“Art is not something done for another or to another. Art is everybody participating, that is, when ritual is real, when the whole community participates. No one can pray vicariously. No one can sing or chant or dance in our place. We are all meant to participate because each of us must find the ‘center,’ the ‘eye of God,’ wherein the true peace flows. We are all meant to tap into the creative energy of the Holy One, the Artist of Artists, and the Source without a Source.”
We live in a society that raises their collective fist to the air and says “ENTERTAIN ME DAMN IT!” And then when we don’t like what is done, we bitch, moan, complain, and carry on like spoiled children. For 36 hours now I have endured (for that is the only word I can think of) all this ridiculous talk about Miley Cyrus and I’m so tired of it. It’s boring.
Look…I’m not here to defend her. But I would like to point out that we created this problem. Us. Yup…the finger is pointing at you and me. We are not guiltless in any of this. We raised our fists and demanded to be entertained. The woman looked around at our bigoted, misogynistic, racist, pornography-laden, over-branded, driven by marketing, overtly violent, purely consumeristic, gimme gimme gimme world and said “Provocation sells. That’s what this culture calls Entertainment. I can do that.”
Maybe we should all take a deep breath. Think about how we can bring creative energy into the world. As Fox says “Tap into the creative energy of the Artist of Artists.” Make something. Write something. Paint something. Dance. Sing. Create. Build. Give time and ideas to children, animals, serving the less fortunate, running for a cause, creating awareness and change. And for god sake only take in those same creative energies from others who come from a place of deep creativity and not those playing to our voyeuristic lazy tendencies.
For me this means declaring a moratorium on books, TV, movies, and music that have any of the consumeristic characteristics I rattled off above. And yes…this is a subjective decision because each of us comes at our “entertainment” from different angles. But even more important than the moratorium…I commit to creativity. Finding ways to create every single day…to tap into the Holy One and into the gifts of creativity given to me. I see lots of people doing this in their crafts, poetry, writing, singing, dancing, painting, photography, technology…so I think I’ll join them.