Celebrity Culture Cuts US Off
The Celebritization of Creativity benefits only a few. While it’s meant to be inspiration, I reckon celebrity culture is more a distraction. We focus on the Other instead of putting time into cultivating our own beauty and brilliance.
Today I was assisting the welcome call of our course on Quaoar, the dwarf planet named after the creation deity of the Tongva people, of what is now known as Los Angeles. Although I have been cycling through these courses for a few years now, first as student and then as admin assistant and now as co-teacher, I continue to learn all the time. Simply by being present and engaged, I learn from everyone else, which is what I love about the Dwarf Planet University.
DPU is a true Aquarian environment of co-creative respect. See my short post on the difference between that word and collaborative:
What I love at DPU is how we get to be pioneers in a field of clarifying the new view of our solar system that, thanks to technology, has expanded exponentially from Pluto’s (now) measly 248 years to revolve around the Sun to Sedna’s epic 11,406 year revolution around our home star. The IAU (International Astronomical Union) has designated that Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO’s) be named after creation deities. What I absolutely adore about this is how clearly it conveys the “as above, so below” ethos of astrology.
We now have a true reflection of the ‘unity in diversity’ consciousness of the Aquarian Age. The reality is that there are myriad cultures and languages on our Earth, yet astrology has primarily only endorsed the Greco-Roman, and generally only the masculine at that.
Until 1801, when Ceres was discovered, we had only Venus and the Moon to give us any reflection of the feminine. Ceres was initially named a planet, then she was re-designated as an asteroid, and then in the early 2000’s she was changed again to a dwarf planet when Pluto got the same designation. A few others in the asteroid belt were named in the early 1800’s —Pallas (1802), Juno (1804), and Vesta (1807)—but they weren’t really brought into consciousness until the 1970’s. Hmmm, I wonder what else was going on here on Earth then? Maybe the women’s liberation movement?
Really, when you start looking, it’s astounding how our perceptions of the so-called outside reflect the so-called inside, and how human evolution follows suit from those “discoveries”. I put the word discovery in rabbit ear air quotes because those bodies have all-ways been there, so what was actually discovered was the technology to see what was all-ways there.
Since 2000 there has been a quantum leap of “discoveries” and these KBO’s or TNO’s (Trans-Neptunian Objects) are requiring us to face the inherent complexity and beautiful mosaic of humanity on Earth. Now we have far more female role models to reflect back to us how we are as women, but which we haven’t had words, myths or visuals for before now.
And, super exciting to me, we also have our first non/pre-gendered deity Quaoar (pronounced kwah-oh-wah). So I was stoked to learn on the call that Queers are calling Quaoar their heavenly body! They’re owning this one.
That’s what we all need—to be reflected with acceptance—isn’t it?
So along with the mythology of Quaoar being about “singing and dancing a new reality into existence out of the chaos”, they are also a They. And we have Theys here on Earth, whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not, whether you care or not. They are here.
And WE are all here together, so the sooner we accept our diversity, the sooner the beauty of the world takes precedence over the strife.
The sooner we re-cognize the underlying harmony that exists in healthy biodiverse environments, the sooner we realign our living with the truth that one frog singing is nowhere near as good a sign as 14 frogs singing in frog chorus.
Which brings me to singing. The same person on the call who said Queers connect with Quaoar is an artist, yet their voice was shut down in childhood so that particular aspect of self-expression has not been open to them. This is not an uncommon story. It might even be your story, or someone close to you?
How many of us have been told we cannot, and therefore should not, sing?
I know, with my hearing loss and subsequent difficulty in trusting my hearing as well as my speaking, I was. Yet we were also Buddhist and Yoginis growing up, so the saving grace for my voice at a young age was chanting, mantra, and kirtan. I was blessed to be exposed to the beauty of devotional sound, which so sculpted my relationship with sound that I could not connect to pop or modern music, primarily because I wouldn’t put my voice behind the lyrics. I can’t sing that because I don’t want to put that message out into the world!
But a lovesong to the Divine?
A mantra to incite one’s own lotus potential/true self to emerge?
Or a prayersong to the Waters?
I’m totally down for those and it was in persevering through the utter embarrassment of making a croaky, off-key sound that I eventually came to lead sound, study sound, and also put together the MYOGA Sounds module. Here’s my intro to that, in case of interest.
So, gradually swinging around to the title of this piece, all of that to say…
Celebrity Culture Cuts Us Off From Our Own Creativity
I’ve been in artistic and performance realms since I played dress-ups with the neighbourhood kids and danced as a dewdrop in The Nutcracker at age 6. My undergrad was in Theatre at Cornell, which emphasizes the breadth of liberal arts education over the specialization you might find at NYU. So I studied all aspects of theatre, including theory, history, design, creation and performance. I focused on acting and costume design.
Yet living and working in NYC as a designer, maker, milliner, and actor, I struggled with the caste system the US denies it has. There is a hierarchy in my homeland, and it’s based on celebrity. You have to know someone, or be introduced. Of course this is a generalization and it’s more complex than that. I just wanted to explore and create and DO, but so much of the creative fields involves convincing others to pay you for it, or give you a place in the systems.
So I made different choices and prioritized freedom over acceptance.
And yes, for all you British spellers in the readership, I do use Z in these words on purpose because it’s pronounced Z, not S. That’s one very small example. I choose the words I use and I choose how to spell them, to make a point about pronunciation or meaning, and also to align myself with what feels true.
And what feels true in regards to celebrity is that, like many of our Capricornian hierarchical structures, it is breaking down. You’ve seen it yourself with the profligacy of online streaming outlets. As actors we went from the restraints of typecasting that meant you either had to be a native speaker for the accent, or a damn good act at it, to now re-seeing period pieces with mixed ethnicities and accents. Yet we still idolize a select few, including those in powerful political positions...
So here’s my vote. Take back your voice and give it out as good as you get.
Did you know there was a successful revolution in Estonia that was led by singing?
Or that Eve Ensler, creatrix of The Vagina Monologues, also created One Billion Rising, a movement based in dance?
Who cares what the Kardashians are doing? Or whoever is the name of the day. Clearly I don’t care because I don’t even know, and I never did.
What I care about is your song, your dance, and the beauty you gift to the world in your very presence.
May your ARTivism be based in celebrating the ABC’s — Acceptance, Beauty, and Care.
The video below is a fun bit of ‘walking my talk’ with my Mama Bear whose voice was also silenced early on. After years of prayersongs together, here we are enjoying singing out loud the inspiring lyrics from Rising Appalachia, the Southern sound of which feels a bit like home to these Virginia natives. The trigger warning in the notes says, “to anyone with perfect pitch or even a good singing voice--that's not us! This is fun for us, so be kind!”
Let’s see how it goes…🙏🏽