Calling for CC Salon participaton

Currently, I'm working to organize a CC Salon in Ottawa. I've set up a Google Group for CC Salon Ottawa (http://ccsalonottawa.notlong.com), and a Facebook group. I would like to see a physical meet-up once a month, but I have decided that I am not going to call a meeting until I have at least 4 people who are comitted to going to every meeting (or course with exceptions for outstanding circumstances) ; the meet-ups would be scheduled around these people first and foremost. These four people would be called the "hub" of the CC Salon. This concept was inspired by the fact that several groups I have involved myself were held down by only one individual (in the case of Free Culture Carleton, that person was me), and at times meetings only had 2 or 3 people, which didn't make for a very lively interaction. Whether you would like to be a part of the hub, or you just want to attend the meetings, please join our mailing list and give a short introduction to the list, optionally expressing your particular interests and curiosities.

Theatre of the Oppressed

So, I've been having some good progress working wisdom into my performance act, but lately I've been feeling that the socio-political aspects have been lacking, so I googled "social theatre" and I found out about this group called the Theatre of the Opressed, and this captures what they're all about:

International Theatre of the Oppressed Organisation (ITO)
Declaration of principles

Préamble

1. The basic aim of the Theatre of the Oppressed is to humanize Humanity.

2. The Theatre of the Oppressed is a system of Exercises, Games and Techniques based on the Essential Theatre , to help men and women to develop what they already have inside themselves: theatre.

Essential Theatre

3. Every human being is theatre!

4. Theatre is defined as the simultaneous existence — in the same space and context — of actors and spectators.Every human being is capable of seeing the situation and seeing him/herself in the situation.

5. Essential theatre consists of three elements: Subjective Theatre, Objective Theatre and the Theatrical Language

6. Every human being is capable of acting: to survive, we necessarily have to produce actions and observe those actions and their effects on the environment. To be Human is to be Theatre: the co-existence of actor and spectator in the same individual. This is the Subjective Theatre.

7. When human beings limit themselves to observing an object, a person or a space, renouncing momentarily to their capacity and necessity of acting, the energy and their desire to act is transferred to that space, person or object, creating a space inside a space: an Aesthetic Space. This is the Objective Theatre.

8. All human beings use, in their daily lives, the same language that actors use on the stage: their voices, their bodies, their movements and their expressions; they translate their emotions and desires into the Theatrical Language.

Theatre of the Oppressed

9. The Theatre of the Oppressed offers everyone the aesthetic means to analyze their past, in the context of their present, and subsequently to invent their future, without waiting for it. The Theatre of the Oppressed helps human beings to recover a language they already possess — we learn how to live in society by playing theatre. We learn how to feel by feeling; how to think by thinking; how to act by acting. Theatre of the Oppressed is rehearsal for reality.

10. The oppressed are those individuals or groups who are socially, culturally, politically, economically, racially, sexually, or in any other way deprived of their right to Dialogue or in any way impaired to exercise this right.

11. Dialogue is defined as to freely exchange with others, as a person and as a group, to participate in human society as equal, to respect differences and to be respected.

12. The Theatre of the Oppressed is based upon the principle that all human relationships should be of a dialogic nature: among men and women, races, families, groups and nations, dialogue should prevail. In reality, all dialogues have the tendency to become monologues, which creates the relationship oppressors - oppressed. Acknowledging this reality, the main principle of Theatre of the Oppressed is to help restore dialogue among human beings.

Principles and Objectives

13. The Theatre of the Oppressed is a worldwide non-violent aesthetic movement which seeks peace, not passivity.

14. The Theatre of the Oppressed tries to activate people in a humanistic endeavor expressed by its very name: theatre of, by, and for the oppressed. A system that enables people to act in the fiction of theatre to become protagonists, i.e. acting subjects, of their own lives.

15. The Theatre of the Oppressed is neither an ideology nor a political party, neither dogmatic nor coercive and is respectful of all cultures. It is a method of analysis and a means to develop happier societies. Because of its humanistic and democratic nature, it is widely used all over the world, in all fields of social activities such as: education, culture, arts, politics, social work, psychotherapy, literacy programs and health. In the annex to this Declaration of Principles, a number of exemplary projects are listed to illustrate the nature and the scope of its use.

16. Theatre of the Oppressedis now being used in approx. half the nations around the world, listed in the annex, as a tool for the making of discoveries about oneself and about the Other, of clarifying and expressing our desires; a tool for the changing of circumstances which produce unhappiness and pain and for the enhancement of what brings peace; for respecting differences between individuals and groups and for the inclusion of all human beings in Dialogue; and finally a tool for the achievement of economical and social justice, which is the foundation of true democracy. Summarizing, the general objective of the Theatre of the Oppressed is the development of essential Human Rights.

