A quick intro from me first…..
If you are anything like me, I’ve found it extremely difficult to focus on my writing these past few weeks. The constant bombardment of deplorable actions coming out of this administration has created a tangible negativity and anxiety that permeates everything. It is a challenge to not feel so overwhelmed and hopeless, that you just want to curl up into a ball and hide from the world.
While listening to a sermon from Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR this weekend, I discovered that there exists a term for this feeling called “snailing”. In her sermon Rabbi Brous explains that she originally learned this term from Mika Almog, granddaughter of Shimon Peres, former Prime Minister of Israel, and a fierce fighter for democracy and justice in Israel. She says that eight years ago, Mika had told her about this cultural phenomenon happening in Israel at the time called ‘snailing’:
“when a person tries to escape a harsh reality that is unfolding around them they might curl up like snails into their shells and hide and wait. Eventually the threat will pass they think and they will be able to re-emerge”.
I think that’s a position many of us can relate to right now. It’s this feeling that if we can just somehow make it through these 4 years, things will have to get better, right? While this may seem comforting or like the only choice we have, Rabbi Brous went on to warn of the dangers of taking this posture:
“Snailing may be tempting but we must remember it is not the answer. For one a snail buried deeply into herself is unable to assess and approaching threat and therefore unable to protect herself from getting crushed. Snailing also preemptively abandons those who are weakest and most vulnerable to harm, who will undoubtedly be quashed first and that is morally unconscionable. It may not be you or your community today who faces the greatest threat. But that does not mean you have the right to ignore it and don’t believe that it won’t be you tomorrow. And remember this - when an entire population snails in tandem tyrants perceive that they have been granted permission to run rough shod over us all.”
As impossible as it may feel right now, this is exactly the time where we must get to work. We must be loud and use our voices to create the change we want to see. As writers, filmmakers, musicians, and artists we must create art that resists, art that gives hope, art that shows the beauty of all humanity, and art that shows the importance of justice.
When I started to think about putting out this call to my fellow writers, filmmakers, musicians, and artists to use our talents to help create the change we so desperately need. I was reminded of an article we printed in 2006 for the Filmmakers Alliance magazine, where Cathy Pagano, a Jungian Psychotherapist, Archetypal Astrologer, Author, and Transformational Coach, placed such a call , in a way that has stuck with my all these years. It is a call to action to artists that is way more eloquent and inspired than I could write. Luckily for me and all of you she has graciously allowed me to reprint that article here.
This moment in time, so clearly echoes where we have been in the past, that although this article is from 2006 and some of the reference are aged (just switch out Bush for Trump), it is just as relevant and necessary as it was then. Sadly, not much has changed. I hope this time around it will, and that’s where you all come in.
Where are our Bards?
by Cathy Pagano
There is a deep silence in our world. It is not the silence of peace. It is not the silence of wonder. Perhaps it is the silence of shock. But the sound of this silence is deafening.
It is the silence of our artists.
Where are all our artists, our filmmakers, our musicians, our storytellers? Why this silence in the face of what is happening in our country and in the world? Granted, we are hearing from a few: Tim Robbins’s play Embedded and, because of Michael Moore, many documentary films; there are a few films such as The Day After Tomorrow and The Constant Gardener; Bono, Sting, Springsteen and some of our Hip-hop artists are speaking out about government, AIDS and the environment. But still…where is the artistic vision that speaks to our times? Where is the music of protest? Where are the stories of hope? Who or what has silenced our artists at this time in our history?
If there was ever a time to call upon our collective talents and will to transform our culture, it is now. If there was ever a time when our country, and the world, needed artists, it is now. Not to go off and wage war on our projections of evil, but to work right here on ways to help people understand the American shadow and our part in creating the chaos of our times. If no other good comes out of George Bush’s time in office, at least it has brought into focus the shadow elements of the American national character. Now is a good time to confront and heal our national shadow. To begin with: our willingness to embrace genocide and militarism, the lack of morality in our free market economy, the real lack of separation of church and state, our unconscionable waste of resources, our adolescent refusal of responsibility, our unwillingness to be equal partners with the rest of the world.
Just as our soldiers are fighting fanatics abroad, we have the right and the duty to fight the fanatics and hypocrites within our own culture. We Americans are now living with Orwellian doublespeak, Machiavellian arrogance and religious hypocrisy. If artists don’t stand up against it, who will? We all have to examine our own conscience, or the extremists in all religions will feel they have the right to do it for us. Our political, economic, social, environmental and military policies are being detailed and discussed in books and on television. But, for the most part, our artists remain silent.
Cathy Pagano, the author.
As a Jungian psychotherapist, it is my experience that most men and women are hungering to understand themselves and their world. While many people are turning to religion, many more have abandoned the traditional religions and are left without guidance. This is why artistic visions and voices are needed right now. The great mystic and artist William Blake believed that in the coming age, artists would be the priests and ministers of the people. I know that stories and music can change our unconscious perceptions and open us to new possibilities because they speak to the human heart. So where are the stories? Where is the music?
