Transformational art and healing…

 I have continued my learning in UpLvl Communication. It’s been SO GOOD. And then, sometimes, we take a break to do something amazing, and it ends up being even more amazing than we thought it would be, and we receive exactly what we need to unstick the flood of emotions that often overwhelm, or that we’ve been careful about releasing because once the flood gates are open, it can be challenging to staunch the flow. I think I’m at a place where I’m pretty done staunching the flow and just want everything to flow outside me, because keeping it in makes us sick.

I had agreed to go on an “art hike” with some friends. Honestly, I was not looking all that much forward to it, but I’ve decided the time has come to start getting out again, start being joyful and intentional and remember to say “Why not?” instead of “Why” or “No”.

Going back a bit though….I arrived at work on Friday and was asked in pretty short order, “Do you have time in your schedule to go with them up to the Tahoe Campus today? I’d like you to be there to verify and watch the receiving of the podiums and to ensure they get moved carefully and with no damage.” Well, first of all, he’s the boss, so of course I’m going to make time, but bottom line, it was Friday, and there are definitely worse ways to spend the work day than getting to spend some time in one of the most amazing and beautiful places in the world. While we were unloading the podiums, this was the view right outside the storage room doors:

The day was pretty awesome, I felt like we worked quickly and efficiently, and there was no freight damage to any of the items! A TOTAL win!

Then, I knew we were in for a busy day Saturday. In the quest for energy clearing, and also peace of mind, in addition to having a requirement for the refinance people, we needed to clean out the crawl space between floors in our house. I now own the house my parents bought as new in 1963. There have always been people in my family living in the house, and NONE of them every cleared out the crawl space. Ya’all, that’s at least three generations of crap. The crazy thing is, much of this crap was stuff like empty boxes, bags and boxes with empty bags and boxes. As a Depression-era human, my mom never threw ANYTHING away, so putting things “in the hole” became the compromise of living with someone who has hoarder tendencies. I was determined that was all going to change!

What back-breaking, grueling work! I sherpa’d for much of the day. My husband was kind enough to crawl IN the space and move boxes forward and fill trash bags with the detritus of  my family. We found some interesting things, sort of like a time capsule. Here’s one stunning fashion find:

It was, in fact, exhausting and at one point, I got overheated, my arms started to itch because I’d carried up many boxes, some of which had been resting on fiberglass insulation for a long time, and it became sort of hard to breathe. AND, to both our luck and consternation, it was “free dump day” in our community, so we managed two dump runs to get rid of this stuff, but each one took minimum of an hour, and there were long, long lines. The good news is that we were also able to get rid of an old TV, and some old, mostly empty but still hazardous paint cans, because it was a community-type cleanup day. Usually, you have to pay extra for those things. Overall, a complete win!

Then, I was home, had just exhaled a bit, feeling like we had accomplished a lot for the day, and got a text from a friend. This is someone I worked with a long time ago, when I worked in Extended Studies. We’ve had a tradition since I stopped working there, that each June, we would get together again to connect and maintain our friendship, by attending the Reno Rodeo, which is billed as “the wildest, richest rodeo in the West”. I don’t know if all those things are still true, but I think so. At any rate, they changed a lot of policies this year, including how people get tickets and she’d tried for DAYS, back in the Fall, and had completely struck out, so I was sad, having FOMO, and resigned that I was not going to the rodeo this year. Then she texts out of the blue and says her husband doesn’t want to go, do I want to go to THE FINALS?! Umm, yeah! I told her, give me half an hour to wash the funk off my body and I’d be down there. Dangit, I’d scored brand new cowboy boots earlier this Spring at a friends garage sale and was SO ANXIOUS to wear them! The rodeo was good! I say I always go and root for the cows, and they definitely won this year. There was also a super sad accident in bull riding where a cowboy got pummeled pretty good, but we’ve heard since he is going to make it and even won an award.

