SAN FRANCISCO where are you! Where have you gone, my denizens and hipsters and troublemakers? Where have you gone my artists and anarchists, merry makers and truth seekers? You are a city of beat poets, mad musicians, radicals and revolutionaries. Hey West Coast, You are the leading edge of consciousness!
Let us begin a discourse in our public spaces through which we bear witness and become accountable to each other for that which we see transpire in our arenas: SOCIAL, POLITICAL, ENVIRONMENTAL, FISCAL.
Should we turn a blind eye again and again to our current emotional and political environment? For it is emotion with which we are dealing, or rather not dealing with and have not dealt with for nine years. The atrocities of our time are too numerous to list and apparently too great to mention. Where would one begin? Our hearts and our minds have closed off in an effort at self preservation in an era of an increasing loss of freedom and influx of shadow.
Let us not succumb to this collective reverie of amnesia and loss of voice any longer. It is as if we were dealing with a great, "He who cannot be named", and we're all afraid of talking about the elephant in the room because it might ruin the party.
We all want to be happy. We all want "it" to get better. We can see the crash at the end of the road but we can't avoid it because we are barreling toward it too quickly to change course.
But perhaps through our acknowledgment of the mental and political environment and of each other we can change the direction of this global crash. There is a fear (which we will overcome) that if we start speaking about that which is going on something bad will happen. Maybe we will break, maybe we will disagree. Maybe we will need each other. Maybe we will be affected. Maybe the lights will go on.
Let us go out in a heated discussion rather than fade into oblivion. I would rather go out in an earnest attempt than slowly fade away dancing on the head of a pin.
How long can we remain silent? How long can we reside in a hedonistic reverie? Escapism is first rate these days. It is quite possible to go weeks without any thought to what is happening in the larger global environment and it takes a catastrophic event to pull us back. We get the general sense that it's all bad but like little lemmings we more or less turn our backs on the stark realities of our time and head for the cliffs of oblivion.
What are any of us to do?
1) Admit to Self that we don't know how to communicate with each other in any REAL sense anymore because the emotion and gravity is overwhelming.
2) Realize the fundamental resilience of the human spirit. We are strong enough to face the truth and volatile enough to create a positive change.
3) Start speaking to one another honestly about current events in order to educate one another and do so with an outlook of positivity, hope and commitment that things are changing and changing quickly because we are ourselves are changing.
At the crux of the matter is a need to dedicate oneself to improvement, both personal and social. We are not simply bitching about what is going on but speaking of the issues in positivity, and diligently applying ourselves to that which is constructive. The spoken and written word has POWER because of the intention and movement that is behind it. The power of thought is more significant still. And what of art? And what of music? We can change the course of our history by how we speak to each other and how we view our landscape. Let us not avoid the horizon any longer.
Through the beginnings of these conversations we will build momentum. As we wake up THE ANSWERS WILL COME TO US.
The decades of the individual are over. We are now in a new space of the collective. Once again the collective can and will come together to enact change. In the coming years, as the establishment’s infrastructures lose ground we will need a crop of self starters, organizers, visionaries, Alpha dogs, and soul mamas to guide the way.
Look around at your brothers and sisters. Start speaking the truth. Which of you have a voice and intellect? Each of us does. Let us encourage one another in growth. Let us believe in the goodness each other.
