ART PULSE for NATURE ~Number One~
How we are embodying, remembering and standing up for the land through monthly ceremonial art actions on the sidewalks of Northampton, MA.
We picked butter yellow daffodils to adorn the Earth. We had made a nest out of spring saplings on the frame of an old baby carriage and then carefully nestled the paper mache earth into its home on wheels. Loading up the old silver truck we headed down our dirt road to town. With drums and banners tucked behind our seats, daffodils bobbing and the earth jiggling, we belted out our song in preparation for our street ceremony on Earth Day. “We are the flow, we are the ebb, we are the weavers, we are the web!”
In town there was less aliveness to our little band as we negotiated the hard tar and street lights in the morning light. Cars passed us with a few glances as we carefully rolled out the Earth onto the tarmac. Whooshing past me, a car kicked up some fear. I started to worry that this wasn’t going to work with so many people inside those hard metallic barriers, keeping their distance. The longing for peace on earth pounding in my heart, and the seeming impossibility in this city-world of hard edges and closed doors.
I paused to sense where I was. The meandering Connecticut river flowing through the glacial rounded hills is so close to this city we could walk there. I thought of the few trees still growing in the parks and along the shores that hold cellular memory of the time when millions of birds nested here, and fish swam thick up stream to make their babies. An image of an eagle just above me flashed into my awareness and I instantly sensed that our little pulse of reverence for the natural form of this place would move molecules. We could find our own unique way to express our gratitude and reverence for the abundance and beauty of this land, even in the city.
I popped out of my reverie when I saw the activists arrive. Some I’ve known for twenty years, still working hard for everyone’s sake! Some grey haired but still ruggedly gleaming with fearless love, they set up their tables with flyers, and got ready to educate and inspire with information and songs.
Stephen and I rolled our unusual offering of the earth onto the green lawn and placed saplings alongside the freshly stenciled banners - PEACE ON EARTH - that we’d stayed up until midnight to finish. They fluttered in the wind sending out our deepest prayers into the ether.
When the time came, we beat our drums and called in those willing and ready to join us on our first ART PULSE for NATURE! A perfect mix of young, old and in between picked up banners and gathered around into a circle. We took deep breaths, felt our feet, remembered the land as it once had been and the people who had loved it. We envisioned the 10,000 years of tribal life and giant trees, fishing treaties and the nomadic union with the animals, plants, sun, moon and stars. And then…we acknowledged the white ships, the genocide, the enslavement and the abolition.
As I stood facing this gentle, kind group of people, I was shaken by how we were standing in the heavy truth of centuries of domination. The colonists cut down all the trees, damned up the rivers, hunted all the animals, plowed up the fields, forced the children into schools, covered the earth with parking lots, put up big box stores, extracting massive amounts of oil, causing climate change and then denying it, while meanwhile, taxing everyone and accumulating enough power to make wars against other people, in other countries, we don’t even know! All within the last 300 years. Yet here we were as fragile as the daffodils, and just as bright.
We headed out into town, bells ringing loudly, drums beating. The sidewalk became an ancient pathway, which we walked single file. This impromptu band of bodies with smiling faces carrying banners, faced the passersby. I felt goofy and breathless. My brain seemed to go numb, but I just kept singing and beating my drum, and trusting that this unusual mini parade was, in fact, vital to the future of being human on earth.
Somehow this act made sense to me, born out of a childhood steeped in theater, anthropology and art. I had by osmosis come to sense that human’s at their best were story telling, craft making, celebratory creatures who honored life by being creative.
Facing these intense times it just feels clear to me that we need to fill our streets with folks creatively standing up for justice. As Barbara Ehrenreich writes in her book: Dancing in the Streets -“People must find, in their movement, the immediate joy of solidarity, if only because, in the face of overwhelming state and corporate power, solidarity is their sole source of strength.”
