We’re all a little bit racist.

It’s impossible to be 100% non-racist. Part of the discussion on race in America is to acknowledge that racism is rampant in every race. I love Hip Hop music, many of my heroes and icons are black, I teach in Spanish to Puerto Rican students, but I still feel uncomfortable when a group of tough looking black or latino boys pass me on the street with their gold chains dangling and their brows furrowed? Why do I feel uncomfortable? Because I am projecting a racial stereotype onto them.

I have noticed myself (a white guy) make generalizing comments about white people to my minority students. I’ve heard them make racist stereotypes against themselves. Race is complicated for blacks against blacks. Look at Dave Chapelle’s trajectory on his Comedy Central show. He struggled with what was criticized as racist material and eventually left his own show because he felt he was being “socially irresponsible.” Ironically, the race issue is not Black and White. Race is a grey area.

It’s when people are shocked by blacks’ hatred of whites, or when whites are shocked to be labeled racist that it gets polarized. If you’re white and you are not aware of the very present racism and prejudice affecting people of color in the world then you haven’t acknowledged the part of you that is racist, that is ignorant to their problem. You haven’t acknowledged your privilege. If you are a person of color you have way more working against you in a white culture. You probably have to fight the racial stereotypes you believe of your own race. You probably feel the same discomfort I do passing a group of furrowed-brow black kids on the street.

The issue is not that of equality, it’s about fairness. Fairness is everyone getting their needs met. Take every situation where whites dominate the culture- in media, in college classrooms, in sit-coms, in government- and change the colors. If you are white, would you feel uncomfortable being the only white person in a 400 student lecture class in college? Would you feel uncomfortable as the only white member of a black jury trying a black defendant with black lawyers and a black judge? Would you feel uncomfortable being the only white member of black congress? How would you feel being the only white person on a plane filled with arabs?

If you can’t place yourself in this position and acknowledge the discomfort, the fear, the anger, the discrimination, the ostracizing, the dirty looks, then you haven’t acknowledged the extent of the race issue in America. You haven’t acknowledged the racism you perpetuate by wondering why minorities are over-reacting or being “reverse racist.”

If we all have the capacity to be a little bit racist, imagine what this does to a country where blacks were once slaves, and whites were once their owners!

The Contentment Experiment

So there’s this blog called the contentment experiment. Finding it made me feel content. I felt connected to the blogger as if he was speaking for me, speaking my thoughts in his words. I felt at one with ezparz.

I’ll have to keep coming back here periodically to check out what he has to say because his site is a good reminder of life’s purpose; we’re just here to find contentment. Life’s just a big contentment experiment. Here’s a quote from today’s post:

We are creators seeking contentment. Our contentment is to be found by discovering the root of contentment. And what is always at the root is our self. When we find ourselves inside of ourselves we will find contentment and cease desiring something that can’t be fulfilled outside of us.

Art shows

I can talk all I want about whether art is spiritual or not, about whether the art world has lost its way, but the bottom line is that any opinions about art, especially current art, are subjective. Who knows what’s good? Who knows what will stand the test of time or affect humanity in amazing ways over the years. What I do know is that my relationship with art continues to be difficult, tumultuous, conflicted.

My students are having a photo show today. It will be great for them. They’ll get to see their work in public, framed. I put tons of work into the show. But, although I hate to admit it, I could care less about art shows. I feel like humanity’s relationship to art is also conflicted and until repairs are made all the art out there isn’t going to affect people the way it is intended to. Maybe it will for my students and maybe artists grow in positive ways when they show their art, but there is just too much of it. There’s too many coffee shops with too many poorly painted, overly priced paintings in them. I feel sad when I see all the work because I believe I do have a real connection with self expression and I can see the longing, the pathologies in the artists. I can see their suffering. I can see their anemic art careers and their hopes for fame and their pathetic need to have connection with the world, to express themselves. I see lost souls.

Even when people loved my work I didn’t feel a deep connection being made between them and what I was capable of expressing. Humanity needs spiritual guides to see the deeper meaning in things and art has no spiritual guides right now. Humanity needs artists who feast at God’s table then live to tell their story. What humanity is getting is the story of drive-thru fast food. You can live off it and it can even be delicious… but something deep is missing.

Connectivity

I want to write some poignant post but I don’t feel the need. I’m finding that when I feel connected to the people in my life- who I originally wanted to have deep connection with and thus turned to blogging- the need to write decreases.

How much of what we create would not exist if who we really hoped to reach (our families) already saw, heard, and understood us for who we are, irregardless of what we do?

Can I offer you a drink?

Posted an essay on the nature of things we partake in to ‘take the edge off’ in life. It’s in my pages/essays section. If you partake in them…and feel guilty… then fear not. I give you permission here.

Art does not equal spiritual experience.

Here is an inspiring article on the relationship between art and spirituality. And here is my response. I gotta go long on this one.

It is passionately written (and is similar to this beautiful passage by Dorothy Sayers.) But it’s thesis is at the core of my criticism of current art, as well as devoid of any contemporary evidence. Linking all art to spirituality through the ages is akin to writing an article about physics starting with Galileo and ending at Planck or Hawking or the Supercollider, but in this case they started with shamans/primitive artists and ended with… who or what art? Who makes art like this (that isn’t already in an age-old religious tradition like Buddgist sand painting)? Since when have you or anyone you know literally “experienced the same passion of unity with the source and essence of existence” while looking at a painting? That’s a tall order.

