I'm glad you did share the second part, and the Stepford Wife-ing of the Furies. I'm no scholar of the Graeco-Roman stories so was unaware of the basis of my bone-deep mistrust of the so called democratic process. A mistrust that's taken a long time to grow loud enough to hear, of learning to trust the bones and tissue of my own wisdom (did I just write that?)
The need for the grief has gone nowhere, but it has got louder and louder, you'd think it needed us to hear it. Thanks for this.
Hi Lindsay, thank you so much for this, and sorry about the delay — I’ve been travelling this past week. I hear you on the difficulty of recognizing/owning mistrust in the democratic process. To me it has felt almost dangerous to question it, because at least some of the alternatives are so dreadful. I suppose the thing is, though, this isn’t actually democracy we’re living under anyway. Not any version of it the Athenians would have recognized (even after the taming of the Furies). It’s the endgame of an Edward Bernays experiment in popular control via consumerism, with a facade of political choice. And I think it would have been much harder to pull the wool over if we’d kept our lament practices; if we were still in touch with our grief. Though like you say — it’s never gone away, and it seems to be getting loud enough to hear now.
Interesting! because it isn’t as if there isn’t enough, it’s just how it’s distributed or withheld. And us constantly wanting “solutions” for problems they keep inventing. In a way one must accept problems and stop wishing to be free of them to maybe gain some agency back?
What an interesting conversation! In my post above I was mostly referencing the idea Adam Curtis puts forward in Century of the Self -- that in the twentieth century, a new version / vision of "democracy" emerged, which carefully preserved the illusion of political choice while actually hooking the public attention to a constant cycle of consumerist consumption that would artificially pique and then sate the natural human yearning for change and improvement. This was all done quite deliberately by Freud's nephew Edward Bernays and others -- at least in Adam Curtis's reckoning. I've got some thoughts about all this coming in my next essay on here! But meanwhile, have very much enjoyed reading your takes on it. Thank you for the brain food! x
Another wonderful piece Ellie, and immensely moving. The Irish have always known the value of grieving properly, there was a tradition of keening, singing to the dead. There's even a festival for it!
I am so glad you shared the second half of your essay. I have a theory (actually I have lots of theories!) that the shrinking of consciousness, in modern societies is analogous in domestic violence of what Ewan Stark called perspecticide, that is the deliberate erasure of a separate point of view of the victim. The perpetrator inserts his (and it's usually his) consciousness into his victim by subterfuge. This includes silencing her voice, depriving her of agency, isolating her from support networks, belittling her, restricting what she can see and hear and what she is allowed to express.
I can see that the MO was already developed in Greek times. Taming the Furies is a very visual way of doing exactly that, humilating female energies in order to control them. And the ego is also afraid of death, so a women crying over death is two massive threats to its power. No wonder they banned it!
WOW — this is a fascinating analogy. I’m going to give that a lot more thought. But yes, it absolutely seems to ring true. Thank you as ever for massively re-expanding my consciousness with these nuggets you bring.
Also fascinated to learn about the keening festival. Thank you! x
Unprocessed anger makes bad law. You only have to watch what happens after children get murdered. People reject forgiveness and mediation, and if your child has just died horribly, that is perfectly natural. There needs to be a healthy public channel for that kind of rage and lament, or it will come out in riots on the streets, destruction of the careers of people who were trying to help fix a broken system, hate-mongering journalism and hastily drafted laws. Sometimes even the false imprisonment of vulnerable people. It’s no use trying to pour the rawness of human emotion into a box of rationality. Let people scream, and then talk with them. Otherwise many folk end up voting out of rage, alienation and wounded integrity.
Perhaps theatre began with the notion of “audience”, compared to perhaps ceremony, where all beings in attendance could be understood to have been “participants“. What might have been lost when such a shift from participant to observer occurred?
This is a fascinating question. I wish so much that we could establish a clearer sense of how much early theatre really did evolve from rituals and rites like the Eleusinian Mysteries. Think that would be tremendously illuminating.