Artists bear a responsibility to all of us. Their gifts are not theirs alone – they are the legacy of the collective culture. Art for art’s sake is sterile and ultimately deadening. Just as individuals search for their own individuality and truth, each profession must stay true to its purpose if it is to remain viable. So what is the purpose of story- telling and music?
There is a power in naming. We name ourselves so we can know what we are capable of, as well as what we are responsible for. Like the Scarecrow in Oz, we need to acknowledge the reality of what we do best. And so I would like to name our artists as bards and speak about the Archetype of the Bard.
Archetypes are energetic patterns, like instincts, which make up our experience of being human. They in them- selves are eternal, but their archetypal images are not. These images lose their power over time and when they do, they become stereotypes. And that is what has happened to the archetype of the Bard. We have been left with the stereotype of the Entertainer.
Like Orpheus, the figure of the Bard has been dismembered; its parts scattered to many other occupations. The ancient Bard was: shaman, shapeshifter, wonderworker, magician; jurist, historian, spy, messenger and newsperson; warrior; visionary, prophet, poet, truth speaker; teacher and councilor to kings. Bards held the keys to tradition and wisdom. Their training was long and arduous; their memory stretched back to the beginning of time, and their purpose was to serve their people by helping them to understand what it meant to be human. In ancient Greece, a bard was a man of Logos, a man of the Word. For the ancient Greeks, this meant the power of language, the power of spoken words to communicate ideas, to reason and to persuade. Logos encompasses both the speaker and the listener. Logos reminds us of the power of words to hurt or to heal.
So, what has happened to the archetype of the Bard in our times?
Those of us who grew up in the 60’s were lucky. We did have bards – Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Simon & Garfunkel and of course, the Beatles. We took in their message with their music. They helped us to understand our selves and our world, and then we set out to change our selves and our world. I love to imagine how people in 1000 years will remember the Beatles. Will they have stories about four Bards who changed the world through their message of love and imagination? Will they tell the story of their descent to the watery under- world, in something called a Yellow Submarine, to bring back the gift and knowledge that ‘All you need is Love!’? Perhaps if we make it through these times, and create a loving society, they will.
The archetype of the Bard is slowly coming alive once again in these times. Russell Crowe acknowledged it at the SAG awards a few years ago when he said that he and all of the actors in the audience were members of an ancient and honored profession. Then there was a recognition of it in the man who saw Bruce Springsteen after 9/11 and called out “We need you now, Bruce!” Springsteen’s response was his CD “The Rising.” At the time, in an inter- view, Springsteen played down his role by saying that he was just a musician, that he was just doing his part in responding to the tragedy. He couldn’t get beyond the fact that he’s supposed to be only an entertainer. Then during the run-up to the 2004 elections, he was part of a group of musicians who went on a tour called Vote for Change. Their goal was to foster change in our cultural awareness, especially change of the current administration, by getting people out to vote in the presidential elections. And look at George Clooney’s recent films. These are all signs of hope that our artists are recognizing their responsibility to help focus our understanding of our lives and our times.
The archetype of the Bard includes entertainment as part of its function in society. Storytellers, poets, musicians, actors, writers – part of their function is to entertain through the gifts of artistic expression. Entertainment is the vehicle of their purpose. But it is not their main purpose. When Robert Redford said that he’s in the business of entertainment, and that he was naïve to think that he could change the world with his films, he had lost touch with the arche- type at the center of his being. If you study his films, a theme runs through all his works – the question of what makes a man if not his honor, his integrity, his principles, his sense of self? More than most actors and directors, he has followed the path of the Bard in trying to make sense of situations men find themselves in today. He doesn’t believe anymore that he can teach with his works. And yet he does. Like the Scarecrow in Oz, perhaps he needs to be acknowledged as a Bard – and that we recognize that he is one.
The fault does not lie with our artists alone. Besides the corporate takeover of Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment business, we, the people, no longer recognize the true worth of our artists. Look at the public outcry that accompanied Redford’s battles for the environment, or Sting’s environmental work for the rainforests. Look at what happened to Richard Geer after 9/11 when he made a public appeal for peace. Or what happened with the Dixie Chicks or Linda Ronstadt? Remember Vanessa Redgrave’s support for the Palestinians? And then there was the Hollywood blacklist in the 50’s. Our culture has forgotten that these ‘entertainers’ were once bards, and that their purpose was to tell us about the world and shape our conscious- ness of it. Our culture needs to be reminded that our ‘stars’ are not just entertainers but people who might be worthy of commenting on the culture, the world, and our human condition. And maybe we would listen if our ‘stars’ used their box office power to create stories we need to hear.
