How can we, as artists, become the storytellers, the awakeners of memory? How can I help others to remember, finally, the story we know so deeply, the story so obvious that we’ve become blind to it? I believe this much – (I have to, to have hope for this world yet) – I believe that truth has a resonance to it; that a story told with truth has the power to awaken the voice within us all. The voice that knows, and remembers…oh yes, this is what is most sacred. For that, I am willing to change.
Ten years ago, on a morning so thick with fog that I couldn’t see more than 5 feet in front of me, I walked to the edge of a lake. I left my clothes in a pile on the rocks, and jumped in. In those days, I think I was more open to receiving messages from spirit, from nature. I would seek them out. I was more daring, perhaps, more willing to listen to those inner urges.
After only a few strokes toward the center of the lake I could no longer see the shoreline. I set my inner compass, trusting that I’d be able to navigate my way back to the spot I’d jumped in. Trust. I lay on my back, floating. Above me, the clouds seemed to form shapes I perceived as my grandmothers, gazing down at me. I felt protected. I thought to myself, “Ah! I’m having a mysterious encounter! I should write it down!” But a strange thing happened: a voice entered my mind, I think from the grandmothers up there in the clouds. They told me, “When you write it down, you forget how to remember.” I sat up in the water and looked across the white expanse.
There, alongside me, I saw the trails of fog moving across the surface…but then, I began to see them as a long procession of people, of humans and animals in history, marching past. I remember quite clearly seeing the fog take on the form of a brontosaurus head, sweeping around to gaze at me, treading water, as if wondering what I was doing there. Suddenly, I became aware of my own vulnerability. What was I doing there? I had a scary glimpse of myself floating still in the water, with blue lips. With some urgency, I began to swim swiftly back to shore. Amazingly, I landed just in the spot where I’d left my clothes. Since then, I’ve carried that experience in my memory, and well, yes. I am writing it down.
This memory resurfaced for me recently, during a weekend “retreat” taken by the water team – a group of artists and researchers who gathered together last July to brainstorm ideas for the upcoming “Reinvigorating the Common Well” project. The question was raised: how can it be that this precious, irreplaceable, life-giving substance of water, is so overlooked, forgotten, and taken for granted? How is it, that on one hand we “idolize” the idea of water – in poetry, in paintings, in postcards of sunsets glinting across sparkling lakes – and with the other hand we abuse, neglect, and carelessly waste water in our day to day lives?
When you write it down, you forget how to remember.
I’ve often thought about this message, and wondered about its meaning. I’ve understood it to be about the practice of memory. When something is written down, we often cease to revisit it. Because it is safely recorded in some book, there is no reason for us to let it continue occupying space in our minds. And so, we forget. But what is lost, when something we should know deeply is relegated to the dusty corner of some bookshelf? What is the difference, between wisdom, and knowledge? One could say that wisdom is living. It is knowledge in practice. Knowledge, alone, is sleeping.
A vital element missing in our culture is an active practice of remembering. Honoring and appreciating that which sustains us, and connects us to all life: Water. Earth. Air. Our ancestors. Our children. The Commons. How else, but through constant re-interpretation, can we keep our most precious truths alive…dynamic, active, informing our everyday decisions? How is our knowing different, if we hold the knowledge within ourselves, rather than entrusting some book or authority, a media source or expert to know it for us? Does the knowledge seep differently into our cells? Do I feel more willing to change, if the impetus for that change arrives from a knowing deep inside myself?
At one time, the storyteller was the only way a history was kept. Told and retold, the story shifted slightly with every telling. The past has messages to tell the future…by keeping it alive, through an active teller, the same stories suddenly came alive in a new and different ways.