A Most Happy Happy ReBegin Day Celebration!

The ReBegin is here, and in a very Happy Happy way! The Saturday, Dec. 29th performance proved to live up to the name and be a wonderful way to honor the long-time collaboration between performance artists April Hava Shenkman and Jason Jenn upon their shared birthday.  It was a very festive occasion, honoring the archetype of Divine Fool in all of us, the idea of Calendar Girls and the human fascination with dates and time, Janus Geminus (the Roman God of beginnings and the New Year where we get the word January), and the cosmic transition our little blue planet is on as it recently went through a Triple ReBirth of the Sun (an alignment of the Earth, the Sun, and the center of the galaxy as predicted by Mayan Astronomers).

When I first met April, in Rachel Rosenthal's workshops back in 2004, I was immediately intrigued. She's always had her iconic spiky hair style and ability to bring intensity to spoken word and rattle off some fast-talking gibberish like no other. I was stunned when we discovered we shared the same birthday. It was jarring at first, there went my unique "possession" of the day, but then I realized we were kindred spirits, and there was a mirror there to explore. We performed and created several performances together in Rachel's workshops, but it had been some time since the disbanding of Fauve Conspiracy in 2007 that we'd done a true collaborative piece together. So this year, the timing of our birthday on a Saturday evening seemed a most auspicious time to manifest some magic again.

April has been hosting her cabaret style event, The Happy Happy Show at various venues for many years now. The idea was to combine that element with my concept of The ReBegin, and viola, the performance was born and the idea of piecing together elements began. April and her partner, Jared Whitham spent 2012 creating a series of 12 short movies to commemorate each month in The HAVA Calendar series. HAVA means life in Hebrew, and indeed, April brought the months to life with her unique styling and flare, a nod to classic Hollywood, vaudeville, and clowning. So we framed the first act of the show around videos with The HAVA Calendar Series as the centerpiece, and the second act around live performance.

It was indeed an outrageous outing, requiring a lot of work and energy to be generated around an already crazy holiday season and end of year chaos. But the end result proved to be the best way I could image spending the birthday and celebrating this once-in-a-lifetime cosmic transition we are in. I learned a lot about myself and my connection to the archetypes we celebrated. In particular I had always been drawn into the double heads of the Roman deity Janus, but I didn't quite understand the full relevance. In doing my research I discovered innate connections that astounded me and proved to add another piece of the puzzle into the mystery of life.

I had an incredible time that lived up to being a Happy Happy ReBegin Day Celebration! It was so much fun, that I am sure that our performance will manifest itself in some way, shape, or form again at some point in the future. The audience too appeared to brighten up as the evening progressed, and several beautiful comments afterwards assured that this was not just a birthday party, but a true gift to everyone who attended. It was a remarkable way to end a remarkable year and propel energy into 2013! Many blissings and blessings to all!

A special thanks to Spirit Studio Silverlake, all our support/tech crew, and wonderful audience!

Also, you can get your special edition, hand-drawn by April Hava Shenkman,  HAVA, 2013 Calendars here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/114946226/hava-art-calendar-2013-with-12-drawings

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fools & Fiscal Cliffs

Going crazy over all the issues surrounding the Fiscal cliff? Perhaps there is some divine insight for us to gain by exploring another cliff walker, The Fool in the classic depiction from the Rider-Waite deck by artist Pamela Colman Smith. For there we find our Fool about to step right off the edge of such a cliff. Note we only see a small portion of the cliff - who knows just what will happen once the step is made?  Will the Fool plummet to his death? Or will he merely land on a lower ledge a few feet below. Or will his little bag become a parachute and he safely glides downward? Or does the Fool discover he can walk on air and even fly? Is the cliff merely an illusion created by fear? So many mysteries surrounding the interpretation…but the Fool, seemingly unaware of it, or unconcerned by it, moves forward. We all need to seek out our inner Fools - for we are indeed on the brink of some major transformations in our world. We can hold on tight and threaten to tumble, or keep ourselves light and adaptable.

The imagery of the Tarot’s Fool contains a bounty of metaphysical symbolism. In the Tarot deck the Fool is usually depicted as the number Zero, which means he is a sort of wild card character, a liminal being neither here nor there, existing outside the system and full of possibility — anything could happen. Zero is also a number which has no value, additive at least. He is therefore neutral and a fresh point of origin, without bias.  He is the figure who wanders away from any stagnant situation to begin a new journey and adventure. Thus he is a figure associated with paradigm shifts and new beginnings. He is not afraid of doing something unusual and outside of the box. He does things that may seem foolish to the current society, but will one day likely become the new normal. History knows many Fools, but more likely calls them a pioneer, explorer, scientist, revolutionary, hero, or savior.

The Fool’s head is held high - perhaps filled with lofty ideas - carrying with him the desire to seek out things above and beyond him. He appreciates natural beauty as seen in the pure white rose* he holds and those dandy duds. The sun shines down upon him like the divine nature of his exuberance, his curious search for understanding and meaning. The only baggage he carries is the small sack of belongings which doesn’t weigh him down. He is free to wander. The dog yips at the heels perhaps with a warning about getting too close to the cliff. Perhaps the dog is his animal instinct, his primal fear of the unknown giving one last plea. Or perhaps the dog is merely yipping joyfully along with him.

