DanceHouse, 12th Tishri

Dear DanceHouse People,

How do I recover my white garment, washed in Murray water?  I don’t like this emphasis on colour.  What are we, the ‘whities’ who need our sins expunged by traditional washing.  I deplore the use of ‘black’ to define Aboriginal people, many of whom do not have very dark pigmentation.  It means the same as ‘nigger’ which has deplorable connotations, yet people like to own ‘black’.

We are coming up again soon to Australia Day, which Aboriginal people deliberately use divisively, by rejecting the general celebration of our nation in favour of a separate mourning of the ‘invasion’.  As long as this persists, Reconciliation will be impossible.  As an all-inclusive  nation, we need to find a different day on which to remember and mourn the tragedies of the past.  This shameful history should be commemorated by all Australians, not just those who can prove genetic, ancestral occupancy of Country since ancient times. 

I see from the DanceHouse Diary that DanceHouse is at the forefront of the divisiveness and internal social dislocation that tragically splits the world’s community of people.  ‘Anti-Capitalism’ is a failed philosophy that is ‘so last century’.  It is the sort of movement that has generated phenomena like Trump.  I notice that you charge a ticket price!  You should make your performances free and include a voluntary donation box at the entrance, where you would most probably take in more than you do selling tickets.  It is fine being an adolescent iconoclast, but it is quite unrealistic in the real world and the predominance of these divisive attitudes of unbridled hatred towards others produces the worst reactions.

In the second performance piece, where two people, apparently with international ‘dance’ experience. Just flopped around for an hour in a dark, undefined space, moving slightly closer and then further from time to time, which was as close to meaningless as anything I have seen.  As to the soundtrack, I think one of the conflicting voices repeated the Moslem declaration of faith, but the other sounds were meaningless to me.  Were they Xian chants?  It was essentially trivial movement to noise.  It was quite hypnotic, and I cannot say I did not enjoy it – on some level, but watching the trees move in the wind, which I often like to do, is just as entertaining.

Better explanation of the first performance piece would have been better.  Fortunately, I read the brief notes that were hidden away in the foyer and which I am sure most people did not read.  I did look at the plates, but there was no time to study them to see if there was hidden significance in what was drawn.  None of us knew what to do when we sat at the table.  I think one person gobbled up their scone without any idea of its significance, while I was horrified by what it all meant and found it very confronting and thought provoking.  I would not eat the bread because I am a vegetarian, let alone not a cannibal, but the shock of thinking about the slavery that used to produce this bread and the symbolism of Aboriginal blood would have prevented me from even one bite.  There was too much waiting without knowing what was happening and that greatly distracted from the experience. 

I liked the idea of the washing, but the projected lists of massacres was unintelligibly written and so spasmodic in its projection that only the idea of it had meaning and its realisation was a failure.  I thought the ratio between the huge, central performance space and the audience space along the dusty edges of the floor said something about your attitude to us, the people for whom you perform.  Clearly, from all this, DanceHouse is all about ‘us’ and I regret that I am an outsider and not one of ‘you’.  Gosh!  I so hate all this divisiveness. 

Please send me back my white garment, randomly numbered ‘1’.  It will become a treasured part of my wardrobe, remembering the context in which it was laundered.  The massacres were a long time ago, but the attitude of inter-racial hatred that is promoted mostly by Aboriginal people and their fellow-travellers is causing a perpetuation of the tragedies.  I understand that now days more Aboriginal babies are being removed from their families than before the Stolen Generation Report.  There are things wrong with our Economic System, but they need to be fixed, and that will not happen while people like you dream of replacing it with some sort of ideal, theoretical utopia, and constantly express this hatred and contempt for other humans instead of working within the ‘system’ to make it work for everyone.  This conclusion is the result of me reaching seventy years of age and having gradually observed the folly of my own youthful rebelliousness.  Fifty years ago I would have agreed with all your mythical anti-establishment values, but now I am just very depressed and disappointed to see that our global society is no closer to harmony than we were in centuries past.  The more things change the more they stay the same.

