What’s the point of creation?
I’m feeling compelled to write (sun conjunct my natal north node) but lacking words (mercury retrograde) and feeling like what’s the point (venus retrograde). I also have a lot of music to learn and I’m having trouble finding the beauty in the tiki-tiki-tas when the world around me is falling apart.
How is everyone? We holding up okay? I’m swinging hard between feeling hopeful and feeling like I’ll gulp my last breath with the grips of capitalism choked around my neck forever.
I had a dream recently where I was taking care of two black children riding on a school bus and we were hurling through the air towards open water and I was helpless to stop it. I kept apologizing to them and they just looked so innocent and the guilt I felt has stuck with me ever since. I think that dream came about for many reasons but one is because I’m reading A People’s History of America by Howard Zinn. It’s just insane to me that the destruction of entire cultures was done in the name of gold acquisition. Like gold? What the hell is that worth? Why is gold worth the genocide of American Indians who, to my understanding, had much more of the type of culture I would want to be a part of. But not just gold - Land. To grow crops to sell to other people while the slaves working the land were beaten, raped, and sold just as easily. Like… you grow up knowing this history as a white kid in America, obviously, but I didn’t have the capacity to feel it so intensely as I do now. Especially, as I see it play out with greedy eyes set on Gaza and Ukraine and the millions of excuses they have to exterminate people for the acquisition of land and resources, yet again.
I’ve had this thought lately that human evolution is just the evolution of our stuff. Homo Sapiens haven’t changed much in 300,000 years but the way we live has changed A LOT - extraodinarily in the last 200 years and that’s all because of the tools we have acquired and resources we have obtained. We are gifted these very vulnerable bodies in this lifetime, ones that will surely die, and yet we have found ways to live all over the globe (soon beyond), all because of the stuff we’ve made. There are things I’m sure I use multiple times daily without thinking that took someone their entire lifetime to make. That is the evolution of humans and it’s not down a path I really want to be associated with, especially at the detriment to the planet and other life forms.
I’m rambling. I know… I felt like I needed to get some of this out and it’s my website so I can do what I want. And thankfully for now we have free speech without persecution… I say with a hearty laugh of irony as they’ve begun to round people up for speaking out against the government.
So that brings me to my main question… What’s the point in creation? I’m having trouble feeling creative with all this stress around. I know we need creativity more than ever during these times but it feels like smoke that dissolves into the air before I can contain it. That’s where I compare it to the Venus retrograde… she’s taking a trip to the underworld to strip away her beauty and allure and get to the ickiness of why we need to create. For me, it’s to make sense of the disgust I feel in my innards. Disgust that I’ve grown to love because it invites in compassion for the disgust I know we all feel when we’re being honest with ourselves. I’m exploring those icky parts currently with little rewrites of Rita Libretto who, if you haven’t heard, has been diagnosed. If you have no idea what I’m talking about that’s okay, and if you’re in the NYC area come to Haus of Characters tonight (when Venus retrograde is making a cazimi) and you’ll hear all about it.
I’m actually fortunate enough to be doing a bit of performing coming up. I’ve got a Puccini concert in Jersey and a new opera concert in Brooklyn (where I get to be a sentient robot who loves the stars - how perfect) and then workshopping a new opera in Tennessee and another Queer’ecital in June. Right now it feels daunting to try to bring all that to life but one day at a time. I’ve also been really proud of the writing group I’m leading at Brooklyn Art Haus - Shut Up & Write on Saturday mornings at 11am and Wednesday nights at 5:30pm. Being in the presence of other creators who are just showing up gives me hope.
