To George on Street Theatre

[Guest guest]

GeorgeSon wrote:

 

....We could place ribbons from New York to Fairbanks Alaska and human nature

will not change by symbolic street theater alone...

Dear GeorgeSon ~ respectively, in my study of art history and culture, there

have been many times when art and/or "street theatre" has helped change

people's minds, behavior, lives. Western street theatre is a bit different from

Eastern street theatre, but both meet a need that many humans have to "see"

things set out before them in symbolic form, in order for it to be more easily

understandable ~ not because we are stupid, but because, in some essential

way, we are symbolic beings.

 

You could look at all the dieties in the Hindu pantheon as symbols or

essences of a particular quality or qualities. In Hindu culture this done in a

very

colorful, ornate, and quite externalized way. On the other hand, something

as "abstract" looking as a Shiva Lingum is eloquently symbolic to the person

who understands all that it means. And for much of human history and for many

cultures today, art and life are not separate, and symbol, or even street

theater, are some of the places where these two aspects of humanity ~ the

artistic and the spiritual come together.

 

To me, art has always been a form of worship, and many of my favorite

artists, even the big timer abstract expressionist painters of the 1950s, made

art

that felt to me like spirit. My own art in most meaningful to me when, in the

creation of it, an essential aspect or meaning is spiritual. I remember,

from a few years ago, an exhibition at one of the major downtown DC museums

about how many of the women of India, first thing in the morning, take rice

paste

and paint beautiful and symbolic imagery on the sides of their houses and on

the walkways in front of their houses. In some cases, they make intricate

mandalas, using the petals of flowers and in some cases spices.

 

An essential part of being alive is this being spiritual, symbolic,

aesthetic, artistic aspect of who we are. I believe each of this is all of these

things, and more, and each expresses it uniquely, and people and cultures are

express it collectively. When I was in college, I took a philosophy course. I

wrote my final paper on the "innefability of Art," which was, in the terms of my

paper, also ineffebly spiritual. (I got a B- because my basic premise was

unprovable. LOL But that was the whole point, you can't prove something that is

ineffable.) You can point at it, and if you've learned from a Great Soul, a

Mahatma, a Guru, you understand that the finger is not the moon ~ in fact the

moon is not really even the moon. If this is a thing to be avoided, why is

the cover of the movie, "River of Love," done by artist Peter Max. Most

people would never think of Peter Max as a "spiritual" artist, but those who

are

Amma devotees have seen this side of him.

 

I'm feeling a little weird about how responding to a post on Amma needing or

not needing people to help and the value of "street theatre" somehow turned

into a bit of a treatise on art history and spirituality. On the other hand,

these are essential parts of who I am.

 

Jai Ma,

Linda