It is my fear that as we continue to evolve our technologies and thus physically move further away from the ground from which we came we also, psychologically, move further away from that which makes us human. It is only plausible that, as we forget our humanity, we come to more and more follow the totalitarian dictatorship of the few who want the most. I also fear that as we continue to allow mainstream media and other forms of patriotic brainwashing to infiltrate our lives, we will continue to purchase false hope and fictional realities. I am afraid that we will blindly follow wherever we are led, even if it is into an uncertain future where commerce is digitized and placed underneath our skin, just as the V-Chip is intended to do.
For years, I emphatically stated that I would never own a television, and now, here I am, the cautious owner of such a large technological device. However, the purchase was a harmless compromise. My partner had paid for extensive mechanical work to be performed on the sputtering engine of my ‘90 Volvo. In exchange, he asked for the mind-numbing, body-loosening contraption. I felt obliged. Gratefully, to this day, he continues to agree to my terms of usage. Which are: we do not subscribe to a television cable network provider, and we only rent and watch independent, arty films (well, most of the time).
Our 36” High Definition television sits, tucked in a corner, just to the left of the north facing living room windows. Across its barren face lay a yellow sarong. Red letters emblazon the fading material, - Hindu characters paying homage to an ancient god. The artifact is a memento from a blissful journey through Switzerland. Running late for a Paris train, I nonchalantly purchased the relic prior to an all-out sprint to board the departing locomotive.
In recent years, another layer has been added to the collection. For my 29th birthday, a dear friend gave me a pale, knit scarf, its edges frayed, as a token of her friendship. Ten years my senior, she feels a certain kinship with me, - that unique parallels connect our life experiences. She was adopted into a Sikh community as a teenager, and she spent her high school career living in India. As a mother of two, she now teaches Kundalini Yoga and feels most at home while donning a turban.
When people visit our current abode, at 3175 Mandan Way, they either do not recognize the television, or they question why it is hidden. My rationale is multi-fold. First and foremost is the fact that a majority of Americans proudly display their TV sets as the most prominent feature in a room that is meant to entertain ‘family.’ A modern day crucifix, it is beholden to all, and prayed to for hours on end, - daily, weekly, and monthly. Transfixing our dynamic bodies into a fictional state of stagnancy, we kneel before it as though its glossy, dual-dimension will somehow transmute the messiness of our many-dimensional lives.
Numerous cultures throughout human history have believed in ideas of objects as both the harbors and the propagators of evil. For example, in Hawaii it is thought that speaking one’s gravest of acts into the face of a rock will encapsulate and hold the sin for eons to come, - unless, of course, an unsuspecting human comes along and plucks the millennia-old stone up from its resting place. At which point, the negative energy is transferred to the new receiver. Hideo Nakata’s horror film, Ringu, draws from an ancient Japanese folk tale based on a similar notion. The American version, directed by Gore Verbinski, blatantly points the eye of the camera in the direction of television set after television set, as though to say that these inanimate objects are the true harbingers of evil.
It is hard not to witness elements of truth in Verbinski’s film. Americans are inundated by images of sex and violence daily, from the hourly news to children’s cartoons. Raised and reared not to question these as anything more than simple forms of entertainment, - like the video games that the early 80s ushered in, - heighten a basic disregard for human life. This has been exemplified by the actions of countless American military personnel who have served numerous deployments in Iraq over the course of the past five years. Tucked within armored vehicles, these military trained soldiers plug their iPods in, fill their ears with the tunes of death metal, and look through the blast-proof windshield as though it were the square perimeters of that black little box and the dark-skinned people on the other side, made of real flesh and blood, were just animated characters within a made-up game of War.
Although the erroneous belief that the earth is a flat plane was disproved thousands of years ago, modern day peoples still buy into this false notion by their support of a two-dimensional reality. Religion, media, politics, education, entertainment, and even medicine, all treat both the earth and the human body as though it were a level surface, easily controlled and manipulated, rather than as the shifting continuum that it is, capable of rejuvenate healing as well as horrendous mutilation.
My neighbor, for example, recently shared with me the difficult time she is experiencing in her personal life right now. She believes that if the reflection in the mirror were a little less round, a smidge less voluptuous and instead longer and straighter, that she will somehow feel a whole lot better. I recommended covering up the mirror altogether, and then putting away the magazines and turning off the television. I also suggested paying attention to the moments when we she was singing, laughing, crying, talking, making art, making love, walking, dancing, moving, writing, and all those other activities that fill us up with a satisfaction that we are hard pressed to find elsewhere. Our inability to view ourselves, and our world, as a complex, multi-dimensional organism, made up of many systems and parts, is to our greatest detriment.
