We don’t often go out, but this was for a community meeting about Floating Land at Boreen Point. We ended up having dinner with Christine Ballinger, Floating Land’s manager, Sue Coburn, Phyl Williams and Ellen Appleby, good local artists, amongst many others - even Bob Abbot, Sunshine Coast’s mayor joined the party. It was a fine night, full of laughter and aspirations, marred only by the recent calamitous oil spill along the north coast (taking up much of Bob’s thoughts at least). Another local with long hair that had never been cut, was shaving it all off for cancer fundraising and everyone at the pub donated, some even wept. The moon rose as we sat outside eating and drinking, making merry and dreaming up environmental and cultural change in the face of more destructive human impacts

All we need now is a culture of creativity!

A culture of creativity

There have been many dominant cultural approaches that shape our Western lives. We live, as Plato said, like projected shadows on cave walls, which rarely reflect our complex and unknowable reality. And these projected shadows have been more or less successful in helping us live well.

Let’s skip forward a few years to Descartes, who identified the common human schismatic process of simplifying everything into two opposing camps (you’re either for it or against it). We still live under this reductionism – we are black or white, man or woman; nature opposes culture, science opposes religion. Such thinking was not new, but humans do like simplistic stories and explanations, and such approaches help us to believe our aspirations for the linear and the rational.

In the 1950s, Cartesian assumptions aided and abetted the rise and rise of science. We believed if we just collected all the information, analysed it rationally, that we would come up with the single logical response (much like Christianity came up with a single god). The trouble was that scientists did not necessarily agree with each other and were left baffled whilst denying any personal or political influence in their perceptions of the world. Of course, humans are neither rational nor logical. Although, much of our bureaucracy continues to cling to this notion (most absurdly, given the incontrovertible evidence of unreason that exists in every administratively heavy institution).

So we gradually abandoned the shadow of science for one of economics. By the 1980s, we believed self-indulgence was good, that the world was reduced to individual needs and financial greeds. And now we are suffering that consumerist hangover and wondering where the money went (need we ever ask? – it always goes into the pockets of the very rich). But vestiges of economic shadow thinking are still at work – individual fiscal stimuli maintain the dying paradigm a little longer (while returning our money to the very companies and institutions that prop us this system). Let it go, I say. It’s time to move on again.

But where next in our shadow reality? What set of thinking will most shape and influence our near future? It is time for another renaissance of the arts, for a recognition of complex and creative thinking, reflected in more positive and collaborative portrayals of ourselves. Some of us, still holding faith with previous shadow stories will resist this overlay – art will be evil because it is not logically reducible, because it does not feed materialism or even individualism with the plastic aspirations of capital. But creativity and imagination does feed the soul and free the spirit, too long chained down by shackles of rationalistic, rampart materialism. Art, in all its diversity, should shape our next more-than-human shadow story, if not its underlying reality.

...

Art certainly shapes our personal reality here on this piece of land. Ross has been making art and craft in the shape of fine furniture for exhibitions, talks, private and public commissions. Even the rare days of escape are dictated by deliveries, exhibition openings, and meeting with clients. Anika has started making fine myrtle wood bookmarks to sell at the markets and has used the money to buy a travelling leather hand bag, handcrafted by Ali Adams, another market store owner. She is struggling at school, except for art in which she excels. I have been judging a national green art writing competition with the lovely Alan Dodge, ex director of WA’s gallery and the gentle Maurice O’Riordan, editor of Art Monthly, as well as writing a few magazine, journal, and web articles. And the next day of music and art on our outdoor stage amidst our encroaching rainforest environment is planned for the second Sunday in July, after the excitement of Floating Land has died down. We look forward to seeing you here!

We went to a great concert last night, with Linsey Pollak and Jess Ainsworth as the naughty Brides of Grove. Linsey also performed the ever-evolving Extinction Room (sans wedding gown) while Terri Delaney and her new boy band ramped up the volume. The beautiful voice of Kerrianne Cox sang of connection to land and spirit of all Australian people, along with the sax and improvisation skills of Kim from Mullumbimby who had joined Kerrianne along the way on her tour of the country. Despite all being a little under the weather, we enjoyed it very much – Anika so inspired she sung herself (loudly) to sleep. In the midst of Kerrianne’s singing of place, I looked around at all the friends I had hugged, the artists, musicians, writers, woodworkers, gardeners, and consultants that live locally and I too felt firmly grounded by this place and by these many wonderful relationships. It was a moment of bliss, of knowing home and feeling peace.

We have lived here almost ten years now, and it is long enough to know a little of the spirit of this place and its people, to understand this choice and lifestyle. It has grown with us, evolving a way of being in the world that soothes and calms. I doubt we could easily return to more city-based and institutionalised careers or lives (but never say never). And I often wonder if our city friends could ever comprehend just how desperately poor and how enormously rich our lives are, both at the same time. More seditiously (in terms of capitalism), perhaps the two go hand in hand: material wealth might not ever lead to happiness; instead, perhaps the pursuit of happiness might start with pursuing socially undervalued activities and ends in economic poverty but rich laughter and moments of deep connection. Here is a heresy indeed – might we be happier if we owned and owed less? As my favourite singer songwriter, Kavisha Mazella, said: “We are angels, but we’re forgotten out wings”. Here’s hoping that we might, at least, glimpse the feathers of freedom from time to time in amongst the idiotic aspirations that reinforce capitalism.

PS. For those of you who I know will ask, and although she no longer lives with us, and has her own story to tell – the wonderful Katerina is now both qualified chef and masseuse, has moved in with her boy Sam Kelly, and has also booked air tickets to travel the world from October this year, starting with Jogdakarta, London, and then Europe, with plans of working on a private yacht or two along the way. We hope to be celebrating her 21^st on the 14^th August before she goes. All I can say is, look out world!