Open Your Ears

I have met so many people here and around who assure me that a change is coming, that the current course of the modern western world is bound for ruin and the only way to redirect that course is with informed, intentional action. Lindsay said the other day that what we need now is brave people, courageous people. The most recent issue of the Re-evaluation Counseling publication “Current Times” opened with a quote: Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength. Loving someone deeply gives you courage.” It seems that a lot of important historical action has come from like-minded individuals bringing talent and skills to a community*, and inviting other enlightened individuals into a pulsing group of activists via late night conversations, substance experimentation, the wholehearted execution of bad and great ideas – and the more I read about the literary groups and artists’ circles that came before, the more I consider the potential of the community my friend Kelsey mentioned in a recent email:

Clare and I have been fantasizing a lot about the post-Ecuador San Francisco life [they are currently in Ecuador on a Colorado College post-graduate grant to film a documentary] and, I have to inform you that you are intimately involved in our future fantasy. So, here is the deal. We want to move into a big house in the Mission in the fall with other like minded artistic, into the healthy lifestyle/going out on cultural ventures type people.... know anyone who fits this profile? (hint: try looking in the mirror)

And there’s no way that venture could fail, simply because we would be together.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been soaking up a ton of new information about the past and current states of the world. The first was a film called Terra Madre about the SlowFood movement – a documentary based upon the urgent call to renew the once-sacred bond between Man and the Earth – after which I had a chance to talk with the director and filmmaker Ermanno Olmi about what effects the film may have on viewers, and on the larger population. As the end of the film was a 30-minute wordless chronicle of one farmer’s seasonal process (tilling, sowing, smelling, cutting) I told them during the Q&A that I thought the film fostered attentive listening. Active, deliberate listening: something often forgotten in today’s age of output. Blogs allow people to publish mindless grievances and ravings; text-message capabilities allow lovers and friends to say things over the mobile phone that they cannot take back, let alone defend or explain; and email correspondence has contributed, in my opinion, to the rapid breakdown of the written English language as a means for articulating one’s ideas in an intelligent way. In another part of the Q&A, Ermanno Olmi mentioned President Obama and his story-telling campaign, and I agreed that he has indeed opened the door to individuals of each life path to come together in love. The next step, however, is to listen. Really slow down and listen. Absorb. To give ourselves the time to do that, then take that new information with us into the action.

* Torino's Promotrice delle Belle Arti (an elegant exhibit space in the big riverside park, my favorite museum here) is currently hosting collected works of husband and wife Camilla and Valerio Adami. They had a circle, too, in the 1980s, which included literary theorist Jacques Derrida. Cool.