthers technology.
In the entertainment industry , Fine Art is the R & D that entertainment
follows and feeds on for its continued evolution. The movie industry is
the most productive industry in America and is America's greatest export
with a huge balance of payments surplus The movie industry also rips off,
with impunity, America's and the world's greatest creative people with
nary a nod in their direction. The only thing Hollywood pays for are
technological tools and performers. They seem to understand the tool use
of art but not its meaning and hence it is valueless. A kind of 20th
century hunter/gatherer.
The other thing about the Neanderthals was that they seemed to be
following the "Hero's Journey" (only able to exist in small groups) while
the Cro-Magnons were able to cooperate and function in civil situations.
Will the "heroic" simplicities of the modern market myths built around a
shallow use of "fad" language translation be the flaw that some future
"Cro-Magnons" are bound to exploit and use to defeat our system and
prosperity? In spite of the fact that we like large events and have huge
religious organizations we are still threatened by the idea of large
groups, armies and the like.
Today's pscho-spiritual youth oriented culture is involved in a struggle
to separate from what they consider a parent-like authority function of
the society. They seem to believe that they have to struggle to be alone.
In Education, after the child learns the habits of a teacher by rote and
imitation, it is true that they must then learn to analyze, make the
information conscious and apply it through practice to new situations.
They often come to believe that the problem was rote learning and
imitation itself instead of just the anxiety provoked by struggling to
make experience conscious. This is a pedagogical error since rote and
imitation learning is holistic and involves the entire life and perception
of the student while intellectual learning is linear. Intellectual
learning without imitation and experience is like learning Italian only in
a grammar book instead of going to Italy to learn it in the street. In
education, books are aids to making conscious that which has already been
experienced and catalogued in the unconscious. Cherokee teachers say that
books are the way we remember what we know.
In pedagogical theory, learning to be an individual is just that second
conscious, intellectual part of the learning process. It does not really
mean that I must separate from my actual parent, teacher or society. In
fact the support that I gained and continue to gain from them gives me the
encouragement to tear the "coat" of unconscious experience apart and put
it together again in new and creative ways.
The third element of learning comes not from being alone but in the act of
communication with others. In music we call it ensemble if it is a group
act and performance if it is dialogue with an audience. That was and
continues to be the most difficult part for me. I know that I am alone.
It is the dialogue of family, community and business that I find the most
difficult. It has been through the helping of other young adults to bring
their talents to conscious practice that I have learned the most.
Performing the "Teacher Function" seals my learning while making me aware
that the issue was never to be or not to be individual. I came into the
world experiencing the trauma of birth alone. I will do the same with
death. To worry about not being an individual or being overwhelmed by the
group is to lose focus in my work. That without the life of the audience,
my work is mute. Without the warmth of my wife, my life is cold.
Without the joy of my daughter, my life is small and without my connection
to Creativity and the Great Mystery my life is lacks energy.
I now know that I can exist in almost any society. That cultures are a
great smorgasbord of life that only enrich my existence. That as long as
I have the necessities of life, I can make my work rich and deep and that
being tied to simply obtaining the necessities is the greatest slavery of
all for I have no time to accomplish the complexities of my work.
America's first great composer Charles Ives, was so harassed by the tastes
of the day that he earned a million dollars in insurance. That freed him
to write what he wanted and hire who he wanted to play it. Unfortunately
trying to do both, compose on the highest level, and develop the insurance
business killed the composer in a rush or rage and high blood pressure.
He worked all day in business and composed so furiously at night that he
tossed the pages over his head on the floor where his wife gathered and
filed them the next day. Upon his death many of his scores were never
sorted never having been corrected, revised or even looked at because he
didn't have the time. I knew the musical historian who sat with his wife
figuring out those scores. He said they were a mess. After the first
heart attack in his forties Ives lived into his eighties but he could
never hear his music without a loud ringing in his ears.
I suspect that all of the exploration into Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals is
really a struggle to bring the two sides of modern human existence
together. The way that communism (not socialism) and capitalism seems to
need each other to stimulate each other's drive to accomplish their
genius, says to me that neither are a very good ideal for humanity.
Integration and integrity seems to demand that we get beyond this very
brutal and unequal time in our history.
Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc.
--"Magic Circ Op Rep Ens" <mcore@nyc.rr.com>
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