The International Theatre of the Oppressed Organization (ITO)

17. The ITO is an organization that coordinates and enhances the development of Theatre of the Oppressed all over the world, according to the principles and objectives of this Declaration.

18. The ITO does so by connecting Theatre of the Oppressed practitioners into a global network, fostering exchange and methodical development; by facilitating training and multiplication of the existing techniques; by conceiving projects on a global scale; by the stimulation of the creation of local Centres for Theatre of the Oppressed (CTO’s); by promoting and creating conditions for the work of CTO’s and practitioners and by creating an international meeting point on the internet.

19. The ITO is of the same humanistic and democratic nature as its principles and objectives; it will incorporate any contributions from those who are working under this Declaration of Principles.

20. The ITO will assume that anyone using the various techniques of Theatre of the Oppressed subscribes to this Declaration of Principles.

I am definitely in line with these principles, and I'm interested in learning how to employ their techniques. In a quick browse, I couldn't find any HOWTO documents though. Although there is a book about the organization...

Professional brilliance

This guy's act is so clean; I find it quite inspiring, particularly because I tend to be very sloppy with presentation, and I mean that in a very general way. You can check out the rest of Steven Ragatz's videos on his website here.

Podcasts, hearts, and yoga

Aside: recently my little black mp3 player has become a figurative black box : the display is completely out, such that I can only navigate the menus by memory and trial-and-error. However, I'm thankfully still able to listen to things, albiet in a somewhat awkward fashion.

For a while, I've known about the Rabble Podcast Network, but haven't really tuned into it too much. But recently I returned to it, and started listening to several issues of one of the podcasts, Healing the Earth, which I really enjoy. The first episodes I tuned into were about Permaculture, which I find an absolutely fascinating philosophy, a great metaphor for many kind of relationships: ecological, economic, human, biological.

The second podcast I started to tune into was about "The Lost Language of Plants and the Perceptive Heart", where the interviewee points out things such as:

• the heart is more than a pump, it is a perceptive organ (and if you a reductionist and just believe it's a bunch of chemical reactions, then you'd never see value in loving relationships, as he points out)
• in order to do it's work on a purely physical level, the heart would have to be strong enough to shoot a 100 lbs. ball 1 mile in the air, which it obviously is not, so there must be something more subtle at play here
• Western culture is the first in history to believe that the earth is nothing more than a series of chemical reations at work (which he refers to aptly as "scientism")
• humans have reliably built phychic relationships with plants, hence the massive body of ethnobotanical knowledge (which has mostly been destroyed in the crusades of Christianity and Scientism): he states the example of a woman with no prior knowledge of a particular plant having a vision of a child in a manger, and as she later found out, that plant was traditionally used to cure diaper rash

Anyway, you can just tune into it to get all the details; I was listening to these podcast with the intention of retaining and sharing the information (which I rarely do), so I just thought I'd affirm that. This is because the topics presented are at the core of my focus in life right now, which is the intersection of language (science, politics) and spirituality. In yoga, there is the bodily mechanics, but there's also something more subtle, the prana as yogis call it, and I've been experiencing it in a quite intense way lately. In the circus art like juggling and baton play, it's the same, there are the moves, but then there's the mind's focus, which is something more than just mechanical. In the field of ideas I wish to present in my performance act, there is presented is the opportunity for personal, spiritual change, and a also social/political change (for a great picture of what the integration of spiritual and socio-political change might look like, take a look at The Network of Spiritual Progressives Core Vision; another example of this vision is spiritual activism as popularized by Starhawk).

Getting back to hearts, for a long time, I've felt like my heart has been very closed, that I've been quite avioding of human relationships on the whole, constantly withdrawing into my own mental space. I'm sort of on a mission to make the best use of this (dis)ability by producing art to share with all. However, I feel like it is only because my heart has begun to open up that I feel I can do this, because I care to share. I am very thankful to have left University, as it only further exacerbated my mental mania, and also to have the opportunity to do as much yoga as I please because of my employment with the Rama Lotus.

My parents introduced me to yoga a long time ago, (probably 10 years ago), and I had tried in subsequent years to make a regular practice of it, but never managed to keep the regularity beyond a couple of weeks, and never took a class until about a year ago. I'm very thankful to have been passed on the awareness of yoga from my parents, as I may have never ended up in the practice I have now.

Yoga has been a very large part of healing for me. For the first time in my life since I can remember, I feel comfortable in my own body. Even way back in grade school, I was constantly getting stiff necks and sore backs. As I mentioned before, yoga has also "opened up my heart" and made me a much more perceptive person; I feel like I'm learning to "read people" now.

All of this came to me in a particularly strong way on Friday, which happens to be given the mythological attribution of Venus (for more details on planetary attributions of the days of the week, check out this wikipedia entry) and of course, Venus is attributed to love, and thus the heart. I recently developed a loving relationship with Fridays when I woke up last Friday singing "It's Friday, I'm in love" by the Cure, which my friend Angel, who host karaoke at this dive bar down the road called Bonkers, often sings on Friday. I have not had an intimate relationship in many years, and so to some may think this is odd, but it is my believe that I have to feel the love before it will come to me.