The Melbourne Festival gives us the opportunity for unexpected experiences.  Some are truly transcendental, but others just make me think, and sadly what I think is ‘same old same old – going nowhere’.  We must not forget the tragedies of the past, but we need a Sorry Day for all of us, not a divisive one from which us ‘whities’ are excluded.  BTW, I studied Aboriginal Cultures with Open University a few years ago and got a High Distinction, so I feel I have a right to comment on these issues, not that anyone listens or agrees. 

Regards,

naum@tered.org

It is presumptuous of me

It is presumptuous of me to attribute my ideas to the mind of God, but I am that arrogant, deep within myself, far from the surface of self that fractally separate’s from “out there”, so I do.

After Jews wrote down the six booms of the Mishna that they had kept as oral literature for centuries, necessitated by the destruction of the Temple by Rome, and had collected all the traditional sayings of the Rabbis and written down the two Gmearras, creating the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, then I imagine the Universal Mind observing that Jews still did not understand the purpose of it all.

Certainly some Jews found the true meaning within the performance of all the rituals and within the multiple repetitions of word-embodied ideas.  However most people learnt to perform all these rituals and repeat the formulae of words without losing their inner sense of self.  The “I” that thinks and therefore knows it exists is an illusion.  Hindu and Budhist teaching is that the “ego” is false.  Those who succeed find true bliss, others, like me just wonder at it and wander up dusty lanes.

What was needed was another Prophet who can explain to people that the intent of the complex practices is not the practices themselves, but the act of submission to a higher consciousness and the abandonment of the false sense of “self” that everyone is born with.  “Islam” is “submission”.  It has the practices and the recitations, but the intent is exactly the same for Orthodox Jews.

Twice in the last two decades I have started to become religious.  It came very naturally to me when I was struck with grief at the sudden death of my dearly beloved Father.  I made it through the mandatory year and about another month, before the “all or nothing” requirement got to me.  My sense of me, my ego was too strong.  Perhaps it was because I have always been an extreme introvert, and my “self” is buried deep within me, far from the real world.  No one has ever succeeded in penetrating into my psyche or sense of self or what ever it is called, to really connect with the true me. 

So I know about performing a person in public.  That is where I saw how so many people did everything and survived in the community and were quite happy with their lives, but they had a secret side to them, which wasn’t a “side” but their inner core that like me they kept safe from the full submission that can come from an honest approach and a love of God.  Therefore I could easily see the people that were putting it on, or acting it out.  Some sort of fooled themselves that what they were doing was correct and natural, and of course there were hidden social structures and connections between these secret selves that undermined the otherwise perfect community.  I hate to say, but it seemed to be most people, though some were trying and will get there eventually.

Anyhow, I could not do either, and certainly not keep up a pretence, so better to do nothing, and so I am typing this on Shabbat, and my only concession on the day is that I don’t shave.  It has given me a wonderful insight into how the Universal Mind might think, that mind that I believe exists but to which I have not submitted.

Islam, the Religion, teaches submission to the will of God exactly as Judaism had done.  In ancient religions such as Egypt and the Hellenic and Roman Mystery Cults, a priestly elite passed on the meditative practices that delivered the blissful life.  This was not shared with the bulk of the population.  Judaism was different in that it was to be a “nation of priests” so the techniques were not secretly held by the Cohanim,  though the stream of authentic knowledge was shifting to the Rabbinic, Pharisees.   However, by the time it was redacted and written down it had become the exclusive opportunity for only those prepared to study hard.  However, the promise of eternal bliss may be the reason such a large proportion of the Israeli population devote their lives to study.  Oddly, they do not seem to understand that it can be combined with a life in the wide world, and indeed is better when it is.  The move to make army service combined with Yeshiva study for everyone eqully would have totally transformed Israel into a totally Shomre Mitzvot society.  It was stopped by the religious people who did not see the benefits.  The idea of being soldiers in the cause of spreading the Will of God somehow dies not appeal to many theoretically trained minds. 

This is where the national groups that have adopted Islam as their religion have gone off the rails, too.  They are soldiers, hoping to die as Holy Martyrs.  The God who loved the “Sweet”smell of the animal sacrifices on the altar in Jerusalem, must equally love Sons of Islam, followers of The Prophet (pbuh)  who fight each other in the name of the One True God, and make Holy Martyrs of each other as human sacrifice to the Will of God.  Everyone dies, but only some die nobly for the ultimate cause.

