August as Is
As I depart for a tech-less August with words from Stephen Nachmanovitch’s The Art of Is: Improvising as a Way of Life in my backpack, I am posting one excerpt here for your contemplation.
“…We step into the role of ancestor the moment we begin to speak, to sing, to draw, to invent, because we are transmitting toward the future…but that is our job and our reality as we open our mouths to say a new word, to express a fleeting feeling, to connect to one another, to love each other and to give rise to something unforeseeable…to act like ancestors in today’s world seems irrational. It is an audacious move, it requires a certain gumption, a certain romantic stubbornness. This romantic view is so unrealistic as we look around and see the substance of the earth and of the civilizations we value threatened rapacious commercial and political interests, by the poisons of hate, greed and delusion. But then I turn my gaze to sights of spiritual and artistic refuge and realize that they often come from times and places that were dominated by power-hungry warlords. Yet what has lasted is the art, is the insights, is the practices that reflect the impermanence and imperfection of life regenerated again and again in new forms.”
My regular Thursday posts will return in September.
