Playback

I was looking back to what I've written on this blog while I've been in Milwaukee, and I can completely understand why I've focused so ardently on white supremacy. Quite honestly its a daily (hourly, minutely, second-ly) experience and has taken up quite a lot of my energy. My eyes have started to twitch. A sure sign of deep struggle.

What I have failed to share with you is the opposite of white supremacy. What is possible when human beings are connected to themselves, their spirit, and to the spirits of others. What is possible when we deeply see each other as whole beings. When people are not afraid of touch, of holding a hand, connecting. When we are willing to be with pain and not move to fade it or fix it (-Oriah Mountain Dreamer). When we integrate the whole of who we are instead of chopping life up.

Let me digress slightly here and tell you what I mean by that: Chopping life up. This is a deeply imbedded belief in the US that is a result of white supremacy and capitalism. It is as deep as calculus. It is the understanding that in order to understand mystery, we can chop it into pieces. In calculus, its how we do limits, taking something infinite and defining it by chopping it into a series. And then the limit is how we define derivatives and it keeps going and going. We chop up everything. We chop the day into 24 hours and then create rigid color-coded schedules. We chop our lives into public and personal life. We are supposed to leave behind family and the depths of ourselves when we do our jobs. We chop down whole forests, send people to their deaths to extract fossil fuels from the earth. We let doctors chop up our bodies (literally). And then we wonder why there was no healing, no joy in our jobs, no new life growing from the ground. We wonder why our backs ache, stomachs hurt, why our air is dirty and we cannot breathe. Maybe its because we chopped out our souls, too.

So, what is it like when we don't do that? WHAT?!?! What the hell are you talking about, Jess?!?

Well, at some level I don't really know, but I know one example of a place where it is okay for me to be me, whoever and whatever I might be in that moment, with the whole of who I am that is a joyful mess of a person, an interdependent individual and spirit. A place where I can hold pain, joy, questions, confusion, peace, silence, or a hell of a lot of noise. That place is Playback Theatre, Milwaukee.

Put simply, Playback is a form of improvisational theatre in which we share stories with each other and we see those stories played back to us artistically. It is a place of outrageous laughter, profound healing, listening and honoring the story teller, and being with what is.

Now that I have written that, I don't know if there is much more I can tell you about Playback. You just have to see it. Be it. Live it.

I guess what I will say is that I am finding that one story liberates another. Her story about high school triggers my own, my story of oppression connects to another, his dilemma reminds me of hers, her laughter brings out my joy. When we can tell the truths of our lives openly, when we can tell our stories with the whole of our hearts, we open up sacred space for one another and we create community.

That's all I will say about Playback for now. You will hear more later.

I am blessed. Blessed and broken.