The most atheist post on this blog

At my day job at the aquarium I rotate through several different stations:

"Come right in, I'll take you to the next exhibit..."
"Welcome to the ray pool, you can touch the animals here..."
"That's a sevengill shark, the largest type of shark in the Bay..."
"We can't ask the sharks to eat different foods but you can make choices about your food so we all have enough to eat..." 

and so on. But standing beside an 8-foot-tall model of a Megalodon jaw, with a smaller shark jaw in my hand, gazing down the sidewalk at the endless march of international tourists, it hit me.

Developed countries are responsible for most of the greenhouse gases already released. This makes developing countries cry foul at every attempt to set international standards for reductions.

But those developed countries are run by white people. These countries got rich during colonialism by bleeding regions that now encompass developing, poor, and conflict-torn nations. Many of these regions are, furthermore, being hit harder and faster by climate change: wetter rainy seasons destroy harvests and natural habitat, extreme weather patterns disrupt subsistence fisheries and planting and harvesting dates. In turn these impacts can touch off and worsen civil conflict (see link above).

What does that mean for our responsibility as living citizens of former colonial nations? The Brits walk softly but they don't want to talk about it. With Portugal, Spain, and Holland (Dutch East India Company), they outright refused to apologize and lobbied others to stand fast. White America is rightly mired in slavery's messy aftermath and Australia also issued an apology for aborigines child abductions, but they are far from alone in stacking up atrocities on people of color. Note also that the apologies were for wrongs against resident populations.

Speaking of residency, the OECD's citizenry is increasingly comprised of immigrants of color. On top of navigating discriminatory systems and culture rifts that threaten familial and social networks, bridging the disparity between developed and set-back nations becomes our responsibility.

One of my favorite stations is by K dock, the local crash pad for wild sea lions. Gazing over the concrete breakwater, I spotted a handsome, tall Brown Pelican.

Pelicans lay three eggs, each one day apart. In an average year, both parents find food only enough for one chick to survive. As hunger sets in, the two eldest chicks beat the youngest with their beaks, heavily hooked from hatching, until it falls out of the nest. The parents ignore it and it dies of exposure or predation. As hunger continues, the eldest turns on the middle chick with a similar result.

Nature is amoral: the benefit of having an extra chick or two on an exceptionally bountiful year outweighs the cost of producing those eggs all the average years, so three are laid and chicks are clubbed to death by their siblings.

Evidence lies infinite around us; another piece might be Nature is amoral: asteroids meaninglessly wiped out most of the life on the planet. Today I'm interested in underlining the immortal peace in this much larger reality. We could continue this mass extinction and climate change trend until the planet becomes uninhabitable by life as we know it. Humans could ourselves become extinct, brief spark in the history of life that we are.

Or we could suck it up and take responsibility in our own lives now, whoever we are, whatever crappy background and ancestry we have to account for. What one change will you make this week to exercise our unique quality of ethics and morality?

From Philadelphia

This weekend I relaxed in Philadelphia for Gender Reel, staying at my old house. I shared the opening act with the bold genderqueer Ignacio Rivera. That event was free and packed, but the rest of the festival, including screenings were oddly sparsely attended.

Since I had shingles, I ruled out full contact for my own comfort. Instead, I shared my story about reading The Economist's special report on the Arctic while I flew across the continent, then invited everyone to create movement, sound, and visual art while I played fully dressed. It would be a collective exploration of slowing down. 

There was a breath or two as I started playing violin spectrally into a corner, exploring a door on the back wall.

Then, more bodies than I could count were on the floor, mostly drawing, some dancing. I approached one making a rubbing of an odd vent on the stage. That person proceeded to tear up the marked page and tape strips on me and hang pieces on my violin.

I went to my full-contact violin headspace, barely aware of what took place in the performance space. During the feedback phase someone showed me a glittery page reading "Traveling ART SHOW" which they'd prepared to crumple up and throw around the room. I didn't react at the time, still emerging from my performative, meditative focus.

From the panel and screenings I took home some big concepts. I noticed, in the lives of many POC, how quickly more urgent issues of solidarity, prosperity, and sustainability left trans* in their wake. The lives of trans* POC aren't troubled solely by this minor difference. While some immigrant families don't accept trans* relatives, it's in a context of broad cultural rejection and communications impasse.

Am I, the performer, necessary in this work? Can't I mark an analog clockface at ten minutes from the start and leave? Would it it enough to set them up with my story and energy and leave them to the creation? Is that less performance than workshop, and isn't an effective workshop one in which the participants are brought to do the extraordinary? What I love about TO, as demonstrated in the modified violin piece, is participants leave feeling more able to use the activity as a tool on their own.

What if, then, we raise the standard of proficiency in our non-performers? This would produce a more powerful citizenry, one better prepared to make urgently needed changes in our lives and world.

From San Francisco

I'm propped in my usual spot in the kitchen, the high-tech dishwasher purring sweetly. When it gently pauses between modes the distant growl of trucks or planes eases into the gap.

I'm catsitting for a gamelan acquaintance in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. Seated on dramatic hills of quiet, upscale residences, it offers me an escape from the presence of others. After a depression scare this morning the sun mercifully appeared, nonchalant about its habitual lateness in these parts. There's nothing that leeches creative energy from my soul like grayness -- a toxic neutrality of weather, soundscape, and effort. Incredulity incarnate.

Ouch: Oppression hurts everyone again

The scene: Rainbow Grocery, at the pasta bulk bins on a early Tuesday afternoon.

Bulk bins at Rainbow

Me, casting about: There aren't any tongs in these bins...
Person next to me talking to a friend about the pastas: Guess not. You can use one of those new plastic bags. Put your hand in it and pick it up, that'll keep things clean.
Me, still casting about: Yeah, but the whole point of this is not to use more plastic.
Person, stopping: That's Earth.
Scene.

