Shower meme
Jun. 10th, 2003 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
featherynscaleParticipating in the Shower Meme. Following are answers to questions from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rougewench. As I tend to talk a lot, they are cut for length.
1. You and I met at Roger and Caroline's Yule last year. How did you come to know Roger and/or Caroline?
I met Caroline at Gaia Community. I had discovered that Gaia had a pagan choir, and not being able to sing in a choir was one of the things that I had lamented about not choosing a mainstream faith. So I went to the Voices of Gaia practice and Caroline was there. This was when she was beginning to work on The Demon, and we got to talking about the show, and she recruited me to help with the backstage (she has a way of talking people into things, you know?). Then I met Roger at the show.
2. What do you do for a living currently? If what you do is something you only do to feed your face, what specifically do you do to feed your soul?
I work in the finance department of a chemicals company. Although I do have a pretty solid affinity for numbers, this is not the career I would have chosen, just something I happened to fall into. I just picked it up to support me while I was finishing school, and then school ended, I found out that there was no way I could afford to go to grad school at the time, so I just stayed on.
The care of the soul is somewhat different from the maintenance of the pocketbook - in order to properly care for my soul, I need to give it a fair amount of playtime and creative outlets. My biggest outlet is creation and participation in ritual - I serve as one of the "lay ministry" at Gaia, and also write ritual and "liturgical" material for other pagan groups. I'm also working on some non-pagan outlets for this energy - the Hedonism Flaunt and other such celebrations fit here, and I'm trying to put together some "art" projects based on the situationist idea of psychogeographic tours - wandering through various places taking impressions of the "feel" of the place through writing, sketching, photography, etc.
These things help sustain the worldview I try to keep hold of - that the universe is unfixed, that we are creating the universe every moment, and that the way that this creation occurs is through inspired play.
3. I note that you list dada as an interest, how did you come to be aware of the dada movement and how do you believe this art form relates to our western current society?
I have always been interested in randomness - the unexpected patterns that emerge from the throw of the dice, the casting of stalks, and all that sort of thing. I first encountered dada as part of a high school class on art history - it got about a paragraph in the textbook, which didn't mention anything about the social or political aims or causes of the movement, but did mention that there were dada poets who wrote by drawing words out of a hat. This stuck in my mind.
Later, when I was in college, I began to identify and associate with the idea of the Trickster god(s) - I returned to dada as a manifestation of the Trickster concept, in that the results of the dada processes first confuse, then cause reflection, and finally point to beauty. The forms of dada are not unlike koans to me. Of course, now that I have some concept of the aims of dada, the illumination of the common, the drive to avoid stagnation, the confirmation of the senselessness of the world, it's even more compelling to me.
Trickster says that the world must change, and that change often does not occur unless we are shocked or fooled into it - this is also what I see in dada. I don't believe that there has ever been a time in history when Trickster was not needed, but it seems to me that there is a special need for him/her now - society consolidates, merges, becomes more homogenous, more bland every day. We need Trickster to remind us that there are other choices, other colors. Or, from Tzara's Manifesto of Mr. Antipyrine: "it's shit after all but from now on we mean to shit in assorted colors and bedeck the artistic zoo with the flags of every consulate"
4. I understand that you too are dead interested in vintage burlesque. How did this interest come about and how, if at all, does it play out in the context of your life?
My interest in burlesque really comes from the impression that I have that women in general used to be much sexier than they are now - that we have somehow lost the idea that sex and sexuality are not about being perfect or competitive or what-have-you, but are about having a good time. Burlesque refutes the idea that "Wit kills eroticism and eroticism wit" - it's funny and sexy and enjoyable all at the same time, and I love that. As an added layer, people don't know how to react to it, and I love that - I love to see the attitude adjustment that happens as audiences settle into the idea that it's okay to think of it as fun, that looking at scantily clad dancers doesn't have to be about power and objectification, but might, just maybe, be about somebody enjoying showing off just how beautiful and funny they are.
I'm not actively involved in the burlesque thing at the moment - Caroline keeps talking about starting a company, and I'd love to work on that. I do try to keep that attitude at the core of my own sexuality as far as possible. I feel like I'm not there yet with it, that I'm not free of the modern constructs about sex, but I try.
5. One might argue that any belief system closes as many doors as it opens in the mind/heart/soul. What doors would you say that the pagan perspective closes for its adherents?
I have two answers to this, one that applies to the pagan perspective in general, and one that applies to me personally.
