What is movement beyond coming and going?
How can different people of very different forms communicate as we negotiate the wreckage of post-industrial 21st century society?
The Gray Whale has migrated from Alaska to Baja California for millions of years. This alone is beyond comprehension to human beings considering we have nearly annihilated a large quantity of species, and ourselves, in just a few thousand years of wild product driven frenzy.
Many elements we take for granted - mega structures, highways, navy sonar testing, plastic islands in the ocean - all these storehouses of wealth, power, control; the skyscrapers, metal, concrete, steel, and asphaltum of 21tst century California tower all around us. Yet, in terms of the life of an average Californian, they pale in comparison to the sudden breathtaking meaning and beauty of the sea.
We gather at the edge to remember the sublime - but also to question the way the sublime has acted as fuel of the drive to "achieve." Aesthetics of power and wealth are translated in the California vernacular into the sublime. The wealthy are the ones capable of "relaxation." Many work their whole lives for the hope of retirement, vacation, a day on the beach, a corona.
Yet, in California, thousands of people opt out of the working/sublime path and directly immerse ourselves in the "wet" life of full on nature/culture. With no longer a duality to work towards or from, we become the "beach bum" or the "homeless" in the tent city.
The gray whales remind us that our lives need not necessarily be stigmatized - after all, whales work and play and migrate in fluidity across national boundaries up and down the Pacific. Even the idea of time as a linear process, and migration as a series of "goals" may be inappropriate to describe the gray whale migration.
Perhaps it can be best described as a "cipher," an embodied undecipherable code that simply exists, and exists in interconnected resonance.
We sit together on the beach or in the city this winter in Southern California - with the gray whales. Each of us sit behind a veil of ocean, a veil of skin, a veil of fabric, a veil of thoughts, even a veil of confusion and unknowing. Yet communication will happen. Join us.
Reserve your spot now text
509 290 3456 Alan teahut@matchaparty.com