I attended a lecture by the classicist Oliver Taplin a couple of years ago in which he spoke about the origins of theatre. My personal sense is that theatre is in some ways a more passive art form for audiences than storytelling, because it fills in more of the visuals and leaves less to active cocreation via imagination. But Taplin holds the opposite -- that the dynamism of the stage drew audiences in in an unprecedented way.
I think if nothing else, the fact that it was citizens who acted in the plays and formed the chorus probably made it feel less passive. But I totally agree with you that there's something very interesting going on with agency and the birth of theatre.
I suspect that Taplin is right about how the stage affects the audience. This is precisely my concern.
Unlike storytelling, which usually takes place in small, intimate groups, the theatre audience is large enough for individual members to be subsumed into a mass. Without a healthy balance of masculine and feminine energy, this mass can be directed, or simply explode, in horrific ways.
Sorry Ellie, just wanted to jump in with a thought. Is it possible that the apparent passivity of the audience masks how much effect it has on them?
So distancing the audience from the players, spatially and elevating them on a stage also has an invisible effect on the audience? So the audience are being manipulated without their knowledge, by platforming (literally) an activity it makes it more important in the mind of the audience?
I think Shakespeare was very well aware of the effects of the feedback loop between the audience and the stage. The play scene in Hamlet is a reflection of how the presentation of a play can affect the consciousness of the audience 'Mark his looks'.
Perhaps the whole 'mere players' schlick Shakespare also hides behind is a deliberate piece of diversion, because if the government cottoned on to what he was actually trying to do in the history plays for example, actively trying to mould the consciousness of his audiences, then they would shut him down pdq.
I think the longstanding distrust of actors in polite society was very well placed, there was a sense that this acting stuff was a lot more subversive than it was pretending to be, an even a suspicion that this was actually a machine for transforming consciousness masquerating as entertainment. And they weren't wrong. That's probably why women were forbidden from acting for so long, if you allowed that then you might start giving the women in the audience some pretty dangerous ideas about agency. They weren't wrong about that either....
At least when the audience were in the chorus it was obvious that they were active participants but distancing them spatially veiled the psychodynamic links...sorry, this has gone on a bit....
I love this Ellie. So true. We have outlawed grief at all levels of society and thus we live in desecrated deserts where we deny our grief our rage. The juice and flow of human life in all its ages need grief’s expression.
In Ireland we had the tradition of women Keeners at funerals up to the last few generations. We still do funerals well in Ireland but they are slowly being professionalised in funeral parlours. The black shawled women took time to keen and were given a place of honour. The body was laid out in the family home and for days waked there with neighbours coming and paying their respect. As a child I experienced many of these wakes.
Hi Anne, thank you so much for this. So fascinating (and sad) to hear of these recent changes in Irish funeral practices. I've always thought of Ireland as a place that does death very very well, so it's good to get a reality check on the way that globalism is impacting that. Thank you. (Though I did hear from someone else on here about a new resurgence in people practising keening in Ireland. I hope that's true!)
Thankz for a solid write, personally Life only makes sense as a multitude of artforms to practice, mingle, evolve through, as for lament, here 's part of a poem of mine .. "Melancholy, Mistress of Lament, your voice must Not be Silenced, for to the Woes & Ails of this and Any World, No One should be Deaf, For, to the Wounds of Trying, No Soul should be a Stranger"...
Most welcome, the beauty is multifold, some things I tried showed me how not to approach a challenge, some came so easy it took way long before understanding it as a natural talent, yet anything I tried has deepened my appreciation for how much human effort constantly goes into generating our environment, how many people consistently strive to share their optimum in their work, & how striving for quality experience just enhances that layer of the social fabric, ...
In so many ways & since the art of patternweaving, the ability to combine while harmonising towards natural beauty & ingenuïty is how culture shows its everEvolution, to my feeling anyways, ...