Only a few, largely self-selected, men studied the Talmud, Zohar and other texts  and learnt submission, but they would have achieved a blissful life.  Many communities were lucky enough to have such a person, and it is little wonder that such people are held in awe by their communities, such as the Lubavitcher Rebbe.  Even in a religion called “submission” it is evident that too many people quickly assume that because they have mastered the rituals and memorised everything thy know everything and their ideas are best for everyone, but they do not know their ideas are very limited and do not apply to everyone. 

If the religious authorities in Iraq were to revive the Jewish centre of learning in Babylon, and teach the traditions of Judaism through the filter of Islam, then something truly wonderful would result.  It would be greater that an equivalent Academy in Jerusalem where Islam is taught from a Jewish perspective.  The two religions are so similar.  Living in the world was the way the Saducees lived, in opposition to the cloistered life.  Everything is a duality, but the best solution is a synthesis of the duality, combining the best of both sides.  (See New Whig for a socio-political version of all this.)  One day there will be Peace on Earth.  Suddenly people will see that they have lived in the Garden of Eden all the time.  The expulsion was purely mental, but how many thousands of years will it take for people to return to a State of Nature, being part of the Ecosystems of the Natural World as well as the social systems and other systems of organisation, including in the virtual dimension.  It is only a few decades now to the bimillenial anniversary of the Temple’s destruction.  It is pleasing to think it might be rebuilt, and with the new ground penetrating technology they are sure to find the Arc of the Covenant that was never retrieved for the Second Temple, but will be for the third.

Then again lightning can strike the open iron alter at the top of Mount Zion and kindle the fire for the sacrifices once again.  I am a vegetarian, but I accept that most people are not, and if animals are to be slaughtered for food they should be recognised as sentient beings whose souls are also part of the divine Universal Consciousness.   The ancient temples were butcher shops.  I have been to the Kali Temple above the west bank of the Kali River that borders Nepal, and seen the blood sacrifices in the temple courtyard, seen the vultures circling for abandoned flesh, and seen people of various castes come for the carcases.  It saddens me that I shall not live to see it.  All I can do is imagine it, and write this and post it to a blog that is not read and may never be read. 

New Play

New Play

About a guy, based on me, married to a woman based on Billy.  She is not on stage at the start but makes an entrance half way through the first act.

He is a moderately successful architect.  Part of the action is his arguments with bureaucrats about a development or extension or something.

Anyway, the wife is an addict.  Notes to the script can suggest that the production make her an addict to what ever is plausible at the time.  I don’t want to lock in a drug.  Perhaps after drugs are legalised and normalised, there will be something of an equivalent.

Anyway, a visit from her supplier occurs in each act.  There is discussion on the virtues of the illegality. 

Perhaps I can make it a vehicle for my Melba Opera House idea.  There should also be a mother in law.  Clearly there is tension between He and Her’s family.  She can be from an aristocratic, Toorak family, old money, with the proceeds of selling the ancestral homestead and property, dating back to Selectors.  No problem knowing who she is based on.

It is a Melbourne play, about identifying with Country.  It is also about retributive justice and using the Law to punish people.  Everyone has secrets.  She about the drugs from her mother.  We later learn the Dealer has imunity and can keep dealing because he feeds information about his clients. It is why He misses out on some contract or tender, or prize.

She may in fact be of aboriginal descent.  Many old families hushed up such a thing long ago.  Opens the debate into what it means to be Australian.

Ok, so the Architectural competition behind the play is for an Opera House for Melbourne.  The winner is a foreign conglomerate design in Port Philip Bay, with a Racing Circuit round it and hotels and wealthy apartments.  Not a people’s place.

There had better be a Grand Daughter, so we have the three phases of womanhood.  Perhaps she can act as a kind of “chorus”.  She might break the fourth wall.  She ruminates on her life and family as if they were a play she was watching or caught up in.  The unreality of it.  When she is left alone with the Dealer for some reason, they can have a big argument.  Good place to put Economic ideas. He would be New Capitalist, she New Anarchist.  

scrap of dialogue

D: You only want to win because you think you can get a knighthood, now. 

