Culture Reviews

25 Oct

Posted at 17:49h in Culture Reviews by

Jamie Wheal’s brilliant and erudite proposition is that in the post modern, industrialised west we are suffering a “collapse of meaning”. He identifies a necessary collective ‘griefgasm’ (Bilal’s term), to belch out our trauma. “Our ability to be of service is in direct proportion to our ability to digest our grief”. He articulates a very convincing synthesis of how to bring about change for the many not the few – “it needs to be all of us, or none of us”. He presents a diagram of the components of collective transformation. The crux is awakening through both ecstatic practice, through cathartic experience, yet connected and grounded in community. His shiny appearance, “super sexy, gee wizz” language is designed to get the attention of the well groomed smart casual movers and shakers in the audience. “How to blow your mind with household substances – respiration, embodiment, music, sexuality and substances…stacked together to bio-hack consciousness” is the programme. I share his passion to ignite courage, witness his eyes brim, and am already on board with most of what he espouses. He brings together strands to inspire “don’t curse the darkness, light a fire”(Watkinson). I would also love to hear his words weaving in circle with others – with women and people of colour. Here he stands with Yoms and June prefiguring my wish.
Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex and Death in a World That’s Lost Its Mind. Talk by Jamie Wheel. www.tickettailor.com/events/rebelwisdom/290176/

15 Oct

Posted at 22:20h in Culture Reviews by

Naomi Klein lights the touch paper and sparks of recognition and accord fly. Her arguments – as ever smart and brilliant ignite the quintessential Guardian audience and me. I sit feeling the flame in my mid-fifties with my white face, greying hair and organic veg box deliveries. I feel as though someone who speaks truth to power is delivering my thoughts and also some of my not yet articulated opinions. “We need to raise the collective alarm, to grieve together and to plan together.” She talks passionately about the metaphor of fire both in its negative and positive aspects. “Maybe you’re carrying some trauma that needs to be cleared away. What is the debris that you need to clear away on the inside so that we can clear away the debris on the outside? We have to clear away the deniers, the distracters, the doomers, and most of all we have to clear away the debris of the dividers.” She says, “we will be facing more tests of our humanity,” and asks, “what are we willing to give up?” In praise of hope, “we need to tell better stories about what the world could look like. We need to be on fire”, she asserts. I already am, but her words make me feel more confident in raising my torch.
www.membership.theguardian.com/event/naomi-klein-in-conversation-with-katharine-viner-63565032724

03 Oct

Posted at 11:24h in Culture Reviews by

There’s a pleasing circularity in the things I am hearing in the meditation. It is led by Jarmbi Githabul of the Githabul and Ngarakwal tribes in Australia. Almost the same visualisation was taught to me by Eucalyptus who works in a Celtic tradition. I did a version of it in a ceremony lead by a South American medicine woman, and others before that. I am grounding through the earth, and connecting to the stars. It includes opening my heart. It is a practical way to connecting up both vertically and horizontally, which for me is the key to changing everything. I like his low key practical approach. To connect with who we are and our heritage, “feel your blood”, he simply says. I am finding my way back to the old ways, to those who were earthed, way back in my own lineage. Jarmbi’s bush lore circles through the words that loop round my head – disconnection, trauma, grief, honour, listen, ancestors, remember, ceremony, community, dance, love. The air ripples with the pulsing drone of the didgeridoo. One small gasp for air punctuates the sound of his circular breathing. www.42acresshoreditch.com/events/grounded-connected-as-i-see-it-jarmbi/

01 Oct

Posted at 21:35h in Culture Reviews by

Speaking with passion, Daiara Tukano – indigenous artist and activist – shares something of her ‘cosmovision’. This perspective beyond the material, comes from the Tukano people’s oral tradition. She holds us to account, to honour our own words. One word, ‘Decolonize’ blazes on an 8m banner. “If we hide what happened in the past, we’ll be blind to what’s happening in the present.” I feel betrayed by my white-washed written down school history. Now in this ‘radical anthropology’ lecture, we have a place to hear the legacy of genocides and the violence of evangelism in Brazil. Indigenous people don’t have magical solutions, she warns, but she is returning the history we have obfuscated or lost through the telling of it now in her words, loud and clear. www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/person/person/264