As a dancer, with my body as image, and movement as my primary mode of expression, I discovered all too quickly the pitfalls of the American mainstream. As a young, developing woman, attention and immediate gratification were an easy accrual when I solely relied upon the objective nature of my being. As I grew into young adulthood, however, I rebelled against what I felt was a stifling and oppressive visual aesthetic. This rebellion was the motivating impetus for the artistic choices I made, such as shaving my head, and creating site-specific dance.
To this day, I still intentionally avoid the proscenium arch of a traditional stage because its parameters so obviously mimic those found within the larger macrocosm. Theatre patrons are relegated to a similarly passive role, - that of a stationary consumer encouraged to sit in the dark in rapt attention. Rarely are audience members challenged to move beyond the invisible fourth wall and into the realm of performer. As a human being, I quickly grow bored of watching the same body types take to these stages and move their typically trained forms in the same patterns of repetition and style. This kind of dancing only serves to perpetuate the lack of breadth measured by today’s standards of civilization.
As an American, I intentionally avoid watching copious amounts of television, - while being especially careful to avoid most of what the news media reports upon. For America is no longer being served by a host of outlets, each ranging in various ideology and doctrine. Instead, the News Corporation Media, an empire ran by Rupert Murdoch, has accumulated what was once a vast network of independent voices and viewpoints. With Karl Rove monitoring the information that is being disseminated to the general public via Fox Television, the New York Post, myspace.com, et al, I do not trust what is being sold to us, the American people. For I intuitively understand that we are no longer citizens of a republic but, rather, we are now consumers of a global market.
As professor Tom Wessels said in his address to the Antioch graduating class of 2008: “If we objectively step back and look at all that is coming to us from the media, advertising, the entertainment industry, even our political leaders, we will see a cultural story – constantly reinforced – that is focused on the importance of the individual and the need to consume. Have it your way. Verizon will give you the world.
This story has clearly invaded the political arena as well. In the past our political leaders addressed us as citizens. This legislation will be good for the citizens of this country. Today it is rare to hear the word citizen in political discourse. We more frequently hear that legislation is good for the consumer. One might say that individual consumption has become the icon of our culture. Just as Good Friday ushers in the high holy days of the Christian faith, we now have the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, ushering in the high holy days of consumption.”
Wessels implores the soon-to-be graduates that America does not necessarily need a new story, as Daniel Quinn and his books Ishmael and The Story of B propagate, as much as it needs to remember the first three words of the United States Constitution, We The People. “Americans need to focus less on individual freedom and more on the freedom for the people, the greater good, - an ideal in which one should sacrifice life, “he says.
Wessels also reminds us of the importance that frugality used to play in our lexicon and in our family, civic, and religious lives. “How could the cultural story of America shift so sharply from a focus on the importance of people and frugality to one that currently focuses on the importance of the individual and consumption?”
America’s insatiable consumer appetite with “more time spent making money, developing wealth, acquiring possessions, and maintaining image with less and less time spent in meaningful contact with others” is resulting in a people that have become more isolated from their communities, from their families, and even from themselves. Other costs and consequences of this neoliberal era are skyrocketing rates of depression and anxiety. Mistakenly, too many patriots confuse a choice of twenty different detergent brands found down a neon-lit grocery store aisle with democracy and freedom.
Personally, the psychosomatic connection between my mind and body was made evidently clear two years ago. During that time, I suffered through an emotional breakdown of which I had never experienced before. The why of it all was relatively simple, - I had finally allowed my hardened fortress to be penetrated by the raw vulnerability that love exercises. This act alone unleashed a torrent of repressed emotion. Feelings that I had been running from and eluding my entire life hit me like a tsunami. I was so depressed that I could not enjoy the taste of the small amount of food that I was able to lift into my mouth. Excess weight, layers of fat that I had padded around myself as a defense mechanism, began dripping away.
Once the depression passed, I was overcome with a full-blown case of anxiety. I was crawling out of my own skin. I could not bear to be in an enclosed environment for a number of hours at a time. My only recourse was to run laps, forwards, backwards, and around in circles, on a grass straightaway down near the bay. One afternoon I visited a gynecologist for a regular check-up, and the pap smear returned abnormal.
Typically, an abnormal pap is an indication of HPV, a virus that can lead to cervical cancer. In my case, I understood that my psychological state was wreaking havoc on my body and that it was my sole responsibility to tend to my emotional wellbeing. After months spent working on a renewed, fresh perspective, I returned to the doctor’s office. The scheduled polposcopy was not needed, as the doctor could not detect any abnormalities in a preliminary search. To this day, I recognize that if I do not nurture and tend to the daily needs of my own internal garden, that I will unintentionally grow something dark, cavernous, and potentially cancerous, - just like that same neighbor who has a malignant tumor, the size of a baseball, in her uterus.
