The art of speaking offers each of us a way of becoming the mysterious, luminous beings we really are.
The chapters that follow this one are intended primarily for poets. If you are not a poet, the last half of this book may not be of interest. It may have some relevance for you, however, if you have succeeded in creating a few speakings, because by that act you have become a poet: you have entered that world. Of course, by entering that world so directly and so naturally, you have created a different poetry. SOULSPEAK is a poetry so human and powerful and direct that it doesn’t really suffer from the same problems and concerns that contemporary written poetry does. Because of this, you may find much of what I have to say to be somewhat academic, maybe even beside the point. But it may also allow you to appreciate the true value of speaking in allowing you to fly without having to strap on a set of cumbersome wings and all the gears and pulleys and levers and pedals needed to make them flap fast enough. Ask Leonardo if you have any doubts.
I fully expect that many poets will disagree with my observations on the beauty and power of speaking, especially those who have not been able, or willing, to orally create a speaking despite the simplicity of the SOULSPEAK process. For those who have actually created a few speakings, however, the power of oral poetry should have become much more tangible and something not so easily dismissed. If I have accomplished only that, then there is reason to hope that some of us can begin to take advantage of what oral poetry can teach us. How much those insights will influence the direction of our current poetry culture is difficult to say. Most probably it will choose to continue on its own difficult, isolated path. I hope that as a result of this book some of you will continue to speak on a continuing basis (much as people currently practice meditation) simply for the luminosity it brings to your life. There is no way of predicting in what manner the art of speaking will affect you. That mystery, after all, is at the heart of all journeys. I also hope some of you will choose to pass it on to friends, informally, much as the practice of meditation is often passed on.
All it takes to give someone a taste is a few words about the general idea of SOULSPEAK, followed by some friendly encouragement and an example. Then, if you actually take ten minutes and create a few speakings with them, they should be ready to try speaking on their own. It doesn’t matter in what form you pass the speaking on: single voiced, multi-voiced, even writing the speaking. The important thing is to pass it on in the form most comfortable for them and for you. The rest is up to them. Your job is to plant the seed, just as I’ve planted it within you. If they’re intrigued, perhaps reading this book would be a helpful next step. It depends on how easily they catch fire. This is an art that is within us, easily reawakened simply by doing it with others. There really is no need for formal workshops, although some people may find them helpful, especially if they have difficulty in reaching the emotional state necessary for speaking to occur. Learning how to speak is much easier in a true communal environment. Once people begin to speak, they’ll be entirely capable of developing the art to whatever level is correct for them. All they have to bring to the table is courage and generosity.
The real function of the art of speaking is to give each of us a way of displaying our soul, a way of turning ourselves inside out, of feeling how mysterious and luminous we really are. Unless we have some way of doing this, we are in danger of becoming slowly de-humanized. Don’t get me wrong. We’ll be very civil about the whole thing. We will simply become dim creatures in dim rooms and not even know it. I don’t think there is any way of stopping this movement. The best we can do is to create isolated pockets where we can become momentarily luminous. Some may find this outlook far too pessimistic, but I see it as realistic. It’s what is in store for us whether we like it or not.
We are becoming dimmer for many reasons. For one thing, we are racing away from pain at an alarming rate—a rate so fast I sometimes think we are in danger of exceeding the speed of light. Yet we know from our greatest teachers that the acceptance of pain is the way to become fully human. Indeed, one of the functions of art is to help us accept this paradox. Every Greek, down to the lowliest son of a hide-tanner, went to the annual tragedies. To not attend was to admit to being less than a man. We have no such role for art in our society. Much of our art (and especially corporate art) is structured to ignore pain. Life, however, is pain: the pain of death, of birth, sickness, loneliness, failure, even the most ecstatic and piercing love has an element of pain. Unless we find some way to help us come to terms with this paradox, we will live increasingly de-humanized lives and not even know it. That is what is so terrifying.
When I say we are racing away from pain, I don’t necessarily mean through the drugs of all descriptions that increasingly dominate our lives (although they play a role as they always have). Life has always been painful and people have always taken drugs to numb or enlighten themselves. Whether we are more drugged than in other times is hard to say. Certainly we have a greater variety. What is unique in our times is not drugs but the fact that we are the first society that has figured out a way to avoid the pain caused by personal contact. We didn’t plan it this way, or at least I don’t think we did. Rather it seems to be a by-product of the technology that has allowed us live isolated lives and yet still communicate with each other efficiently. Too efficiently. In a recent TV interview, I heard a marine general state that he trained his men the way he did so they could handle the immense fear war causes. He said he didn’t mean the napalm and the lasers and the bombs they had to face, but the terrifying moment when they had to look in the eyes of a man a few feet away intent on killing them. That, he said, is the real fear they have to learn to handle, and that everything else pales by comparison.
The general was right, of course. It’s what we go through every day, in the office, at parties, making love, shopping, arguing, and playing. Because what we are dealing with in those situations is a human being capable of harming us in every way we can possibly imagine. The fact that it seldom happens doesn’t make any difference. Deep inside we know what we are capable of doing to others—and what they are capable of doing to us. That is the real danger we face, and have always faced. Not pollution, or unsafe cars, or global warming (at least not as far as our psyches are concerned). Our psyches have their antennae out all the time—the same antennae that constantly feed our dreams— and they are telling us (among other things) that we live in a constant state of potential pain. After all, humans are magnificent, weird, beautiful, bristly, dangerous creatures. We’re not at the top of the food chain for nothing.