29 Sep

Posted at 20:14h in Culture Reviews by

In a hidden corner of South London is artist Stephen Wright’s extraordinary house. It is a cave of wonders, an eclectic collage of colours, textures, objects and images. Over many years he has crafted the house to tell the story of his own ethnobiography. Confronted by the death of his parents and then partner, the walls, ceiling and sculptures inside reflect the narrative of his grieving process. It is a moving temple of remembrance. As I revisit the ‘House of Dreams’ for the third time I am welcomed through its blue door – where conversations about art, beauty and death are celebrated. www.stephenwrightartist.com/houseofdreams.php

23 Sep

Posted at 20:49h in Culture Reviews by

South of the river – behind and between the brick warehouses, pubs and centuries of old Southwark lies Crossbones. Gathering every 23rd of the month at this once forgotten paupers’ burial ground is a crowd of people come to celebrate the edge dwellers of life. We offer words and tokens in memory of the outcast, the ‘othered’ and of sex workers. John Crow – bard and shepherd of this flock welcomes the absurd and the unheard. I imagine this diverse but woolly-hatted crowd creeping out of the cracks in the city to bring their undervalued blessings; here to remember those who have fallen through the cracks. Libertines speak poems into the dark, drowned out intermittently by the rumble of jets full of people who can’t hear the poetry. www.crossbones.org.uk

16 Sep

Posted at 18:07h in Culture Reviews by

I often listen to Cariad Lloyd’s chatty podcast. She talks to comedians about grief and death. At the Podcast Festival I watch a live recording of ‘Grief Cast’ featuring Keemah Bob, Jenny Bede and Tom Parry. Cariad is personable, asks questions which invite saying the unsayable in a very natural way. In response we laugh at the pomp of social norms around death, share dark tales of funeral meets lavatory humour and demystify the secrecy around the process of death and dying. Afterwards I play at interviewer, re-wind the questions in my head.www.cariadlloyd.com/griefcast

 

13 Sep

Posted at 08:32h in Culture Reviews by

We saw ‘Fleabag’ in the muggy dark, holding hands at the local screen; my first time seeing live theatre at the cinema.  Long after we have laughed and cringed at the subsequent two TV series, this is the original monologue. It is darker, funny yet bound with grief and shame. A metaphorical rummage in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s underwear drawer. The tiny strappy ‘Agent Provocateur’ type stuff uncomfortably nestles with big knickers and woolly tights. While she sits or hovers centre-stage on a stool, the technology of live broadcast reveals every artful twitch and grimace of her face. A whole slew of emotions play out between her mouth and eyes, while we gasp.

03 Sep

Posted at 22:40h in Culture Reviews by

From the outset the fortitude of the ensemble cast move us when a member of the Sydney Theatre Company tells of Ningali Lawford-Wolf’s death last week mid tour. Our narrator has come sudden to take her place, sometimes reading the text, to keep the narrative going despite tragedy. Is this a metaphor for the continuing struggle for Aboriginal land rights perhaps? This is the story of one small place where white settlers take land from the first nation people of Australia. One tale told well demonstrates the bloody outcome of colonisation. We see how fear breeds separation, which leads to violence. As one indigenous performer fills the huge Olivier stage, the power of two centuries of injustice is brought home.
https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/the-secret-river

28 Aug

Posted at 21:43h in Culture Reviews by

This is an acerbic, witty slice of the politics of 1988. It shows a stone hurled from Thatcher’s Britain and the consequences reverberating into 2019. Lindsay Duncan and Alex Jennings spar with brilliance as a tory minister and his bitingly sarcastic wife. The punch, however, when it comes demonstrates the destructive power of undigested grief. Simon Woods underlying manifesto is a prayer for compassion.
www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/hansard