Well okay, I have literally experienced this standing in front of a painting, but it’s not because the painter intended for it to happen or has been conscious of experiencing it. Spiritually speaking we are capable of having this unquantifiable experience at every second of our lives. The art world has intellectual explanations for all of its movements and genres but sadly I have never heard a spiritual source for an explanation for any art created recently that was taken “seriously.” Sure, the core source of art is something inexplicable, something magical. But that is the source of all creative endeavors, from a child finger-painting to a grandma humming the child to sleep. But no band or artist out of art school is going to say they are inspired by God to make art unless they are Christian (not taken seriously by contemporary art.)

Also, spiritually speaking, the idea that “the artist is… a mediator between that source [of existence] and the receiver” is true only that it is true for everyone. The source of existence is within you and is something you have to literally experience for yourself. YOU are the mediator between yourself (receiver) and the source of existence. That’s like saying you can watch someone meditate and what they are experiencing will be transmitted to you.

It was suggested to me that contemporary literature like Life of Pi was an example of spiritual art. In reading a contemporary rite-of-passage journey like Life of Pi one can relate to what the protagonist is experiencing and be inspired, but in no way are they having the actual experience of someone lost at sea with a tiger! Reading the story about it just puts you in touch with the person who did it, or conjured it up, and this feels good because what is at the source of the author is also your source. From a spiritual perspective the source doesn’t care if you’re Picasso or a construction worker. The source of all is the source of all. If you access it you will be able to tell a great story, but it’s a story- not the real experience. That is for others to conjure up personally once they’ve heard the story.

This idyllic conclusion about art and artists that is in both of these articles is easy to mistakenly come to and I don’t mean to criticize the authors’ good intentions. But it falsely lures people to art because they believe it has spiritual meaning- which it does, because it exists- but the place one is going to find real, bona-fide spiritual meaning is within one’s self. Since many people have forgotten this requirement and have separated the spiritual experience from their lives, their endeavors- creative or otherwise- have emotional or intellectual meaning, but their source is intellect, acclaim, money, and things outside of The Source. Thus you have thousands, perhaps millions of artists, writers, film makers, etc. but only a few can translate the source, God, spirit, etc. in a deep or sustainable way that reminds humanity to also find it within themselves. (Full disclosure: I created art for reasons ultimately outside the source when I was a sculptor.)

The confusing thing for people is this idea that a rock-star or art-star is so connected to the source (for that one field) that they believe they too can just go make art and be that connected. They don’t realize that it’s not a choice for the artists and that the artists may have a difficult time accessing the source in other aspects of their lives (here’s a whole book about messed up artists). Figuring out how to listen to the source in your endeavors is the journey of being alive, not just the journey of the artist. Don’t become an artist because you believe it will later give you access. Become yourself, now, and you will have access to the source of creation.

Lao Tsu said, “The path that can be followed is not the eternal path.” Spirit in latin means breath. No one can breathe for you. You must do it yourself, every second. This is spirituality.

Who am I to criticize?

After writing my couple posts about contemporary art I keep getting this nagging feeling that I’m wrong about my judgment… Then, again, I read Contemplator’s latest and felt all base and unenlightened that I was judging people, criticizing. So I will do as the Zen Master says, I’ll turn it on myself:

What is new or cutting edge about the way that I’m being creative, about the way that I’m being an artist (a person, a creator) in the world? Also, in what way do I lack the highest level of creativity in my actions? Am I just going through the motions, following a formula, and not accessing a higher consciousness, the divine intelligence that reminds me that I should not cast a stone if my house is made of glass?

Well, I do know I’m capable of being a hypocrite, I know I’m capable of being amoral, unethical, evil. I’m a car-driving American after all. Wars are fought for this luxury. In fact the Ying Yang symbol, although overly used, is actually a great visual for what we all are as a whole. Cycles of dark and light, with potential for good (creation) in our dark times and potential for evil (destruction) in our good moments. This is natural. Night/Day, Sleep/Awake, Summer/Winter, etc. etc.

So what do you do if you know that you are part of a whole, that you can’t judge others as separate from you, that what you hate in others may be what you hate in yourself? Well, once you’ve accepted all of those things, embraced them, been humbled by them, talked and written and therapied your way through them, you uncover what is ultimately a grave responsibility to remind others that they too have this wholeness. And this ‘reminding’ of course comes off as criticism. It’s a strange conundrum. Don’t spiritual teachers remind us of what we’re doing wrong in their words- like the Zen Master criticizing me for criticizing?

This experience of judgment comes up raising one’s children as well. Do you correct something in your child that you have not fully corrected in yourself? I am humbled by this quandary on a daily basis. I frequently question my reasoning with my child. But I think the bottom line is: if it’s done from love, from a place of wanting everyone to have love and suffer less, then it can be done healthily.

Ah, the words just break down into sweeping, subjective statements. These generalities are why we have wars based on beliefs (i.e. I hit you because I love you.) See, again, I’m guilty of some evil that occurs in the world. Wholeness is humbling.
I will just have to address the art world I criticized from a place of love. Better go look at myself in the mirror a bit and get back to you.