Our technological prowess has given us a way to minimize that potential pain of contact. We do it by contacting each other electronically. I do it. You do it. Whether we do it to avoid pain or just for convenience, doesn’t really matter. The effect is the same. We block out a part of someone’s humanity and lose a part of our own in return. Even if we are innocent of this intent (like Pavlov’s dog), we soon sense the advantage of being out of reach and hit the button. I know some idiot is going to pipe up, “Not to worry, we’ll soon have holographs as real as us.” As if we were only a collection of biomechanical parts and not the luminous beings we truly are. One has only to sit in one of those thousand dollar massage chairs to realize once and for all that nothing substitutes for the miracle of being touched by another human being.
And like the hands of another, nothing substitutes for face- to-face encounters, as volatile as they potentially are. When we avoid the bristly, dangerous parts of each other, we also lose those that are warm and loving. You can’t have only one side of the moon. You lose one side of the moon, you lose both, simple as that. You become dimmer. It’s so insidious, and so attractive, I see no way of stopping it. If you sit back and think about it, our increasing dimness (or numbness) explains why our young people have difficulty working with others and are so attracted to acts of self-interest, self-mutilation, and meaningless sex. Compare it to the sixties. It’s not a cycle. The next generation will be even worse. After all, men have been searching for a release from pain since the beginning of time, and here it is right at our fingertips. Finally.
In a recent C-SPAN panel on de Tocqueville’s sense of the American spirit, someone put forth a proposition of de Tocqueville’s that Americans were obsessed both by the spirit of self-interest and the spirit of religious practice, and that the two kept each other in balance. And if religion, with its emphasis on something larger than the self, were to disappear, the vital American democracy would simply devolve into a bureaucratic arrangement to facilitate self-interest. This is what is happening to us today. Although we are still one of the most religious modern nations, religion’s ability to influence our spiritual lives is rapidly waning. The statistics may or may not show that we are losing our religion, as the song says, and more people than ever may be going to church, but it is often to churches whose teachings are no longer concerned with man’s relation to the unknowable, but to a disguised form of self-interest. Give to God, get double your money back. New cars. Money in the bank.
In the meantime, our government is becoming exactly what de Tocqueville predicted. Although he was primarily concerned with what would happen to our political institutions, I find his observations almost a parallel to my own sense that our humanity is slipping into a very dim state. We are just coming at it from different vantage points. Where we join is in the observation that something larger than the self is required to balance our lives. Religion, for de Tocqueville was the way to keep our rampant spirit of self-interest at bay, and keep our society vital. But it is also the way we learn to make sense of pain. Once religion loses its power to convince us, we are set adrift in a sea of confusion and hopelessness. What we do then is learn to push the button that limits the pain. It is a completely painless operation. Dim boys in a dim room.
Although it is a large claim that art can replace religion as a guiding force, it is the only viable candidate. The Greek theater (and specifically the tragedies) played something of this role for the Greeks. If we were to look for a counterpart today both in terms of potential artistic power and universal accessibility, it would be the movies. I don’t think it’s going to happen. The forces of corporate art are simply too strong. Although there may be many who see things much as I do, there would have to be a countermovement of immense size to even begin to change the course of the dry river that is sweeping us away.
Of course there is another problem, and that is the nature of our art forms. The form of the Greek theater was quite close to its tribal ancestor in that it was both a religious and aesthetic experience for the audience. The two hadn’t become separated as they have in our times. One can hardly compare the intensity and sense of awe of a Greek audience at the Tragedies to our own level of expectation as we approach our neighborhood movie house. While we might be able to approach the aesthetic level of the Tragedies, our arts are no longer part of our spiritual lives. That relationship could change. But it would require a massive change in the nature of our culture. It may happen, but the forces against it are immense. One can only hope.
There is another way to resist this dimming of our lives, and that is with individual action. It is what some of our ancestors did to survive the dark ages. Today, there are any number of small counter-movements that focus on things we can do as individuals to protect our humanity and spirituality. These usually involve teachings of some kind, but some, such as meditation, don’t have any particular set of teachings to espouse. SOULSPEAK is also a neutral type of activity. It simply teaches you how to do something. That something, of course, is the act of speaking. What makes it particularly powerful is that it is based on an art form that was used when art and religion were not separate entities but the same thing. Speaking was the way tribal man spoke to the gods. It was the way he praised the gods by imitating the essential mystery of creation and destruction.
That was very long ago, when we lived in a tribal state. We can’t go back to that time, but we can learn from it. We can learn how to speak. That act is timeless. It is also, by its very nature, both a spiritual and aesthetic experience. We simply have to reclaim it, because speaking is a very human way to align ourselves with the immense mystery that surrounds us. The art of speaking, however, doesn’t guarantee happiness or success. Art doesn’t offer that, doesn’t even pretend to. It simply allows us to know, in a way that is beyond logic, what it really means to be human. It allows us to understand, on a blood level, that we are a part of something that is impossibly beautiful and impossibly true. Beyond that we are on our own. After all, life is a dangerous and beautiful business. The only true guarantee we all have is that one day we will die. Until that time, the art of speaking offers each of us, if only for a few moments, a way of becoming the mysterious, luminous beings we really are. In the light of that luminosity, everything makes sense: love pain death birth. That is what I am offering you. Nothing more. Nothing less.