We will honor the Fool's role in new beginnings Dec 29

What happens next? Well, that's the domain of the unknown, and where a leap of faith is required. We don’t know where we are going and we are filled with uncertainty. All the energy and attention being put into the current fiscal cliff is surrounding a non-physical event with such fearful energy (and reminds me of Y2K). The cliff is both imaginary and illusionary, but how it effects us will undoubtedly have tangible results and rippling ramifications the more hyped up it gets. But remember, the Fool’s Journey begins with a step into the unknown. The adventure that is the rest of the Tarot Deck continues from such a launching point. Nothing will be gained unless something is first risked. But we have to lighten ourselves. Fill ourselves with faith and follow a higher calling, as foolish it may seem to those who want to surround anything deemed unusual and out of the ordinary in a fog of fear.

So I’m not writing this as some proponent of stepping off the Fiscal Cliff. I don’t mind either way actually, it's all an illusion, but I find the timing of the whole endeavor to be quite interesting and perhaps even auspicious. It comes on the heels of the End of the Mayan Calendar. It is a ReBegin, and a situation full of possibility for a new Foolish journey and a new way of being to take place, which I believe our country and world desperately needs. But let the talking heads keep debating the so called Fiscal cliff if they must keep stoking the fires of fear -- there is a much larger and more wide-spread paradigm shift happening, and that is the one to pay attention to. There is another cliff that we are approaching, which could mean an entirely new way our world operates. So keep your head held high and spirits lifted as you move lightly and freely into the unknown.

*The white rose may also be a symbol of the Fool's engagement upon a Rosicrucian journey - there are of course many more symbols and meanings packed in the image - and part of the sublime value and joy of the Tarot is discovering our individual interpretation and how it resonates with us.

Fools and Food

 

Say no to GMO’s - or at the very least we ought to have the right to know!

The recent vote down against the labeling of GMO foods in California’s Prop 37 once again goes to show how a little misdirection by big business and a little bit of fear about the cost of eating and the economic effect of things goes a long way in fooling the public. So unfortunately here is another perfect opportunity to discuss the nature of ignorance versus knowledge and how being a fool is different than being a Fool.

First though, here is the simple and challenging truth about your food: if you don’t know what you are eating, you are likely eating food laden with GMO’s and grown in unsustainable, chemically laden ways. The reasoning is that it is cheaper and easier for farmers to grow mass amounts of GMO crops loaded with pesticides and herbicides than it is to grow non-GMO’s organically.  But it doesn’t need to be that way — it’s merely the way things became over time, it’s the business model that took off and took over in recent decades. Scientific research brought about some new discoveries and with a growing population there was a need to meet the public demand for more food. However we really don’t have proper impact studies to gauge precisely what the full impact of GMO’s are on the environment or our bodies.

Yet several studies reveal that GMO’s could be responsible for the wide spread Colony Collapse Disorder that is killing off bees. Meanwhile health issues ranging from disorders and diseases, to cancers and obesity problems continues to rise. You would think that such concerns would make people stop and reconsider the situation, but when big money is involved, the lobbyists and corporate machinery churns on - at the entire world’s expense.

The big uncertainty is exactly just how much harm GMO’s and pesticides do to your bodies when you eat them. However we do know that such things harm the natural environment!  It is more important than ever that we think twice about what we shove into our mouths and bodies, and where that food came from and how it will affect our bodies, our immune systems, our entire well-being.

There are indeed other practices and methods of sustainable agriculture that are being developed to meet the needs of the masses, but big business profits really don’t want it any other way. Derailing Prop 37 was a rather simple feat for them - they merely had to outspend the proponents of the bill.  They created enough worry about what the economic impact of the bill could be. The economy trumps our concerns about our health, once again revealing that money is practically a god in good ol’ consumer America. In general we are all like ostriches, who would rather keep our head buried in the sand than wake up to the hard, cold truth that GMO’s are everywhere in the country. We’d rather stay ignorant than pay a bit more to be informed.

Somewhere along the line, wisdom became uncool. Perhaps its because as life gets more complicated, as we hurtle along in a more confusing and daunting web of complexity we are desperately yearning ways to embrace more simplicity. We think ignorance is bliss. We think playing the fool will help solve our problems, and while I say that is a good intuitive response to follow — we need to careful about what type of fool we’re playing, for there is a difference! The lower-case fool ignores facts, ignores reason, and ignores taking responsibility. The capital F Fool, is more about doing things that seem outrageous and thinking outside of the box, the Fool is more about taking risks and changing the paradigm, the Fool is more about cultivating an essence of holy innocence that is peaceful and sincere.

Those difference and many more elements will be explored in “The Happy Happy ReBegin Day Celebration!” on December 29th from 7-11pm. Mark your calendars - for it will be a very festive AND informative evening of performance art starring April Hava Shenkman and yours truly.

In the meantime, is it too foolish to hope that sometime in the next four years we’ll receive proper food labeling on a national level? Or will the administration do something completely Foolish and truly change the way our agricultural system works so that it is safe? It may seem crazy and seem like a bad thing to do for the sake of the economy, but in the long run it could be the wisest thing we could do for the long term health of our citizens and the entire ecosystem of the world.

We need more Fools!