‘What's Going On’ The New Era
Forty plus years of mining arts in education, stripping healthcare, and restricting voting rights left more than 40 percent of America with less education, less money (according to a recent poll, 40 percent skipped medical care in 2022 out of concern to pay for it) and with less moral capacity demonstrated by what’s going on with continued brutality against minority and rage against the mechanics of a democratic government.
People are aware of and many are viscerally appalled by those images we saw during the attack on the United States Capital January 6, 2021.
Gen Z is leading the campaign for climate action as they speak on a world stage about stunning and extreme weather events and disasters they are subjected to, and for far too many students, teachers and communities —more than 400 mass shootings in 2023, as reported by ABC News in July, cause suffering, fear and trauma to our children, education system and disruption to any peaceable way of living.
What’s going on in the New Era?
Can we believe once again in a people empowered by goodwill and honest character?
Yes. 100 percent I believe we can.
That people is you and me.
For better or worse, the world has changed. We know the headlines, we know the trauma, and yet my Spider-Sense says we need also explore the possibility of a better future together.
In the forty years I speak to above, I’m reminded of a twenty-something year-old me walking down Hope Street in Providence, Rhode Island. Leaving the sunny apartment four friends and I rented, en-route to the most wonderful little coffee shop on Wickenden Street, about a twenty minute walk away was part of our ‘what’s going on’ around 1989.
The floors in that small coffee shop were marred old hardwood, small and marked tables built for two stood where we would sit for hours sipping strong coffee on any given day — with pens, pads, and books stacked on tables or shoved in backpack or briefcase. A creative space, a collaborative space, and it was ours —quiet, speakers speaking to us in mostly jazz, sometimes blues, inspired pens to write page after page seemingly on their own.
Writer, reader, artist, teacher and student alike came from every corner of the world. Providence is an educational hub —home to Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Johnson and Whales University to name just three. So we were lucky.
For a young artist, that environment provided a vibe to get inspired, to meet others looking to inspire and for those just inclined to explore and expand their lives or catch up with friend —and it did just that. Everyone was welcome and anyone could be part of our tribe —the tribe with fresh eyes, uninhibited and participatory in life’s curious project. And we loved that space for what it represented —our common good, infused with the acknowledgement of our togetherness and goals and dreams alike.
At the same time, my friends and I worked ‘regular jobs’ that paid for our beautiful sunny Hope Street abode. I mostly spent my time off running between college class and the ballet classes I loved so much, even though I knew I had started ten years too late for any serious dancer.
The fact is, it was a marvelous place to live before setting sights on a new adventure to my beloved Boston.
Boston allowed me to embrace more of my creative side. In 1992 Boston, we could still survive with one job, pay for a modern St. Botolph Street studio just steps away from the Prudential building, and write.
It was fabulous.
Cities have energy, and Boston has so much history. From the moment you stepped outside the door it felt like you were part of that city energy. I think we all want those parts of our life to return —the parts that make us feel alive and in harmony with something that is connected and important and intrinsically in flow with the up and coming while remaining safe and tranquil and hope-filled.
It wasn’t easy, but we were able to work toward the things we loved.
I wrote a lot of music in that studio apartment and met people who were willing, even happily, helped me develop my work. We recorded in famous studios like Longview Farm in North Brookfield, MA, where big bands including The Rolling Stones and singers like Steven Tyler from Aerosmith recorded just a few years earlier.
By 1995, big corporations were taking over, prices were going up and job requirements changing. Do more, pay more, make less seemed to displace our once creative tribe and places to create. Friends moved away and jobs became less plentiful.
One reason I tell you all this is because I wanted to share a time that was exciting and rich with opportune and fruitful ventures. And to highlight our 80’s era coffee shop is important because it reveals both our introspective soul-searching and collaborative efforts. They were rich and meaningful ways of connection. So many today are looking for the same but we get caught in a cycling of disinformation rather than connection.
We can work together at what is significant and meaningful and we can also be helpful by reconnecting to ourselves, current and future generations.
How?
Spectacle and the sensational is not important, our biggest success is that which builds a compassionate humanity.
A proponent of Faith is also a person of feeling. We need allow our cultures to feel so we can heal.
Today, in this year twenty twenty-three, we have an opportunity to look at our life and make some decisions. While politics and wild media frenzy seem to cause chaos where we live, we also want to quiet our minds and reflect deeply into our selves so we can make new choices that will lead us toward the kinds of environments necessary to promote the creativity needed to live abundantly and in alignment with wellbeing.
IMO, that’s the true purpose of meditation, church, nature walks, retreats, vacations, therapy, and family —introspection to make informed choices.
How we transform a seemingly broken world is by becoming the choices that facilitate the outcome we wish to see.
What a little moonlight can do.
How we see the world depends on what is highlighted and brought to our attention. Sometimes the sources of our information show us not-so-good things and it makes us feel alone and isolated or worse, not caring. I think this is a calculated threat from some, living high above in multimillion dollar penthouses owning multibillion dollar companies that are flooding the airwaves with messages like “this is just the way it is.”
There is another way.
Marvin Gaye sang in his famous social anthem “Talk to me…So you can see…What’s goin on…”
These lyrics ask us to promote kindness, practice authentic civility, and to acknowledge and honor all that lives within us. Today’s brutality and injustices are as blatant and brazen as ever and our choices need to indicate we want to change that. Our vote is what will change that.
To me, the song ‘What’s Going On’ is filled with hope, an intersection where possibility rises from the acknowledgement of pain and suffering and the understanding that our participation is will bring the comfort and our transformation.
That’s what I’d say my teach love movement is really all about —practicing the methods of living kindly with purpose of stimulating and advocating humanity.
Promoting goodwill and equality
Looking not at a hateful world so much as looking for a hopeful world
Adding value to the existence of what our fortune, good or bad, has given us
So, what inspires you?
A person? A song? A painting? A book?
Take the qualities of that person or source of inspiration and acknowledge you possess that particular or similar quality. Insert it into your daily life. You’ve had the power all along. Now you can use it to change the world for the better.
We can’t do everything alone but we can do a lot —together.
If we can change our lives, even in simplistic ways, then it also changes the world around us.
What small changes can we make in our lives? It might sound a weak view to some, but it’s mighty to act.
Don’t look away
Register to vote and help others research candidates
Spend time with friends
Add a new vegetable to your plate
Play classical or jazz music and relax
Forgive yourself for past mistakes
Forgive each other
Explore what you feel—feeling is good
Acknowledge what you see
While a fair few will tell you this is ‘just the way it is’ others will negate and disapprove —trying to deter and distract from their own pain.
Don’t listen to them, listen to the voice in your own heart. There, you will meet others who share your passion and too dream of a more peaceable planet.
I write this because I sense a lot of opportunity for our shared future —believe it or not, I sense it in our political realm.
Why?
I sense the hope in you.
You have the power, you have the choice.
We can’t go back per se, but we can move forward.
You are the way…
“Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/medical-care-costs-americans-skipped-gallup/
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/03/us/as-schools-trim-budgets-the-arts-lose-their-place.html
https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-surpasses-400-mass-shootings-2023-national-gun/story?id=101588652
https://www.marvingaye.net
Photo by Volkan Olmez on Unsplash