Many of the inner doors that one closes by stepping onto a pagan path are the same doors that one closes stepping onto any religious path - there are as many pagans who feel vehemently that there way is the One Right Way (tm) as there are Christians or Muslims or what-have-you that are certain that their way is the only way. We talk a good game about being open and tolerant of other spiritual paths and about there being many roads to the top of the mountain, or whatever, but all you have to do to see how we really think is ask a bunch of pagans how they feel about Christianity - or, hell, ask a group of druids how they feel about wiccans, or a group of traditional, initiatory wiccans how they feel about Starhawk. Our every faction secretly believes in its heart of hearts that their work is more valid than somebody else's, either because "our path makes you study" or "you only progress on our path by inspiration" or whatever it is that they feel differentiates them from the rest of the pack.
On a more personal level, my work requires me to hold a certain set of concepts (the nature of the universe and of divinity are not fixed; every thought changes everything; every model or paradigm is incomplete; in order to advance or improve or become Enlightened (tm) one has to be able to work in several paradigms at once and triangulate from the results of each where the next step should be) that are difficult to convey to other people - the closed doors I run into are mostly in interpersonal relationships. I often find that I'm operating in space that is so different even from the space being inhabited by my closest friends that communication becomes difficult. I frequently maintain the expectation that other people are able and willing to move in and out of philosophical paradigms, and am often disappointed, even though I know that this expectation is unrealistic. I think that's the major way in which my path limits my growth.
rougewench. As I tend to talk a lot, they are cut for length.1. You and I met at Roger and Caroline's Yule last year. How did you come to know Roger and/or Caroline?
I met Caroline at Gaia Community. I had discovered that Gaia had a pagan choir, and not being able to sing in a choir was one of the things that I had lamented about not choosing a mainstream faith. So I went to the Voices of Gaia practice and Caroline was there. This was when she was beginning to work on The Demon, and we got to talking about the show, and she recruited me to help with the backstage (she has a way of talking people into things, you know?). Then I met Roger at the show.
2. What do you do for a living currently? If what you do is something you only do to feed your face, what specifically do you do to feed your soul?
I work in the finance department of a chemicals company. Although I do have a pretty solid affinity for numbers, this is not the career I would have chosen, just something I happened to fall into. I just picked it up to support me while I was finishing school, and then school ended, I found out that there was no way I could afford to go to grad school at the time, so I just stayed on.
The care of the soul is somewhat different from the maintenance of the pocketbook - in order to properly care for my soul, I need to give it a fair amount of playtime and creative outlets. My biggest outlet is creation and participation in ritual - I serve as one of the "lay ministry" at Gaia, and also write ritual and "liturgical" material for other pagan groups. I'm also working on some non-pagan outlets for this energy - the Hedonism Flaunt and other such celebrations fit here, and I'm trying to put together some "art" projects based on the situationist idea of psychogeographic tours - wandering through various places taking impressions of the "feel" of the place through writing, sketching, photography, etc.
These things help sustain the worldview I try to keep hold of - that the universe is unfixed, that we are creating the universe every moment, and that the way that this creation occurs is through inspired play.
3. I note that you list dada as an interest, how did you come to be aware of the dada movement and how do you believe this art form relates to our western current society?
I have always been interested in randomness - the unexpected patterns that emerge from the throw of the dice, the casting of stalks, and all that sort of thing. I first encountered dada as part of a high school class on art history - it got about a paragraph in the textbook, which didn't mention anything about the social or political aims or causes of the movement, but did mention that there were dada poets who wrote by drawing words out of a hat. This stuck in my mind.
Later, when I was in college, I began to identify and associate with the idea of the Trickster god(s) - I returned to dada as a manifestation of the Trickster concept, in that the results of the dada processes first confuse, then cause reflection, and finally point to beauty. The forms of dada are not unlike koans to me. Of course, now that I have some concept of the aims of dada, the illumination of the common, the drive to avoid stagnation, the confirmation of the senselessness of the world, it's even more compelling to me.
Trickster says that the world must change, and that change often does not occur unless we are shocked or fooled into it - this is also what I see in dada. I don't believe that there has ever been a time in history when Trickster was not needed, but it seems to me that there is a special need for him/her now - society consolidates, merges, becomes more homogenous, more bland every day. We need Trickster to remind us that there are other choices, other colors. Or, from Tzara's Manifesto of Mr. Antipyrine: "it's shit after all but from now on we mean to shit in assorted colors and bedeck the artistic zoo with the flags of every consulate"
4. I understand that you too are dead interested in vintage burlesque. How did this interest come about and how, if at all, does it play out in the context of your life?
