Autumn, Creative Directions, and Peace Work

Autumn creeps forward with bits of auburn color, splashes of yellowing leaves, and clear blue skies that we’ve missed this past summer. The air is crisp and refreshing. I’m in a time of renewal, with new projects, artwork, and learning to centering myself in the creative process. The creative flow has felt like a tidal wave in the past six months and now, like a veteran surfer, I’m finding the perfect wave, my relationship to the ride, and learning to balance on the powerful tide. The creative balance is between my work as an artist and my commitment as a peace activist.

I’m productive and relaxed, letting go of many outside commitments that were diverting my attention away from writing and creative work. I’m writing each morning about 2-4 hours daily without strict deadlines, able to write what I want and pursue my creative projects. I’m able to follow the wild muse and enjoying the ride. Though this creative free form schedule has been difficult in terms of getting work out, published, and/or produced, I’m enjoying the privacy of creativity. This creative process includes the writing, designing and drawing new installation peace projects, writing and playing music, photography, and the time to savor the freedom of creativity.

Richard Lovelace in his poem “To Althea from Prison” captures this freedom of spirit so well:

Stone walls do not a prison make

nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

that for an hermitage;

If I have freedom in my love

and in my soul I am free,

Angles alone, that soar above,

enjoy such liberty.

September through October getting ready to perform my newer work - iR Reveren'jAz and jAZ mU eXperience. 17 October 2009 I will be at 5C Café on Avenue C in NYC with some excellent jazz cats. Then I am on to Cambridge and Boston for shows. Stay tuned for details. I am slowly planning for additional shows at colleges in the region. I’m approaching shows differently, each show as a unique creation with the improvisation of jazz, word, and multimedia.

One of the new projects I’ve been very keen on (but and dragging my feet) is the performance multimedia project “Four Prophets” Jesus, Mohammed, Moses and Buddha meet in a Public restroom.

This November I’ll (hopefully) visit a new community development project in Haiti. Then over to Dominican Republic to follow up on on-going community projects we have there. GRACE CARES supports small-scale community development projects around the world. We have one project in India that teaches health care and English and those project holders are creating a larger community health project.

In January through February, I’ll be in Palestine and Israel observing, writing, performance, and hopefully teaching and engaged in homeopathy for children with PTSD.

In the late spring, if things go well, back in Europe performing for a two week tour.

I am a peace activist and artist, and have continually tried to fuse this work and find the balance. Some of this work is on my website at www.vermontpoet.com/gallery and in the music and book section, as well as the section on Landmines. I am designing a Peace/ Meditation Garden using old military weapons and building fountains and art projects. It combines alternative energy, community development, and design. I have a potential sponsor for this in Florida.

I also have the poem One Hundred Flowers that we are aiming to translate into 100 languages.

One Hundred Flowers

Let there be one hundred flowers

of peace that bloom in the garden.

let there be one hundred hours of peace

for every moment of war

let there be one hundred acts of kindness

for each instance of hate.

let there be one hundred years of love

for each minute of violence.

let there be one hundred voices of peace

for each one of war.

let there be one hundred flowers

of peace that bloom in the garden.

namaya 2001

Another integral part of my peace work is looking at ways that my contentious and feisty self appears in the world. In working towards a world of peace I need to center myself, less caught up in my petty arguments, the small egocentric vanities of anger, and focus my attention on the real work in life. I am clearing out the emotional junk that has lead to a lot of unproductive anger. Truly, I am a work in progress. I will always be a feisty person, but the necessity is to do it with a bit more graciousness and humor, learning to find the cruising speed and the easy idling, and avoid the temptation for constant over-drive.

My renewed attention is to the on-going military debacle in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US needs to turn over its share of the war to the EU nations. If the EU, Russia, China, and other countries see that Afghanistan is such an imperative, then it needs to put its soldiers and commitment there. Why is Obama continuing the same failed policies of the Cheney/Bush misadministration?

I campaigned for Obama and think he has the potential to make a difference, but his administration is still fundamentally committed to the failed policies and militarism of the previous administrations. The U.S. is in a pivotal moment, while we need to engage and create peace partners internationally, we must resolve the catastrophic problems in the US: 2 million homeless; 25 % elderly poverty; the lack of affordable health care; the vanishing manufacturing base; our deteriorating education system; and the lack of regulation of the Wall Street Capitalist gangsters.

Eisenhower said it best, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

In the time of personal renewal I am looking at my art and writing as a voice to speak for peace.