Money Talks - but it Don't Sing and Dance and it Don't Walk

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson in "Song Sung Blue"

"Money talks.

But it don't sing and dance and it don't walk

And long as I can have you here with me

I'd much rather be forever in blue jeans"

- Neil Diamond, "Forever in Blue Jeans"

These past couple of weeks, we've been trying to catch up on Oscar-nominated films in anticipation of the 98th awards ceremony on March 15.

This is an old habit, from when we ran a movie theater, and a sad one as we no longer have a local theater at which to enjoy these films, and the conversations before and after, with others. It's the conversations with friends and neighbors that make the movies more than entertainment to be consumed -- but rather culture that helps us grow and strengthens our bonds.

"Money talks

But it don't sing and dance and it don't walk..."

Our favorite of the movies we've screened so far is "Song Sung Blue" starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, who is nominated for Best Actress. Not at all clear why Hugh Jackman was not also nominated for this one.

I was never much of a Neil Diamond fan growing up. His music lives in an uncomfortable nexus between the hard rock we loved in the 1970', the soft pop to which we danced, and the country that was our parents' fave.

Not to mention that "Sweet Caroline" is forever embedded in my cells as it was the #1 tune of our marching band. "Ba ba ba...good times never felt so gooooddddd..."

"Play wiht all you've got:" me marching in 
a high school football game in
Stonington, CT circa 1977-78.

Yeah. We hated marching band, but it was required to be in concert band.

"Song Sung Blue" is actually the true story of a Milwaukee-based Neil Diamond/Patsy Cline tribute band, Lightning and Thunder.

It's Milwaukee. It's working class. Mike (Lightning) and Claire (Thunder) Sardina have a blended family and tough lives where money is short but the songs sing and dance and thus so do they, triumphant trough one tragedy after another.

And it may actually be one of the most honest and moving movies you'll ever see about being in recovery.

We need this now. Check it out.

But instead, the other movies we're getting tend to focus on money and the lives of despicable characters. "After the Hunt," for which Julia Roberts won a Golden Globe but failed to get an Oscar nod, takes on the still-important #MeToo movement within the elite environs of Yale in a way you know that we as women will never see justice in our life times.

The NYTimes called "Marty Supreme," which showcases the excellent acting of the still young Timothee Chalamet, "one of the most exciting movies of the year" -- mostly, it seems, on the basis of it being a terrific love letter to NYC's now lost, once-seething with life Lower East Side.

I miss it, too.

But not enough to praise yet another story of a young man on the make, striving for money and running roughshod over the married women with whom he has affairs to obtain his own goals.

It's an all too familiar story, and one we need to stop lionizing. #MeToo anyone?

The world we're living in is farther from perfect than most of us would presently like.

Movies like "Song Sung Blue" show us the lives and fights of those too often invisible to decision makers. The lives of real people who matter. And it might even give you a new appreciation for the hidden treasure's in Diamond's ouevre.

"Money talks

But it don't sing and dance and it don't walk

And long as I can have you here with me

I'd much rather be forever in blue jeans"

- Neil Diamond, "Forever in Blue Jeans"

In Grief, Reflection and Action

Nellie was a yes girl.

A go girl.

A girl with a dedicated focus, a fierce sense of purpose, and action.

Only death could finally stop her - and we had to say yes to that, while she staggered on at 15-years-old through the harsh winter snow in her "Help 'Em Up" harness, doing her very best to honor her purpose with us.

Grief is a critical time for reflection. 

It is so difficult to stay in it in our action-packed world.

It's a time for integrating heart with head, for being present so that our resulting actions come not only from anger at the world's injustice, but from love.

Actions that arise not only from our pain at loss but from our heart breaking open vision for a different world.

It is crazy difficult not to be angry right now, furious with the way wealthy men are swinging their power around in ways damaging to everyone else.

They are making their purpose very clear: to exploit us and the planet for their own gain.

The U.S. President has made himself and his family $4 billion richer in just the past year.

