One of my favourite Brecht quotes. Do these digital times not feel a bit like we are all (that choose to be) inside the baseball now?

ps If said baseball did exist, the Jays still wouldn’t be able to hit it.

OK. OK. I am up at 5:41am and I can’t sleep even though I know my body needs rest. More rest. I am up before I have to because my mind-body refuses to properly prepare for the future. Or perhaps the past.

I am thinking of what it means to be together.

Amidst the factoids that circulate in the FaceBook ether, two propositions (one by Bertolt Brecht) come to mind:
1) Remove all the space within the atoms making up the human body, and every person that’s ever lived would fit inside a baseball
2) Art is not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it

It makes me think about the Maori concept of the Wakahuia, treasures that were passed from one generation to another and gifted between sub-tribes, families and individuals to acknowledge relationships and during significant events and ceremonies.

I am thinking about what is in my creative Wahkahuia…material objects, writings, images, sounds and artistic influences I value that may represent my cultural and/or creative identity…and by extension, what is in your Wakahuia, what remains unchallenged and unattainable in your creative work.

The body is why we come together, and apart. It is our memory of being, whether we access this palimpsest of experience or not. It is our culture, transmitted or transcended but definitely performed. Most importantly and perhaps least glorified, is the ritual body. What is our training, what restrictions do we place on our bodies and how do we test and push those limits philosophically, materially and aesthetically?

I am thinking of modernism. There is nothing original that is not borrowed. Remembered. Honoured. Broken up and glued back together again, with invisible tears and bloodied thread. It is often not enough to change the world.

What is the path forward then? How we act in the face of that which seems beyond our body? I think of removing the space between us as a first step. Asking for witnesses. Being one. Asking for energy and giving it back.

Maybe we won’t be compact like a baseball but we can be in the same room all the same.

Coman Poon