So, Sunday dawned with me being tired, already feeling over-worked and not super looking forward to the art hike, and yet, yes, looking forward. We were going to go up and do the hike, and then enjoy a potluck style picnic in the Sierra’s. I’d never been to something like this, so was unsure what to expect besides a 2.5-3 mile hike and some art =)

I’m going to make a separate post about the art hike, and each stop, but this post is largely about transformational art. When we started on the hike, it was pleasant. It’s been sort of unseasonably cool this Spring, and even though Summer has started, there was still a chill in the mountain air, and a period breeze rippling through the Aspen trees. We get to the first art stop, and there are two people seated, one with a guitar. The guitarist starts playing and when this man opens his mouth to sing, a thing happened that opened my heart with it’s beauty, bared the recent pain in my soul to the universe, and showed me that whatever happens, it’s all going to be okay. He sang the most soulful rendition of “Let it Be” I’ve ever experienced. There are things happening with my daughter I’ve been venting about in here, that there’s very little I can do about. It’s not my journey and not my story, these are her experiences and her stories to get right with, and I will not know probably for awhile how I fit into her life moving forward. Sometimes it seems trite to post song lyrics. It was the exact thing I needed to be reminded of, in that moment:

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom
Let it be
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom
Let it be

Let it be
Let it be
Let it be
Let it be
Whisper words of wisdom
Let it be
When all the broken-hearted people
Living in the world agree, there will be an answer
Let it be

Although they may be parted
There is still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer
Let it be
Let it be
Let it be
Let it be, yeah
Let it be

There will be an answer
Let it be
Oh, let it be
Let it be
Let it be
Let it be
Whisper words of wisdom
Let it be

Let it be
Let it be
Let it be, yeah
Let it be
There will be an answer
Let it be

And when the night is cloudy
There is still a light that shines on me
Shine until tomorrow
Let it be
I wake up to the sound of music
Mother Mary comes to me
There will be no sorrow
Let it be

Let it be
Let it be
Let it be
Let it be
There will be no sorrow
Let it be

Let it be
Let it be
Yeah, Let it be
Yeah, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom
Let it be

I don’t think it’s necessarily realistic to think there will be no sorrow, there is always sorry, especially as us imperfect humans process the junk and lessons that our minds create for us to evolve our souls and higher selves. I think the suffering is part of the process and necessary, but entirely of our own making.

This dress wasn’t at the installation of “Let it Be”, but a later one, but I want to record these thoughts and feelings like everything is fresh in my brain still, so maybe, some day, I can come back and visit them, if only to see how far I’ve come. It really is true that we show people how they can treat us, and sometimes, that’s not the best thing for our psyche’s.

Peace.

 The theme was “The Space Between”.

On the webpage for these events, there is no indication of who did what, just all the artists on the page, so I spent a fair amount of time scrolling through them all to try to identify who I’d seen the day before.

1. Let it be – Guitar – Lucas Arizu, singer Davon Fleming, Dancers Brandon “Knowbody” Greathouse and Leigh Collins (I think). One of the most beautiful parts of this experience is that, as a group, my friends and I had arranged to do sort of a “potluck” picnic lunch after our hike so we could continue to enjoy the majesty of our surroundings. While we were taking our last bathroom break before heading back down the mountain, we saw the artists making their way back from their stations, and I got to see, meet, and talk to Davon Fleming. I got to give him a hug, tell him how beautiful his artistry was, and how much his performance had moved our group. There were a couple of others from our group who mirrored my sentiments, and he also seemed to get something from the appreciation, all a girl could ask for. I hope we were able to fill his heart even a fraction of how he was able to fill ours. A-mazing.
2. Weaving the forest – strips of fabric woven between the Aspens. Pick a stick and some scrap fabric, decide how they go together, then weave your stick into the larger tapestry between the trees, or on a tree.
3. Four white-clad wood nymphs with chimes dance around us, then dance for us, as we hold the chimes. Blending the separation between performer and audience to allow everyone to experience the energy of the dance. Jennie Pitts Knipe
4. Making mandalas in forestry management burn spaces with Andres Amador. Take a deep breath, bend down and place your hands on the earth. Move hands up your body, taking energy from the earth, moving it through your body and releasing it through the crown chakra and into the universe.
5. 
6. Emily Tessmer sang us a beautiful song based on a poem by a woman who traveled and explored the paths in the Sierra Nevada in the early 1900’s when it was much less common for women to do so. The name of the new song and upcoming documentary is “Unseen”.
7. The final experience was with harpist Motoshi Kosako. He had a beautiful harp in the Sierra Nevadas.

He began to play, then, like wood nymphs materializing from our of the forest, four young ladies came out and did dance accompanied by the harp. They were called Innerrhythms Dance Theatre. Very, very magical.

 

This entire experience reminded me of what art is. Art exists to make us think, to inspire emotion, to help us work through our own crap and the things we create in our minds to help us process our experience and grow our souls. Art is release, balm to the psyche, emotion we are afraid of feeling but are compelled to because of the experiencing of it…which allows us to release that pent-up emotion…..and heal.

This was exactly what my spirit needed, and I didn’t even know it.

Peace.