My interest in burlesque really comes from the impression that I have that women in general used to be much sexier than they are now - that we have somehow lost the idea that sex and sexuality are not about being perfect or competitive or what-have-you, but are about having a good time. Burlesque refutes the idea that "Wit kills eroticism and eroticism wit" - it's funny and sexy and enjoyable all at the same time, and I love that. As an added layer, people don't know how to react to it, and I love that - I love to see the attitude adjustment that happens as audiences settle into the idea that it's okay to think of it as fun, that looking at scantily clad dancers doesn't have to be about power and objectification, but might, just maybe, be about somebody enjoying showing off just how beautiful and funny they are.
I'm not actively involved in the burlesque thing at the moment - Caroline keeps talking about starting a company, and I'd love to work on that. I do try to keep that attitude at the core of my own sexuality as far as possible. I feel like I'm not there yet with it, that I'm not free of the modern constructs about sex, but I try.
5. One might argue that any belief system closes as many doors as it opens in the mind/heart/soul. What doors would you say that the pagan perspective closes for its adherents?
I have two answers to this, one that applies to the pagan perspective in general, and one that applies to me personally.
Many of the inner doors that one closes by stepping onto a pagan path are the same doors that one closes stepping onto any religious path - there are as many pagans who feel vehemently that there way is the One Right Way (tm) as there are Christians or Muslims or what-have-you that are certain that their way is the only way. We talk a good game about being open and tolerant of other spiritual paths and about there being many roads to the top of the mountain, or whatever, but all you have to do to see how we really think is ask a bunch of pagans how they feel about Christianity - or, hell, ask a group of druids how they feel about wiccans, or a group of traditional, initiatory wiccans how they feel about Starhawk. Our every faction secretly believes in its heart of hearts that their work is more valid than somebody else's, either because "our path makes you study" or "you only progress on our path by inspiration" or whatever it is that they feel differentiates them from the rest of the pack.
On a more personal level, my work requires me to hold a certain set of concepts (the nature of the universe and of divinity are not fixed; every thought changes everything; every model or paradigm is incomplete; in order to advance or improve or become Enlightened (tm) one has to be able to work in several paradigms at once and triangulate from the results of each where the next step should be) that are difficult to convey to other people - the closed doors I run into are mostly in interpersonal relationships. I often find that I'm operating in space that is so different even from the space being inhabited by my closest friends that communication becomes difficult. I frequently maintain the expectation that other people are able and willing to move in and out of philosophical paradigms, and am often disappointed, even though I know that this expectation is unrealistic. I think that's the major way in which my path limits my growth.
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 01:48 pm (UTC)2. It certainly sounds as if you have a fine array of input to feed your soul...which can keep a day job from draining you dry.
3. Very, very cool. I came accross dada myself in college, wherein an associate professor wrote a play about the man who did the toilet (whose name escapes me in the middle of my work day). I have always thought it was an amazing idea...pointing to the beauty that was the every day.
You might find the
4. In think that in some respects one must come to an integration of older ideas of beauty and sexuality and the openness and knowledge one can find in modern dealings with sexuality. I for one refuse to subscribe to what society tells me I should be, I just go with who I am.
And I too wish that Caroline could get the whole burlesque thing off the ground. I rather like the idea of having the opportunity to take my clothes off in a cool way when I'm 40...
5. I agree wholeheartedly on your first point. On the second, it seems to be a similar method to my own path through philosophies. I don't think anyone has a right or wrong answer. The truth is individual for each of us. But by that token, you can never assume that anyone will be in the same spot on the path as you are.
If you care to, please feel free to shoot some questions my direction, as I have been asking those I have interviewed to do so. It's quite interesting to see what people wonder about...
D.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 07:46 am (UTC)Thank you also for the lovely questions - here is a return batch (Apologies if you've been asked any of these before - I'm trying to keep up, but there have been a lot of these going around):
1. How would you define the concept of femininity? Do you think this is a concept that has changed over time, or do you think that there is a "core thing" which is femininity that does not change?
2. How did you come to adopt/be adopted by Athena as patron goddess?
3. What is the most important thing you’ve done in the last week?
4. Is there anything that you would like to do with your life, but feel unable to do because of some constraint (not enough time, not enough money, not able to find chaps that fit on the penguin, etc.)?
5. You always seem to be actively seeking new knowledge – what was the last thing you deliberately acquired new information about?
Also: you're almost 40???