He has put armed thugs on our streets in response to our First Amendment rights.

He and his staff speak about others as if they are nonhuman.

And there are so-called "Christians" who support this!

It would be not only impossible, but wrong, to not be furious.

So we must act.

Like Nellie, we must know our purpose and be fierce, focused and dedicated in saying yes to life and love in relationship to other living beings. 

Living in a consumer-focused culture has caused too many to lose their purpose.

Why me? Why here? Why now?

Our purpose here is not simply to acquire things and to accrue wealth.

It is not even merely to take care of our individual selves and our families.

We are an integral part of this planet -- however you believe it was created -- and therefore of each other and all living beings.

"To become holy," a spiritual leader I love said recently, "we are called to commit fully to who we are called to be. Be a Light."

Not just a flashlight for your own self interest.

For others. For our planet/home.

As Bad Bunny said at the Grammy Award's: hate only builds more hate.

What does it take to say yes to love-as-action?

The fierce, dedicated focus of Nellie, who knew her purpose.

It is not enough to say the word "love" over and over.

Love is action.

Love is fiercely, directly, actively dedicated to our purpose here.

Our grief is important. It reminds us of the immense power of our love and also how impermanent it is.

I am grieving every day at all that is lost.

Let us all be focused, dedicated, persistent, fierce and loving members of our communities and planet.

Let's be like my Nellie. 

I'll Keep Doing the Work You Were Doing as if I Were Two

Photo of Hadestown: Youth Edition
courtesy New Surry Theatre

This Sunday, I am struggling to live in my broken heart and not in my rage.

So having had the joy of seeing New Surry Theatre's awesome production of Hadestown: Teen Edition last night, I am reflecting on the power of live theater not only to entertain but to move us, to change hearts and minds. For the record, if you are in this area: do not miss this show! These teens are so excellent -- amazing choreography, great voices, stellar acting. Kudos to all who worked on it for a real community triumph, the type of theater we need more of in our communities, and especially to director Lori Sitzabee for bringing out the very best in her young cast.

This also causes me to reflect on why it is so important for children (and adults!) to learn to read fiction, and stories about those different from ourselves.

The arts at their best are not mere entertainment to be consumed.

Theater, literature, visual arts are the actions by which we build imagination, which is in turn needed to empathize with those not-us and then to have compassion and even to take action on behalf of others' suffering.

Imagine if instead of unrestrained male violence and a lust for power over others we fostered these things in raising our kids: imagination. Empathy. Compassion. Action. Art: the creation of beauty. Every day, a living process.

These are the human powers and skills that Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin and many other peacemakers called for and taught.

Too often, our specific culture, which continues to be dominated by white men, guns these teachers and models down.

Our power, and our trick to bringing a different future forward, is that for every individual gunned down 10 more of us step into their place.

"It could have been me, but instead it was you,
So I'll keep doing the work you were doing as if I were two
I’ll be a student of life, a singer of songs
A farmer of food and a righter of wrong
It could have been me, but instead it was you
And it may be me, dear sisters and brothers, before we are through
But if you can work for freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom
If you can work for freedom I can too."

- singer songerwriter Holly Near, after Kent State, in 1970 and the 1973 torture and assassination of Chilean theater director and poet Victor Jara by the junta who overthrew, with U.S. support, the Allende democracy in Chile

We've been here before. We will be here again. Those of us who believe in peace can never let up.

And if history is going to repeat itself -- let's hope we see a repeat of Nixon's 1974 resignation.

As opposed to a repeat of 1985's Iran-Contra scandal in Nicaragua -- another attempt to overthrow a democratic effort in opposition to the U.S.'s colonialist interests.

Let justice prevail, with each of our active support.

Notes to My Self on Finding A Generosity of Spirit

Notes to my self...

As my aged dog and I were standing in the yard in the middle of last night -- she, like all of us older females, up from bed to pee; me, to take her and gazing at the bright constellations -- I saw two shooting stars.

I went back to bed singing the Gloria in my head for the rest of the night.