So yeah, from an elegant way of walking over a clear sense in talking, from growing food to fostering friendships, all forms of art to practice, share, communicate, experience through experiment with, not on ...
Fascinating essay Ellie. Makes me think about schools which is what paedia morphed into. When schooling was honest about its education of the rich, it sustained echoes of this moral purpose, a cultural eduction, but that was contested through the 20th century will calls for more vocational preparation. Even that retained a moral purpose until the 1980s when a PM said there’s no such thing as society, and schooling was economised into an accountability regime, with testing driving out the moral project because the primary motivation was getting kids into jobs. All important, but stratified schooling systems linger and cultural educations are often sustained for the rich and eroded for the poor.
Terri, thank you so much for this context and extra lens, which didn’t occur to me at all. Of course, makes absolute sense that the stratification of education has massively contributed to the sidelining of art. Then there’s also the intellectualization and academic coopting of art, which makes people feel they’re locked out of the experience of art unless they can talk like an undergraduate. I confess this all makes me feel a bit hopeless until I remember that one real, deep, heart-quickening encounter with art can change everything for a person. Thank you as ever for your generous read and your thoughts. x
This really got me thinking about how art and democracy could be better entwined.
I guess they already are to a certain extent, popular art influences human consciousness and therefore policies and voting intentions. But we no longer have a central hub of art created meaning, and even if we did what would be the message? Lessons from history? Insights into our shared human faults? Spiritual values? All of them sounds pretty good to me 😄
Thank you for this. I think another big part of the problem is the commercialization of art, and the fact that non-commercial art is typically state-funded via government grants. I don't really know what the solution is, because of course artists gotta eat (I know that well enough myself after trying to live as a writer for many years). But it definitely complicates the picture and means there are often multiple agendas at play. I'm not sure how easy it would be for someone to write and stage a play as absolutely devastating to the social order as The Bacchae today, for instance. (I'm sure people will now be able to furnish a thousand proofs that I'm wrong! I hope I'm wrong.)
Thank you for your writing Ellie. It is rich and alive and feels like it is unearthing and articulating potent pieces of the grand puzzle of our times. I got double the 'double vision' today, reading this great article and listening to an episode of the Emerald podcast that evokes and interprets this same insight of Blake. Thought you might like to hear it: Here's the link, jump in at 56m 52secs https://open.spotify.com/episode/4YpNzk04vcMYhA604YRTGv?si=9e086f5ac8164a87. There's also an interesting anecdote about Blake's childhood from 8mins in the same podcast.
Ooh, thank you for this, Will! I love the Emerald but haven’t listened to this episode. So glad this piece hit a spot for you. Thank you for reading! x
Thank you Ellie for these electric ideas!! So big it took me a few reads and a few days to take it all in. Your piece will be a key reference for me in my work with grief.
I had no idea that the birth of democracy was responsible for the suppression of lament. I had previously only heard that the church was responsible for this. I guess that is a part of the story too, with the hijacking of death rituals.
I’ve been learning from the now revived Karelian lament tradition in Finland for some years. Pirkko Fihlman, Tuomas Rounakari and others have given workshops to well over a thousand people the past twenty years. So the once dying tradition has now become a contemporary culture and is considered revived. It seems a Keening revival is on the rise in Ireland too. I’m very curious about the Scottish lament if anyone has any connections.
Thank you for this, Julia! I’m especially excited to learn about the rise of lament in Finland. It definitely seems like there’s a revival underway in many of the places where it’s been suppressed. That seems like absolutely fantastic news, to me. x
Ahh Alun, thank you as ever for reading and for being so generous with your time and comments. Would so so love if you could make it to Kairos! Would be a delight to meet you. (And sorry about the delay — I’ve been travelling and a bit scatty.)
