LIFE Is LIVING

But before we get there… A seed from Marc Bamuthi Joseph

So for real… 

I suck in the soil, but I been farming me a garden for a little while now, and I’m living off the fruit… 

But before we get there… 

I’m sitting in my car outside of starbucks with my engine running as I read the new york times… 

It’s December of 2007, and the Bush administration has used the Environmental Protection Agency as a proxy to reject 17 states in their bid to impose more rigid emissions standards on the automobile agency. Not that I wasn’t noticing the overarching wackness of our president’s policy making, but something about this PARTICULAR decision felt particularly sinister to me. Despite the illusion of inclusion into a domestic body politic, corporations clearly have no national identity, no allegiance to people.

With this decision Bush was going beyond the xenophobia that psychologically bridged the U.S to war in Iraq. The EPA couldn’t claim even a false moral ground here, was transparently and intentionally corporate in a manner that showed neither allegiance to country nor planet.  

Ooohhh… they actually for real, DON’T give a fuck…I thought…

And soon there will be nothing left to eat but money, and regret… 

Me? I got sustainability issues (and not just the personal ones)… I fly everywhere, drive hella much, eat out often, sometimes travel across oceans to perform 5 minute poems. Mine is a garden of robust messaging and performance language…an organization, professorships, hella foundation awards, several touring shows, talking head heaven, the whole nine…

My green lettuce is feebly wilted by comparison…something’s got to change…time to USE THE PRESENT cultural assets and position to MAKE THE FUTURE. 

So folks I’mo try something, and use this space to document the process of moving from thought to action the best I know how. In the break between convictions and contradictions, bush bashing and casual consumption I find art, and I think maybe, community… 

The idea is to make a LIVING COMMUNITY in PERFORMANCE called red black and GREEN: a blues… 

At the center of this community is the belief that the term “green” presupposes an appreciation and value for life. Further, the ugly reality is that for a number of reasons, this fundamental value of life is systemically stunted within the black community. The evidence is in the data. For instance, Blacks are more likely to die of heart disease, stroke, HIV/AIDS, flu, pneumonia, diabetes, cancer, asthma, AND homicide than Whites. All this according to the CDC’s latest statistics.  

So before we go green, we go brown, with a specific strategy to reflect and affirm life for all, beginning with a series of events and installations called life is living. “Life is Living” is a one day festival cum national branding initiative, a direct link between black and brown communities, contemporary arts centers, and the planet. Watch this video to SEE what I mean, or peep this abstract to READ what I mean… 

Either way, the deal is this… 

I am choosing to alter my personal relationship to public space, and through politics, performance, cartography, and film, I am inviting communities all over the united states to do the same, beginning in Harlem and Brooklyn, uptown Chicago, the 9^th ward in Houston, West Oakland, and the Excelsior district in san francisco… 

Along the way, the documentation of the process will appear on this site in blog, photo essay, and hopefully a community of links looking toward action…my starting eight of hero/allies in this are the YOUTH SPEAKS massive, Eli Jacobs Fantauzzi, the mighty MVMT crew, the women of MAPP, Brett Cook Dizney, bethanie hines, jeff chang and you.

Somewhere along the road, I will build my next dance theater work with the dirt and residue of these dreams… 

Art in action. For real… 

Re-use this blog…

Re-cycle these ideas… 

Life is worth living.

Living is green.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 12:04 am. It is filed under A Living Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.