--MY ARCHITECTURE OF HOPE-- I have been pondering over the last post I wrote. I feel like I left it in a half-roll-over. What is it about dancing that becomes the glue of my hope? How can that be the answer that sustains me as I stare into the abyss of apathy and cynicism? There are 2 ways I am answering this question (for myself this is still in process).

1. As usual, I go to my roots, the theories that have informed my praxis. If I take a "postmodern" look at the message that we all are being duped by an overarching power system and have no ability to change that macro-context which overlays all of our lives, then I remember that to attribute such consciousness to dominant systems of power which seem to have a monotonous mindset and homogenous method of execution which is based on misinformation and exclusion in order to secure interests most often tied to resource acquirement in the form of monetary gain is a tragic distortion which only further contributes to my disempowerment. In other words, "Why go there?" Why not see these systems for what they are? A series of bureaucratic results and effects that have been manipulated and misused, but nevertheless remain maleable? I get why folks see the system as impenetrable, I get the suspicion. Sometimes I worry about this. I worry that I am wrong, it is a twisted web that has wrapped around everything. But there is still energy in me, I am not completely trapped. Perhaps my mind is poisoned to some degree. I am also an automotron. But too, I have moments of clarity and action, I shift my consciousness, I watch lights go on in others. There is still a pulse here. That means there is still room for network (s) to be reconfigured. There is no way that in this society of excessive production, especially in terms of new cyber spaces, and old sustainable gardens, that we cannot find places for transformative work (s). We must find places for transformative works.
2. Dancing. I have written before about transcendence and immanence. How that dichotomy traps us in a relation to the "body" that sees it as distinct from the mind. Dancing is the most wholistic place I have found for the synthesis of this dichotomy. There is story, there is movement, there is feeling-- both emotive and corporeal--and that feeling spreads to the "audience." Especially in African Dance, the voyeurism of "watching" is lost. You cannot help but tap you toes, feel your hips sway, notice the way your heartbeat is part of the orchestra. And so in that wholism, I am "beyond" the stickiest parts of the web. Dare I say I am free, and in that freedom , I show others their own? From here we have platforms. We have plaster. We have a foundation. From here we can create shifts.

These, I suppose, are the architectural components of my hope. I like this better than sitting at the bottom of the fracture. My survival instinct requires finding the pathway, whether up, around, or through that leads away from the abyss.