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‘There is a tribe of silent thrivers that many people don’t know’ (Silent Thrivers, p. 89, M.E. Hart)

In recent posts I have been referring to art and art practices as a means of resistance and creation of the possible or small utopias, which could perhaps be defined as collective healing although I have more generally focused on artistic practices and creativity as a means and a process of increasing awareness and healing trauma. Below is a poem with the title Circle from M.E. Hart’s book Thriver’s Quest (2018, Library Partners Press). He too uses the metaphor of the circle not as in negotiating positions in the circle or the stepping out of it, nor the opening of the circle to call someone in or create a crack onto a new future, but instead as Hart writes ‘to describe reconnecting emotions inside with my journey in life outside. It is what healing feels like’ (p.44)

Circle

When the circle was broken / something new began / when the circle was broken / something came to an end / the unbroken circle wound through the years / through mountains / through valleys / through anger and fear / through joys and sorrows / through happiness and tears / the unbroken circle reaches back to the start / a journey through time / to the initial spark / the unbroken circle was broken / with me it is being repaired / even as I speak (p.43)

M.E. Hart has used art, poetry in his case, to process experience and heal. He has drawn on his own healing journey from early sexual abuse and trauma and later life experiences in developing his poems. He is an attorney, actor, scriptwriter, poet, and certified executive coach and has received a BA in Russian Language and Literature. Hart leads a team that helps organizations create inclusive and innovative cultures.

His healing journey and book is centered around six themes: Surviving, Searching, Fighting, Realizing, Healing, Thriving. These seem to be universal themes or / and phases for those working to heal from trauma. M.E. Hart has used an interesting and more structured process he calls The Mini Quest Writing Process, which is a short version of the Hero’s Journey by the mythologist Joseph Campbell. Like in the hero’s journey it includes three steps: The Call, The Quest and The Return. He supports that these internal journeys can help us reconnect to our deepest self and to rediscover who we are born to be, and what we are born to do and offer the world. Hart writes that ‘The Call can be a thought, a feeling, a sensation, a dream, a question we ask ourselves, or a question someone asks us, anything really. It is what sparks us to try to understand what’s happening in a given moment. The Quest is writing down what we are thinking, feeling, remembering, fantasizing, and imagining as we explore the thoughts, feelings, bodily responses, and actions that catch our attention. Then we spend some time putting what we have discovered into a poetic form that deepens our understanding and healing. The Return is re-visiting our poems to help us understand ourselves better as we have new responses to them. Often, we discover that re-reading our poems helps us make sense of something in our present life’.

‘I’m calling it all back / I’m calling back by spirit / and as the universe / flows through me like a stream / dip your hand in and take all you need’ (I’m Calling Back My Spirit, p. 51)

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More recent affairs and events both at a national and global level have brought to my mind the lack of the kind of citizenly care that Wendy Hollway talks about, which produces a bulwark against political corruption, unbridled market forces or religious fundamentalism, Othering and violence.

‘Louis Cozolino suggests that ‘we are not the survival of the fittest, but the survival of the nurtured’. Therefore, nurturing relationships in our early life are important in helping us develop empathy and healthy relationships and optimal levels of a caring capacity. Wendy Hollway writes that ‘babies are not born with capacities to care and the acquisition of the morality that underpins good caring is a complex and conflictual process  that is an integral part of psychological development’ (p. 5, 2006). She basically suggests that systematic and continuous failure of care have profound impact on a person’s character and how they relate to others, which creates a ripple effect and when whole groups fail to care, cultures of hate, retribution and vengeance can be created that reproduce the traumatic conditions. There is less chance of the kind of citizenly care that produces a bulwark against political corruption, unbridled market forces or religious fundamentalism (p.2, 2006). Hollway’s interesting care ideal suggests that firstly, we are able to engage in reciprocal, independent care receiving and care giving, and secondly, that we can provide non-negotiable, asymmetrical demand for care for (our) children. Thirdly, we are able to take care of the self, and finally, we are capable of extending our care to human and non-human objects such the environment, animals, etc. (p.18, 2006)……’ (Tonya Alexandri)

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Mud, sand, creativity and connectivity

‘A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe’; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security’.   Albert Einstein

A few posts ago I referred to the 1000 Gestalten project that involved performance art and during which 1000 volunteers from all over Europe walked silently through the city of Hamburg covered in a mud like substance that gave them a grey almost lifeless uniform appearance. They seemed lost, voiceless and colorless. Gestalten means ‘shape, form or figure’ suggesting perhaps that these 1000 Gestalten were empty lifeless shells. They moved as if in a collective trance until someone ‘snapped’, and thus, began his transformation, and then another Gestalten ‘snapped’, until everyone had awakened. But in contrast to Plato’s released prisoner, in this scenario there is no fear, as each liberated Gestalt without hesitation turns to another Gestalt to help him/her re-gain his/her sight, colours and voice. They embrace each other, rejoice at their new found humanity and connect to each other as the mud is shed and a new sense of community is born, not held together by a mud type uniformity of apathy, but a community where individuals can be at one with themselves and with others. To me this art performance brings the utopia, a space of existing differently, in the here and now, and it allows us a glimpse of the alternative.

Another similar creative practice and symbolic act is Francis Alÿs’s work When Faith Moves Mountains (2002) at: (http://francisalys.com/when-faith-moves-mountains). The eight hundred volunteers who took part were invited to move a sand dune, and in the process they discovered what they never imagined they were capable of. Perhaps this too is a vision of the other spaces we can inhabit in the here and now, such as the space of collective action and collaboration and more agency. Utopia may not necessarily be a faraway place, but it may actually be a potentiality within our everyday lives. So ultimately, utopia may be about bringing up alternative ways of doing, being, thinking and relating in the present. The people that took part had changed by the end of the endeavor and a new memory of doing and being together had been created, a narrative that would be passed down to generations to come, a memory of ‘moving a mountain’ even if only by four inches. And I think that the fact that it was an experiential process made it all the more powerful in creating shifts in the volunteers’ way of thinking. Alÿs said: ‘I don’t know whether the dune actually did move, but something certainly happened in the four hours we dug at it under a leaden sky. The people climbed the hill and dug sand. Something happened that goes beyond one’s understanding; it was a small miracle. There was something symbolic and at the same time something very real about it’ (https://www.muhka.be/collections/artworks/w/item/3787-when-faith-moves-mountains-lima-peru-april-11-2002). It seems as if through this work the artist suggests that we have the ability to have an effect on the world, and even though art may not be able to bring about direct change, it can make us think of new possibilities.