I'd like to believe this person was complimenting my Earth-consciousness. I was a touch low blood sugar at lunchtime, but the disparagement I heard in his voice rang in my ears. He was dismissing my radical eco conservationism as unrealistic -- in the middle of a liberal, worker-owned, eco-conscious store.

And if he weren't an older white man, or if I weren't a younger, smaller brown person of "androgynous" demeanor, he wouldn't have said it. 

And if I haven't been taking "corrections" from miserable, privileged Americans for as long as I can remember, it wouldn't have left me deeply troubled.

If you were to finish writing this scene, how would it go? Would I look directly at the stranger? Say something to him or his friend? Call the attention of other shoppers? Or would I be shocked into silence, twitching around the stab from a sick, consumption-obsessed institution? Give your ending a title and I'll post my favorite to your credit.

Gender Reel Sept 7-9

I've been invited to develop full-contact violin for a festival featuring gender non-conforming artists in Philadelphia. My mother donated a bunch of frequent flyer miles but I'm still about $100 short of travel fees. Hit Donate on the right if you've any to spare!

EDIT: As of July 28 my transportation will be covered! Thanks to my mom, Gender Reel, and a reader like you, I will be part of Gender Reel 2012!

Here's the Transition performance of it from last spring at Asian Arts Initiative. I would probably work from this and new material from my dramatic culture clashes of the past few months. You'll want to view it from relative privacy and quiet.

New Release: Angklung Buleleng

Today I am pleased to publish on Bandcamp a downloadable CD of recordings taken in 2007 and 2012 in Munduk, Bali. These recordings feature three different groups of four- and seven-key angklung, a traditional slendro pentatonic bronze ensemble.

Unlike studio recordings, this collection includes all the contextual sounds that signal the perpetuation of angklung and other Balinese music through generations of cultural and political upheaval. Most often gamelan, especially angklung, perform not for an attentive audience but as part of regular Hindu ceremonies.

I witnessed the most striking evidence for this in the unskilled but functional practice in migrant communities in Central Sulawesi. The sekaa, or group, comprised predominantly of Balinese laborers, produced rough sketches of the required repertoire: lelambatan for temple ceremonies, bondres half-mask skit comedy, classic kebyar, and ancient Rejang. Even the dancing was a mere shadow of the high-tension, balletic drama of performances on the island. The arts are essential to these ceremonies, though, so the artists take a day off from the farms and receive some compensation.

And why all the ceremonies? If nothing else, Balinese are a deeply pious people. Exposure to such extremes of geology, weather, and imperialist violence tends to correlate with escalation in faith practice.

A prominent ceremonial sound on some of these tracks is amplified solo singing. These songs belong to the same class of music as angklung for cremation ceremonies, the Pitra Yadnya, and are collected in published volumes of text. Hired singers, both male and female, train in private collectives and use these books as references. When women sing in unison at these same ceremonies the songs are from the same collections but they use no reference, having learned through community practice.

When you hear these contextual sounds, please comment with the following details and I'll update them to this main post:

• Track Number 
• Start time 
• End time (optional) 
• Description of the sound

Domestic Chinese Journalism

On my flights home from Indonesia, I picked up a couple English language newspapers at transfer points in China. The journalism was a disappointment: void of analysis, vague, and weak. I found the writing full of high school level errors and several times cried out or threw the papers down in disgust. This is not what I expected in a translation of the advanced Chinese language TV news broadcasts of my childhood and of my dad's satellite state television.

A friend who enjoyed a current production of Nixon In China (1987) pointed out that it made only limited attempt to portray the expanse of cultural difference across which the Chinese characters would have experienced those scenes. Without trying to verify this by watching the opera I'll take the observation as fuel for pursuing an explanation for what I perceive as intolerable journalism.

One might consider state control of media to be a limiting factor on how compelling or critical content may be. Take this example, however, of an award-winning investigative article on a case of corporate environmental degradation with serious community impacts. Mind, the award is a joint project of The Guardian and two NGOs. While reading it from the safety of my dining room table it flashed me back to the literature- and internet-starved hours in flight with its headless, tailless, insubstantial paragraphs randomly organized under directionless headers. Even the concluding paragraph leaves me wondering what the heck a reader is to conclude:

Yang Yongsheng said that the village hasn't had any contact with the factory and that no monetary value has been placed on the harm caused by the pollution. Meanwhile, Lu Shaofei of Qilin district's environmental authority said that compensation has not yet been discussed. The next step, he said, would be to engage a qualified agency to assess the damages. The government hasn't yet issued a verdict on the case. Although chromium pollution is extremely serious, in this instance it was dealt with quickly, and there were no human casualties.

The short of it is, these articles fail the So What? test. But what does this teach us about how Chinese communicate or what they expect from media? Ancillary to my question is the effectiveness of English language education to speakers of other languages. Fluency creates confusion or even provocation if applied with culturally inappropriate persuasive methods. 

A Fulbright scholar who taught journalism at an international program in China argues that asserting Western fact-checking techniques within the limiting context of state controlled media may create a mutually conversant international discourse. I cringe at assumptions that Western Europe-origin methods are "higher" or universally more true or applicable than other existing ones, but since white America hasn't budged, the burden of multi-method-ism is on the rest of us.

If we can't understand each other, we can't trust the other to have beneficent intentions. 

PS My next $10 donation is going to the purchase of this collection of eight groundbreaking cases of "watchdog journalism" between 1990 and 2003. If the third-person rewrites are anything like the introduction, it promises to be a more satisfying read than my examples above. Further, there are splashy precedents such as Liu Binyan's People or Monsters (1978) in the driving baogao wenxue style. I'm on it.