Boozhoo all,
Inspired by Wendell Berry’s poem, The Peace of Wild Things (see below) about finding small pieces of hope during this time of a pandemic COVID-19 in April 2020. This pandemic is killing thousands of people around the world. We are at a tipping point of change. As we wait, we are told to practice social distancing. In various places across Turtle Island we have done this for weeks in our homes. Can we make a humanitarian realm together through virtual connection?
During a Zoom call as part of our check-ins at All My Relations Collective, we touched on the idea about vulnerability. What it is and how to make it in this space. I immediately thought about trust and something like trust is so intimate when working with collaborators. As I continued thinking though the night about this. I wondered how vulnerability and tenderness in artistic collaborations can exist when it’s done virtually? Where is the civic engagement to each other and one another if we are social distancing? I thought about this as I saw inside the homes of my artistic collaborators, their pets, their daily darkness and humor, hanger, and zoom fatigue.
This blog is more like a shared notebook shared by artistic collogues from various disciplines to create intentional and vulnerable spaces for one another virtually. It is organic in nature and yet, is steward and has a facilitator. This purpose of this notebook, when you submit, will be to showcase a spectrum to how you are feeling in that moment with a kaleidoscope of design if desired (song, poem, words, prose, a reading, a sound clip, a image, your thoughts, your waxing, nothing, if it’s nothing), and also to be accountable. This is with hopes to find a way to make some ritual to find connection and form relations with one another this project and your world view. This is an invitation to you.
The frame work for this living notebook is to maintain the beloved community working within the three main principals held by the Great Law of Peace in Haudenosaunee Longhouse. The three main principles of the Great Law of Peace are: Righteousness (Good News), Civil Authority (Power), and also Mind (Reason). Idea is to view one another like a circle of standing trees, supporting the Tree of Peace that grows in the middle. Help to keep it from falling over.
Directions
The posting will start on April 2nd at 6am and end on the evening April 12th at midnight where you will get another email that will let you know you have 48 hours to delete or take down anything you do not want the public at large to view. This living notebook will only for those invite collaborators at All My Relations during this virtual residency.
Log In
You can log in on the home page on the upper right corner at www.allmyrelations.earth, click (log in), and enter your info, click on (profile) then it takes you to where you can start posting.
Some nuggets of Q’s
What can I post?
It can be your darkest secret, it can a rant, it can be photos of a star, after all keeping in mind, star stories and this project.
Do I use my name or make one up?
This can be under your name, or an alias name if that is more comfortable with you sharing.
How many times can I post?
As many times as you want. At least once a day.
What can I post?
Respond to a prompt that someone proposes or to naturally allow where you are in the day as it relates to the overall project.
Why am I doing this?
To be vulnerable and find a time of radical acceptance, and to be how and where you are. Using digital technology for humanities and allow this to manifest inside you and then translate to a computer—feel free to be creative as possible or not at all. (drawings, photos, poems, a piece of literature).
“The Peace of Wild Things”
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
If you have questions, comments, concerns please reach out to me directly and I can help guide you.
Thank you for listening and being together,
-Ty
© Wendell Berry. This poem is excerpted from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, Counterpoint Press.