My pleasure Ellie and yes, I have a ticket for Kairos. Really looking forward to it, it will come as a timely close to a month with Dougald Hinds course. And yes, if I can wrestle my way through the adoring masses, it will be a pleasure to shake your hand! And no, no worries on perceived delay, after all we are yarning on the imaginal here right? 😀
Hooray! It's made me so happy to know I'll see you there -- really looking forward to that. Hope Dougald's course is going well; I'm sure it's brilliant. x
Given the grief is unnecessary as most persons return to their place unaided and survive there, I consider the socialisation into despair at loss to be misplaced.
Hi Peter, sorry about the delay — I’ve been travelling. I’m intrigued by this comment, and wonder if you could elaborate. I definitely don’t think I agree that grief is unnecessary, or that simply surviving after a loss is adequate. But I’m not sure I fully understand what you’re saying, and I’d like to!
I had a question, you state that the Athenians or in Ancient Greece the first plays as art performance appears. Would you clarify a bit please. Do you state this in reference strictly as related to Greek democracy? Is there any other civilizations that utilized playwright craft as a method of political expression? Please forgive my generality. I am just wondering? Perhaps it is the art that you are considering as your relational reference. My reasoning for the inquiry is I am sincerely interested in a rebirth of democratic values and as a Native American/ Irish descendent…a North American. I like the writings by Huntington who refers to an evolution of the nation state into a cultural, political, economic regionalism. Of which I believe requires a spiritual revival lead by art, particularly music. I deeply love and am inspired by your mind! To be continued…if you have time. Cheers
I'm glad you did share the second part, and the Stepford Wife-ing of the Furies. I'm no scholar of the Graeco-Roman stories so was unaware of the basis of my bone-deep mistrust of the so called democratic process. A mistrust that's taken a long time to grow loud enough to hear, of learning to trust the bones and tissue of my own wisdom (did I just write that?)
The need for the grief has gone nowhere, but it has got louder and louder, you'd think it needed us to hear it. Thanks for this.
Hi Lindsay, thank you so much for this, and sorry about the delay — I’ve been travelling this past week. I hear you on the difficulty of recognizing/owning mistrust in the democratic process. To me it has felt almost dangerous to question it, because at least some of the alternatives are so dreadful. I suppose the thing is, though, this isn’t actually democracy we’re living under anyway. Not any version of it the Athenians would have recognized (even after the taming of the Furies). It’s the endgame of an Edward Bernays experiment in popular control via consumerism, with a facade of political choice. And I think it would have been much harder to pull the wool over if we’d kept our lament practices; if we were still in touch with our grief. Though like you say — it’s never gone away, and it seems to be getting loud enough to hear now.
Thank you so much for reading and writing.
What do you suppose brought on consumerism? The hungry beast-ness that cannot be satiated?
I've been wrestling with this question for some time now, and the best answer I can come up with is: artificial scarcity, especially money.
Interesting! because it isn’t as if there isn’t enough, it’s just how it’s distributed or withheld. And us constantly wanting “solutions” for problems they keep inventing. In a way one must accept problems and stop wishing to be free of them to maybe gain some agency back?
What an interesting conversation! In my post above I was mostly referencing the idea Adam Curtis puts forward in Century of the Self -- that in the twentieth century, a new version / vision of "democracy" emerged, which carefully preserved the illusion of political choice while actually hooking the public attention to a constant cycle of consumerist consumption that would artificially pique and then sate the natural human yearning for change and improvement. This was all done quite deliberately by Freud's nephew Edward Bernays and others -- at least in Adam Curtis's reckoning. I've got some thoughts about all this coming in my next essay on here! But meanwhile, have very much enjoyed reading your takes on it. Thank you for the brain food! x
Another wonderful piece Ellie, and immensely moving. The Irish have always known the value of grieving properly, there was a tradition of keening, singing to the dead. There's even a festival for it!
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=keening&atb=v273-1&t=chromentp&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D8EKhQkJc7cM
I am so glad you shared the second half of your essay. I have a theory (actually I have lots of theories!) that the shrinking of consciousness, in modern societies is analogous in domestic violence of what Ewan Stark called perspecticide, that is the deliberate erasure of a separate point of view of the victim. The perpetrator inserts his (and it's usually his) consciousness into his victim by subterfuge. This includes silencing her voice, depriving her of agency, isolating her from support networks, belittling her, restricting what she can see and hear and what she is allowed to express.
I can see that the MO was already developed in Greek times. Taming the Furies is a very visual way of doing exactly that, humilating female energies in order to control them. And the ego is also afraid of death, so a women crying over death is two massive threats to its power. No wonder they banned it!
WOW — this is a fascinating analogy. I’m going to give that a lot more thought. But yes, it absolutely seems to ring true. Thank you as ever for massively re-expanding my consciousness with these nuggets you bring.
Also fascinated to learn about the keening festival. Thank you! x
Unprocessed anger makes bad law. You only have to watch what happens after children get murdered. People reject forgiveness and mediation, and if your child has just died horribly, that is perfectly natural. There needs to be a healthy public channel for that kind of rage and lament, or it will come out in riots on the streets, destruction of the careers of people who were trying to help fix a broken system, hate-mongering journalism and hastily drafted laws. Sometimes even the false imprisonment of vulnerable people. It’s no use trying to pour the rawness of human emotion into a box of rationality. Let people scream, and then talk with them. Otherwise many folk end up voting out of rage, alienation and wounded integrity.
Absolutely. And yet the rationalist MO of the modern Western nation state makes you suspect if you even try to point such a thing out!
Perhaps theatre began with the notion of “audience”, compared to perhaps ceremony, where all beings in attendance could be understood to have been “participants“. What might have been lost when such a shift from participant to observer occurred?
Good point. I do think that assuming a passive role in ritual is dangerous, and somehow robs us of our power.
Or, more precisely, robs us of the ability to take responsibility for how that power manifests.
This is a fascinating question. I wish so much that we could establish a clearer sense of how much early theatre really did evolve from rituals and rites like the Eleusinian Mysteries. Think that would be tremendously illuminating.
I attended a lecture by the classicist Oliver Taplin a couple of years ago in which he spoke about the origins of theatre. My personal sense is that theatre is in some ways a more passive art form for audiences than storytelling, because it fills in more of the visuals and leaves less to active cocreation via imagination. But Taplin holds the opposite -- that the dynamism of the stage drew audiences in in an unprecedented way.
I think if nothing else, the fact that it was citizens who acted in the plays and formed the chorus probably made it feel less passive. But I totally agree with you that there's something very interesting going on with agency and the birth of theatre.
I suspect that Taplin is right about how the stage affects the audience. This is precisely my concern.
Unlike storytelling, which usually takes place in small, intimate groups, the theatre audience is large enough for individual members to be subsumed into a mass. Without a healthy balance of masculine and feminine energy, this mass can be directed, or simply explode, in horrific ways.
Sorry Ellie, just wanted to jump in with a thought. Is it possible that the apparent passivity of the audience masks how much effect it has on them?
So distancing the audience from the players, spatially and elevating them on a stage also has an invisible effect on the audience? So the audience are being manipulated without their knowledge, by platforming (literally) an activity it makes it more important in the mind of the audience?
I think Shakespeare was very well aware of the effects of the feedback loop between the audience and the stage. The play scene in Hamlet is a reflection of how the presentation of a play can affect the consciousness of the audience 'Mark his looks'.
Perhaps the whole 'mere players' schlick Shakespare also hides behind is a deliberate piece of diversion, because if the government cottoned on to what he was actually trying to do in the history plays for example, actively trying to mould the consciousness of his audiences, then they would shut him down pdq.
I think the longstanding distrust of actors in polite society was very well placed, there was a sense that this acting stuff was a lot more subversive than it was pretending to be, an even a suspicion that this was actually a machine for transforming consciousness masquerating as entertainment. And they weren't wrong. That's probably why women were forbidden from acting for so long, if you allowed that then you might start giving the women in the audience some pretty dangerous ideas about agency. They weren't wrong about that either....
At least when the audience were in the chorus it was obvious that they were active participants but distancing them spatially veiled the psychodynamic links...sorry, this has gone on a bit....
I love this Ellie. So true. We have outlawed grief at all levels of society and thus we live in desecrated deserts where we deny our grief our rage. The juice and flow of human life in all its ages need grief’s expression.
In Ireland we had the tradition of women Keeners at funerals up to the last few generations. We still do funerals well in Ireland but they are slowly being professionalised in funeral parlours. The black shawled women took time to keen and were given a place of honour. The body was laid out in the family home and for days waked there with neighbours coming and paying their respect. As a child I experienced many of these wakes.
I’ve done a grief training with Francis Weller. His book The wild edge of sorrow is a gem.
Hi Anne, thank you so much for this. So fascinating (and sad) to hear of these recent changes in Irish funeral practices. I've always thought of Ireland as a place that does death very very well, so it's good to get a reality check on the way that globalism is impacting that. Thank you. (Though I did hear from someone else on here about a new resurgence in people practising keening in Ireland. I hope that's true!)
Yes it is and yes Ireland still does death well but it’s changing.
Thankz for a solid write, personally Life only makes sense as a multitude of artforms to practice, mingle, evolve through, as for lament, here 's part of a poem of mine .. "Melancholy, Mistress of Lament, your voice must Not be Silenced, for to the Woes & Ails of this and Any World, No One should be Deaf, For, to the Wounds of Trying, No Soul should be a Stranger"...
I love the idea of life itself as simply a multitude of art forms to practice. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
Most welcome, the beauty is multifold, some things I tried showed me how not to approach a challenge, some came so easy it took way long before understanding it as a natural talent, yet anything I tried has deepened my appreciation for how much human effort constantly goes into generating our environment, how many people consistently strive to share their optimum in their work, & how striving for quality experience just enhances that layer of the social fabric, ...
In so many ways & since the art of patternweaving, the ability to combine while harmonising towards natural beauty & ingenuïty is how culture shows its everEvolution, to my feeling anyways, ...
So yeah, from an elegant way of walking over a clear sense in talking, from growing food to fostering friendships, all forms of art to practice, share, communicate, experience through experiment with, not on ...
Fascinating essay Ellie. Makes me think about schools which is what paedia morphed into. When schooling was honest about its education of the rich, it sustained echoes of this moral purpose, a cultural eduction, but that was contested through the 20th century will calls for more vocational preparation. Even that retained a moral purpose until the 1980s when a PM said there’s no such thing as society, and schooling was economised into an accountability regime, with testing driving out the moral project because the primary motivation was getting kids into jobs. All important, but stratified schooling systems linger and cultural educations are often sustained for the rich and eroded for the poor.
Terri
Terri, thank you so much for this context and extra lens, which didn’t occur to me at all. Of course, makes absolute sense that the stratification of education has massively contributed to the sidelining of art. Then there’s also the intellectualization and academic coopting of art, which makes people feel they’re locked out of the experience of art unless they can talk like an undergraduate. I confess this all makes me feel a bit hopeless until I remember that one real, deep, heart-quickening encounter with art can change everything for a person. Thank you as ever for your generous read and your thoughts. x
Thank you ! I needed this!
Thank you for reading!
Thank you for sharing your unruly voice beautiful woman!
Thank YOU for reading and for recommending this Substack — it means the world, truly. x
This really got me thinking about how art and democracy could be better entwined.
I guess they already are to a certain extent, popular art influences human consciousness and therefore policies and voting intentions. But we no longer have a central hub of art created meaning, and even if we did what would be the message? Lessons from history? Insights into our shared human faults? Spiritual values? All of them sounds pretty good to me 😄
Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for this. I think another big part of the problem is the commercialization of art, and the fact that non-commercial art is typically state-funded via government grants. I don't really know what the solution is, because of course artists gotta eat (I know that well enough myself after trying to live as a writer for many years). But it definitely complicates the picture and means there are often multiple agendas at play. I'm not sure how easy it would be for someone to write and stage a play as absolutely devastating to the social order as The Bacchae today, for instance. (I'm sure people will now be able to furnish a thousand proofs that I'm wrong! I hope I'm wrong.)
Thank you for your writing Ellie. It is rich and alive and feels like it is unearthing and articulating potent pieces of the grand puzzle of our times. I got double the 'double vision' today, reading this great article and listening to an episode of the Emerald podcast that evokes and interprets this same insight of Blake. Thought you might like to hear it: Here's the link, jump in at 56m 52secs https://open.spotify.com/episode/4YpNzk04vcMYhA604YRTGv?si=9e086f5ac8164a87. There's also an interesting anecdote about Blake's childhood from 8mins in the same podcast.
Ooh, thank you for this, Will! I love the Emerald but haven’t listened to this episode. So glad this piece hit a spot for you. Thank you for reading! x
Thank you Ellie for these electric ideas!! So big it took me a few reads and a few days to take it all in. Your piece will be a key reference for me in my work with grief.
I had no idea that the birth of democracy was responsible for the suppression of lament. I had previously only heard that the church was responsible for this. I guess that is a part of the story too, with the hijacking of death rituals.
I’ve been learning from the now revived Karelian lament tradition in Finland for some years. Pirkko Fihlman, Tuomas Rounakari and others have given workshops to well over a thousand people the past twenty years. So the once dying tradition has now become a contemporary culture and is considered revived. It seems a Keening revival is on the rise in Ireland too. I’m very curious about the Scottish lament if anyone has any connections.
Thank you for this, Julia! I’m especially excited to learn about the rise of lament in Finland. It definitely seems like there’s a revival underway in many of the places where it’s been suppressed. That seems like absolutely fantastic news, to me. x
Yes, just brilliant Ellie! Thank you and hoping to make it to Kairos next month. Sounds like a wild enlightening night. The Best to You.
Ahh Alun, thank you as ever for reading and for being so generous with your time and comments. Would so so love if you could make it to Kairos! Would be a delight to meet you. (And sorry about the delay — I’ve been travelling and a bit scatty.)
My pleasure Ellie and yes, I have a ticket for Kairos. Really looking forward to it, it will come as a timely close to a month with Dougald Hinds course. And yes, if I can wrestle my way through the adoring masses, it will be a pleasure to shake your hand! And no, no worries on perceived delay, after all we are yarning on the imaginal here right? 😀
Hooray! It's made me so happy to know I'll see you there -- really looking forward to that. Hope Dougald's course is going well; I'm sure it's brilliant. x
Arrrrggghhhh Ellie this set my heart alight 🔥🔥🔥 Untame the voice! Rewild democracy! Rewild EVERYTHING! Off to scream at the sea now…
Ha! YES hope you got some very good screaming out. Thank you for reading xx
Given the grief is unnecessary as most persons return to their place unaided and survive there, I consider the socialisation into despair at loss to be misplaced.
Hi Peter, sorry about the delay — I’ve been travelling. I’m intrigued by this comment, and wonder if you could elaborate. I definitely don’t think I agree that grief is unnecessary, or that simply surviving after a loss is adequate. But I’m not sure I fully understand what you’re saying, and I’d like to!
I had a question, you state that the Athenians or in Ancient Greece the first plays as art performance appears. Would you clarify a bit please. Do you state this in reference strictly as related to Greek democracy? Is there any other civilizations that utilized playwright craft as a method of political expression? Please forgive my generality. I am just wondering? Perhaps it is the art that you are considering as your relational reference. My reasoning for the inquiry is I am sincerely interested in a rebirth of democratic values and as a Native American/ Irish descendent…a North American. I like the writings by Huntington who refers to an evolution of the nation state into a cultural, political, economic regionalism. Of which I believe requires a spiritual revival lead by art, particularly music. I deeply love and am inspired by your mind! To be continued…if you have time. Cheers