Even more syncronistically, I started inventing a kids song centred on the heart while at work before I started (unintentionally) listening to the "...Perceptive Heart" podcast. The following is a rough draft of it, which I wrote most of after a marvelous day of 2 yoga classes, a great Kirtan (yogic chanting), and a night of dancing with great music and great peoples.

The Heart Song

Air and care, ya care and air
Each one's near the heart
Care and air, ya air and care
Of both I am a part

There's air in care and care in air
Let me demonstrate
Both a feature of the heart
And so they do relate

When I need some care
I start with a deep breath
I know that is the first step
To put dis-ease to death

I use the air to show my care
By singing you this song
And if you care as well
Then you can sing along

The heart it hears before the brain
So trust it when you feel
Then when we come together
The truth it will reveal

Our hearts they grow like leaves so green
With each breath may they grow
In between us all is green
Like the centre of a rain-bow

Feel free to let me know what you think; I'm still pretty novice with writing songs, and I hope find some opportunities to "workshop" them before they reach the "performance stage".

Well, now it's time go make the time to share the care...

Willing to really see...

I have just applied for a 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat from November 28 - December 9th at the Quebec Vipassana Meditation Centre. It's something I've been wanting to do for a while now; I was considering doing it at the end of the summer, but I didn't get to the schedule until now and that's the next one I can take. I have several friends who have completed it and they all say it was an amazingly transformative experience for them. I haven't really secured this plan in my time space, namely, I haven't arranged to have this time off work, but I should be able to make it happen. Regardless, I'm pretty set on going some time soon.

Minu: R.I.P.

Recently our cat, Minu, was picked up in the streets by some stranger and brought to the humane society, where after only 3 days of holding, she was euthanized. We know of this because my room mate recieved the info from the humane society when she put in a report. We had noticed that Minu was gone, of course, but did not respond in time. This was very upsetting to our household. Minu is often outside in our neighbourhood, so anyone in our area should have known that she has a home. And as mentioned by our neighbours, people should know a stray cat when they see one because they are scraggly and not very friendly to strangers. Argghhh, the nerve of this "vigalante pound" person ! If only the humane society would have given us their info (they refused), we could have set their head straight. So, lesson of this story: don't go picking up random cats in the streets and throwing them to the humane society !

Returning the focus

Recently (this Monday) I decided to take a break from all intoxicants aside from green caffene (Yerba Mate being my prefered) for a month because it I felt like they were interfering with me achieving my goals and realizing my intentions. Particularly, there are a bunch of things I've kind of dropped the ball on, including (in no particular order):

• spiritual practice (i.e. meditation, yoga)
  
• organizing a community skills exchange network in the area where I live
• creating community around Creative Commons, Free Software, and Free Culture, through invovement with ArtEngine and the creation of a CC Salon
• my graphics scripting project and related artistic creations
• getting my performance act together
• finding opportunities to earn more money
  

That's not to say that I haven't put any work towards any of them, but I guess I've just lost a sense of administration. I've been driven by a passion to a certain degree, but the discipline has been lacking.

There's so many things in life that I can put energy into to make me feel good that, really, I should have no problem leading a more "pure" life. I've already notice since the beginning of the week that I have been getting more out of these things. For example, the last two yoga classes I have taken have given me an incredible buzz; I've even been getting these fantastic visuals when I close my eyes. Also, my circus arts practice have been much more focused as well.

A late follow-up to the SPP protest

Even though I care a lot about the situation of this planet, I tend to stray from politics because I find it hard to understand; history and geography were always weakpoints for me in school. However, because I realize that there are great threats to public interest at play currently, I try to keep aware of the broader political spectrum. I felt embarassed that the protest against the SPP kind of snuck up on me and I didn't make a comitment to attend it until the last minute. When I was walking toward the hill, I had this frightening but noble sensation that I was marching to war, that I was in a war against war, not one of physical violence, but a war of the mind, of the psyche. Maybe my glorification was a bit out of line; after all, it's the organizers like those in the Council of Canadians who are really on the frontlines of this battle.

I was considering putting on clown face for the protest, as I was attending it with my roley poles turning, but I didn't have time, so instead I decided to put on "anti-war paint", streaks of black paint under my eyes and such. At one point in the protest, I even painted other people's faces. It felt fun to add a little novelty to the ritual defiance. Speaking of novelty, my friend made a sign that said "Portobello mushrooms, not Montebello backrooms !", and his picture made the Ottawa Citizen the next day.

For anyone who's unaware of the impending threats to democracy and public interest that the SPP poses, here's a video of Maude Barlowe describing why we should challenge it: