Little glimpses of light.....

After a 16 year break, I recently returned to college.  I am now two quarters into an introduction to environmental studies class and one of the main things I have taken away from the class is a confirmation that my greatest fears are coming true.  The world is changing and it's most likely not going to be an easy transition.  Currents that have impacted the climate are beginning to slow and lose power.  Extinction is a very common event.  We are killing ourselves and we don't know how to stop.  These are some of the hard realities of being alive today and denial isn't going to be an option too much longer.  There are voices in my head that think that maybe I am paranoid or a little bit crazy or maybe I romanticize the role of the doomsayer.  In my head, as in the world, there is no more time left to question these assumptions.  The world is changing and it is our doing.

One fault of our culture is our unwillingness to look at despair and sit with it.  Another fault of our culture is that we do not know how to support someone who is sitting with their despair.  All of this must be a product of the fear of death that is part of the narrative of the West.

This is why small victories are important.  Small victories allow us to temporarily lay down the burden of fear and despair.  We must remember to take note when something beautiful is accomplished and allow that beauty to carry us through, a little bit further.

In many cultures we have developed a strange practice in relation to the arts, the award show.  A group of people, with neither eye nor ear to the pulse of deep culture, select which works of art, in various fields represent the best that "we" had to offer that year.  Usually, what this boils down to is which actors movie sold the most tickets and which song did corporate radio tell us was the best?  This is by no means a valid way to judge art and usually, anything posing any sort of challenge to normative culture receives no acknowledgement.

From time to time, something from out in the deep, pure blood of culture somehow makes its way to the surface.  There is an uproar in the media over the non-inclusiveness of the Academy Awards.  This is a valid critique of a worthless system but for the first time in 30 years and only the second time in history, a transgender person has been nominated for an Oscar.  This is made particularly exciting because the nominated musician, Anohni, isn't completely black and white about the idea of gender.  The medias primarily representation of transgender people has been very limited in it's scope.  There are men and women and it is okay to pick which one.  This is a great stride but for some people gender is more fluid. Anohni's expression of gender is something that is far more challenging to conventional notions of gender and doesn't dwell in the land of either or.

The song, which is nominated for best original song and is a collaboration between Anohni and J. Ralph, is from a documentary, Racing Extinction.  The film explores humanities role in the 6th great extinction, which is something that is happening now. The acknowledgement of climate change and mass extinction are themes that have lately been running through Anohni's music and unlike most protest music, her songs manage to be both poetic and beautiful.

Let's not forget the fact that she identifies as a witch!  In summation, a gender fluid, environmentalist, witch has been nominated for an Academy Award and there is something incredibly beautiful about that.  It gives me a little spark of hope that maybe, just maybe our culture can adapt and becoming something more beautiful.  It's unlikely but lots of small sparks are the building blocks for a fire.

It is always important to remember history and those brave first pioneers who first came and challenged the conventional thought of our culture.  In this spirit, please read about Angela Morley, who was the first transgender person nominated for an Oscar, all the way back in 1974.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Morley