H: That is ridiculous.  It is an important competition that I am entering to have my vision for Melbourne built.  I don’t care about the recognition, though I admit that would be nice.  And I am not after a knighthood. 

D: You were very supportive of the idea when it was reintroduced, when everyone else in Australia was ridiculing. 

Perhaps the four scenes can be each week, on the same day.  The play could be called “Tuesday”.  Or else the day could be what ever day the actual performance was on.  I like the idea of changing a performance, perhaps making it time relevant.  Time is cyclical.  This play is cyclical.  Not the same day repeated, like Groundhog Day, or many others, but life repeating another, new day’s, similar activities in similar order.

H: If Aus had become a Republic we would not be having this question.

D: Well, I like the Queen and all the Royal Family.  Why do you want to get rid of them?  They aren’t doing any harm, don’t cost much, what ever you say, and some people say they provide stability to our constitution, and without it we would lose our connection to a thousand years of constitutional development and all that tradition, and become just another new, young republic, whose government is open to any faction that gains power through whatever means.

H: Of course the Royals would be welcome to visit, and you can take just as much interst in them whether they are our Monarch or not.

D: But that is silly.  They are only celebrities because they actually are real royalty.  The world has dozens of deposed monarchs and other nobility, and no one ever hears about them.

H: Don’t be so sure.  The Surbian Royal Family is back in their Palace and filling many of the social activities of their ancestors, like marking important national days, without any political power.  He calls himself “Crown Prince” and is just waiting for his coronation. 

D: That just shows how relevant the Crown is to the Constitution.

Her’s speech, Act 2?

You have no idea what it was like growing up in my family.  The expectations were intense. Failure was ignored after praise for being a good loser.  But no help!  Oh, no! We were expected to do it all by ourselves. 

I saw siblings and cousins receive heaps of praise for their achievements, their ambitions, but anything I did was regarded as trivial.  Worse, any time I did manage to start something by myself, suddenly “he” would destroy everything I had started to do, just so “he” could help me start.  I remember starting to climb a ladder as a toddler, and making it up a few rungs before he saw me and came running.  Instead of praising me for being able to do it, which Marcia, my therapist says a normal father would do, he grabbed me and pulled me off the ladder, put me down on my knees, although I had stopped crawling by then, and grabbed a hand and said he would teach me how to climb ladders.  I just burst into tears, so “he” yelled something at me and walked off.

I felt I was lost in a dark forest, like in my story books, but I didn’t know there was a way out, didn’t know I should try and get out, and no indication of which way to go, anyway.

Perhaps there will be four scenes, two in the first Act.  In each “Dealer” comes in, has conversation with daughter and father separately, perhaps one each time, then “her” comes in, but takes whatever it is out of room.  I don’t want any jeckle/hyde transformations happening on stage.  No demonstration of paraphernalia, or methods of administering.  Anyway, she returns a different person, more “real”, honest, perceptive, etc.  Defensive, vulnerable sad.  Aggressive and in control. Perhaps differently each of the four times. 

The fourth time, she comes back very “natural” and life of the party and efficient, as if she had worked through her other problems, but still obviously with the dependency, but that is now seen as harmless, though costly, and indeed beneficial if kept in control.  This in contrast to “Him”s demise, because this is a tragedy, with the tragic floor of goodness.

New Story, perhaps a play. 

A  group of year twelve people.  When they were sixteen they became sexually active and all screwed around a lot including with each other, and now are bored with sex and certainly don’t want to do it with each other.  The Education System has been made very easy for intelligent children to coast through, with good results made easy, or else their futures are mapped out for them through family obligations or connections or social limitations.  Essentially, they are bored.

They decide to commit the perfect murder.  So the play becomes a debate about the morality of death.  They expect their success will come from the unexpectedness.  It must obviously be a murder, but one that is mysterious and inexplicable.  It has to be someone distant from everyone and they consider a random person, but then decide to ensure the person has no connection to any of them, and to their astonishment , everyone in the whole city has some remote, but not insignificant connection to someone in the group.