‘Scheherazade’ by Kay Nielson
If the archetype of the Bard was consciously acknowledged by our collective culture, musicians, storytellers and filmmakers could freely speak out on political and social issues and create works of art that truly comment on them. Look at what’s happened since 9/11. The politicians took over the story and pre-empted a deeper understanding of the situation. They manipulated our emotions with a call to patriotism, while pressing their political agendas of military might and economic recovery. Nothing changed. Instead of 9/11 changing our perceptions about ourselves and our place in the world, we were herded into a war with devastating results not only for ourselves and the soldiers we sent to fight, but also for the whole world. We still refuse to acknowledge that it is our policies that create terrorism just as much as the terrorists do.
When Art returns to its original archetypal purpose, it heals and teaches the human community. Talents such as painting, dance, music, acting, and storytelling are meant to be shared with the community, for the benefit of the community. The arts can unite people for the common good and bypass the political structures. Now, more than ever, we need artists to speak to the issues of life and death facing our country and our world.
One of the greatest problems facing America is the confusion between appearance and substance, hypocrisy and truth. The fact that our government, our religions and our corporations can say one thing and do another (and we fall for it) is a sign of our collective malaise. Our media mentality is a major contributor to this failure to see the truth. Hollywood feeds us stories that have nothing to do with reality. As the art critic, John Berger, puts it:
…for Necessity is the condition of the existent. It is what makes reality real. And the system’s [modern media] mythology requires only the not-yet- real, the virtual, the next purchase. This produces in the spectator, not, as claimed, a sense of freedom (the so- called freedom of choice) but a pro- found isolation.
Until recently, history, all the accounts people gave of their lives, all proverbs, fables, parables, confronted the same thing: the everlasting, fearsome, and occasionally beautiful, struggle of living with Necessity, which is the enig- ma of existence – that which followed from the Creation, and which subse- quently has always continued to sharpen the human spirit. Necessity produces both tragedy and comedy. It is what you kiss or bang your head against.
Today, in the system’s spectacle, it exists no more. Consequently no experi- ence is communicated. All that is left to share is the spectacle, the game that nobody plays and everybody can watch. As has never happened before, people have to try to place their own existence and their own pains single-handed in the vast arena of time and the universe.
Necessity is upon us. More than ever before, our choices will affect the future of our world. So how can people understand the times we live in so we can make informed choices?
A first priority is to recognize that artists have to take responsibility for their gifts. What is their purpose aside from entertainment? The archetype of the Bard implies a social purpose, for these arts are for healing and transformation and teaching on a collective level. And so the archetype of the Bard implies a deep responsibility.
Storytellers, musicians and filmmakers need to acknowledge that their power and purpose and responsibility is to shape the collective imagination.
Modern people have been seduced into forgetting that we are supposed to learn from stories and music. We have been fed the lie that music and stories and films are ‘merely entertainment’ and so have lost a primal connection to our own inner life and imaginations. We need to acknowledge that artists have the ability, through their art, to change our lives. For stories and music feed the soul and open us to higher ways of knowing than the merely rational. Facts don’t always provide a true picture of reality. Facts can be manipulated, as George Bush and his administration have so amply shown the world.
So where are our Bards? Where are the voices and visions that can give us back a true relationship to our humanity? Bards were the guardians of tradition, a word our culture shies away from. All too often, traditions are used by politicians or religious leaders to consolidate their own authority. But I am speaking about the ancient traditions that govern the growth of consciousness and the path of the soul, traditions that go beyond religion, politics and race to the archetypal patterns that make us all human. In songs and stories, through memory or the power of prophecy, a bard could instruct and guide seekers. Through the power of words, music and images, a bard could reach across barriers to the minds and hearts of people everywhere. Artists need to understand this power that they channel, to give it the respect it deserves, and to serve it well. A rebirth of the archetype of the Bard needs to take place within each artist, because the archetypal energies that engender human consciousness need Bards to tell their stories.
This country and our world should use this moment of silence to listen to what is within our hearts. In the silence, I believe people are longing to hear stories of peace and hope. Stories that show us the hard truths of our human situation; stories that teach us how to cope with life; stories that awaken hope in the hearts of people who desperately want to change their lives and their world. Stories that can wake up those people who want to sleep through it all! Stories to shame those who would betray us all for greed or power or mal- ice. We know stories can heal our personal sorrows. We know stories can heal our collective wounds. We know that stories can awaken us to the truth of our lives and our times.
So I ask once again. Where are our artists?
Into the silence I’d like to send out a call. A call to all our artists – both our local artists and our world artists – to take a stand for truth, for that is your calling. For the world needs the voices and visions of our bards to make sense of it all for us.
Cathy Pagano is a Jungian Psychotherapist, Archetypal Astrologer, Author, Transformational Coach. Cathypagano.com
This article is copyrighted by Cathy Lynn Pagano. Check out her Substack here:
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