My heart aches for a generosity of spirit amongst us.

For us, in every community, in every meeting, in every election, in every shared decision, to drop our self-righteousness.

To stop judging each other.

Those of us who consider ourselves "inclusive progressives" have too often played into the opposition's hands -- for, like any opposition, to divide and conquer is to win -- exacerbating this nation's class divides.

Sometimes inclusion comes at the cost of exclusion: putting others outside the special circle.

My brother is missing his two front teeth, lives in a trailer, and is a Trump supporter.

Do you judge him?

Sadly, we still live in a culture in which acts of hatred violate others every day.

Immigrants. Women. All people of color. Children.

It doesn't make the world better for us to condemn those who commit these acts. 

Better to condemn the action than to condemn the human.

As Greg Boyle, who for 40 years has led the most successful gang rehabilitation program in the world, says: we are all irredeemably good.

We really are. Including those who use their privilege and power to benefit themselves over others. Including those who resent those with more privileges than themselves.

Including those who are angry for what they lack.

We have a lot of illness in our cultures. Acts of hate and violence are signs of illness -- no healthy human treats others this way. Christians used to call this sin -- the places where we remain flawed, where we are not yet god, not the perfection of love.

Not the constellations, not the shooting star.

For one thing, we are afraid of "flaming out" in death and darkness.

This fear alone causes so many hateful actions and speech.

There is a lot of anger and resentment out there. Rather than dismissing it, what do we learn from it?

Humility. Gratitude. Acceptance.

The world and its creatures are not ours to judge.

How do we each hold ourselves accountable? How do we hold each other in community, in spite of our hateful actions?

The beautiful floating milkweed at this time of year reminds me of my mother in her raspberry patch.

She was not a leader, not an actor in society.

She feared but did not judge.

Casting seeds of kindness.

Sunday Morning Reflections: Diane Keaton and The Last Quarter

This past week's trail discovery.

Diane Keaton's death this weekend at age 79 reminded me, with a shock, that I am in the last quarter of my own life.

Such a weird feeling and awareness. And to paraphrase the great Mary Oliver -- what will one do with one's wild and precious twilight years?!

We watched "Annie Hall" last night. I grew up with Keaton -- "Annie Hall" (1977) was a hallmark of my high school years, a featured film in our movie-themed yearbook for which I was the editor.

Her character -- her female independence and her androgynous costuming based on menswear -- spoke to me even while the film itself did not.

And re-watching it, Woody Allen was even more painful than his male sexual angst was at the time the movie appeared. I mean: really?!

Yet Keaton soared through and above it all, as she did in so many of her films.

A great comedic actress, she reminds us to move through this wild and precious life with a sense of humor.

As Keaton herself once joked, "I think that I'm strange...I don't know anything, and I haven't learned. Getting older hasn't made me wiser."

Her "self-deprecating" -- read, humble -- humor on this subject is greatly appreciated!

And truly...if we lived in anything other than this anxious capitalism, in which we are all taught to fear we will never have enough and we must keep going, going, going like some sort of insane machines in order to prove our worth and value: we would just happily, sweetly, slow down.

We'd say: I am in the last quarter of my life. My work here is to enjoy this beautiful gift, and to give to others in return.

My work in this final quarter is not to keep racing around the globe, burning fossil fuels and causing destruction with my privilege, in order to "consume" experience. Because we must see/experience/have it "all."

It is not to make a "name" for myself. Who cares about my name, or accomplishments, or artifacts? I am but a blade of grass. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

Nor is it to keep working in order to accumulate more, out of fear that I, who have so much, will not have "enough." "Enough" is sustenance. "Enough" is food and housing security. All around us are people that do not have these basic things. Rather than accumulating more for myself, now is the time more than ever to share, to give it all away.

Here's to slowing down, enjoying the beautiful gifts of planet and lives we have been given, and giving these gifts to others whenever and however we can.

Goodbye, Diane.

The Last Quarter. It's enough.

#newblogpost

#thelastquarter

#anniehall

#dianekeaton