This is my last post. For it I wanted to use this photo by The Voice of Eye, at Flickr, but I was unable to get Flickr to recognize my blog, which it needed to do if I was going to post the picture.
The Voice of Eye has been loading pics up to Flickr showing some of what’s going on in New Orleans post Katrina. The picture I wanted to use today is called “Acrobalance” and is from January 14, when Le Prato came from Lille France to New Orleans, to perform a free show “on a mission of healing through circus arts”.
The photo is a beautiful capture of Anne de Buck and Mikis Minier-Matsakis performing the Living Mannequin act. But it is more than just that. It occurred to me, as I looked at it, that this photo of generous spirit was one of the few I’d ever seen that runs counter the American “do it yourself” pull yourself up by your bootstraps ethic which breeds the sense of the recipient of generosity as a freak, a wall separating that is the recipient’s humanity removed and even transferred to the giver who becomes superhuman. That prejudice isn’t exhibited in the photo of these individuals performing before their audience. They are giving something of themselves, and in a sense the audience is giving something back by accepting that gift and being there for them. One feels the transaction of the performers wanting to give of themselves through their art and that they also seem to comprehend the especial relationship they have with the audience which is accepting and thanking them through their appreciation of the performers’ gift of their skills. They need each other. One has a sense of the performers’ valuing those for whom they’re performing, and the audience valuing them.
Americans have long prided themselves on their do-it-yourself bootstraps ethic, which is by and large a myth. It’s not how the country was made. No, the country and its great resources were taken and parceled out and there were a lot of resources to make some rich–including human resources. But I don’t want to get into here, not now, not too deeply, how the do-it-yourself bootstraps ethic is a myth. I just wanted to point out that it is a myth, that it was sold and accepted, that it has been passed along in folklore in books in movies. That it has been the pride of America. The myth helped the conservative middle class torch themselves in the past few decades, filling the pockets of big business. The American “I can do it myself” pyramid scheme that if you can find enough people to serve as your raft you can raise yourself above them, and they can do the same in turn. Those left at the bottom of the pyramid, for whatever reason, well, however needed they are they didn’t believe big enough and their children shall pay to the seventh generation for it as they sink under the waters.
Truth be told, not many people make it on their own, but usually that’s not going to be as good a story.
How government and business and religion in America works is pretty abusive. I’ve touched a little the past two days on post-punk bloodletting (or pseudo) angst and how I don’t buy it as anything other than part of the system absolving abuse through fashion and speeding it on. I just wanted to mention that here, because I don’t want my inclination to be suspicious of it to be confused with simple matters of taste, when I see it as buying into and glamorizing systems that thrive on abusive exchange.
I know it seems like I’m getting away from the subject of New Orleans here, but i’m not. Nor was this post intended to be just concerning New Orleans.
New Orleans sank. For all intents and purposes it sank. It’s still in dire need down there at Louisiana’s tip. Here come some people from France who wanted to share a mission of healing through circus arts. Quite a turn-around. America is good at sending missionaries, not receiving them. America’s missionaries not infrequently want those to whom they mission to be more like them, and part of their mission is to accomplish this task. But a circus act? Hell, what can it do but perform and lift your spirits. They use what they have, their talents, to give a sense of one’s eyes having been opened just a little wider perhaps…food and shelter being primal concerns but not being all that there is to life. They do it in a way that communicates how everyone has something unique for which they’d like to be celebrated. They can either put a person back in touch with that knowledge or awaken it, such as in children who see the circus and seeing it become entranced with it as a venue through which they could possibly realize themselves…as a clown, as an acrobat, as a daredevil rider.
Anyway, that’s all. I just hope you go and take a look at the photo in question. I think it’s a special one and I just wanted to give a nod to it before signing off. Didn’t want to turn this into an essay.
As I noted at the top of the post that is all too for this blog. It won’t be resuscitated and I don’t plan to be starting any new blog.
Those who have sometimes came by to visit, thank you, and those who sometimes commented, thank you, I appreciated your feedback.
Here’s hoping a circus goes riding by, restoring your spirit, if ever you should need it.
NOTE: I obviously started the blog back up.
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