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FREEDOM DEAR FELLOW ADVENTURERS
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF GRAFFITI? People seem polarised on the subject. Personally sometimes I love it and sometimes I hate it. I hate it when it has defaced something of good architectural merit or a clean train where passengers expect to be able to sit and enjoy a peaceful place. To me, graffiti tags (signatures) are all rather samey and an unnecessary intrusion on a person’s inner silence. If they deface a person’s property then that is the tagger taking a liberty and being quite arrogant, unthinking and selfish with something that does not belong to him or her. Interestingly, in speaking with
teachers at a Steiner school, where they allow children much greater freedom of expression and also give them plenty of art (really free art – not colouring in the bunny rabbit photocopied by the teacher and sticking the cotton ball on the paper for his tail), it appears that they have a very small number of taggers in their student body. I think that speaks for itself. When do I love graffiti? As the article
on page 6 says, sometimes the messages are poignant or powerful and just what the public could be helped by. This is the message style of graffiti rather than the tag. Then there is street art like our front cover and the picture on the contents page by Be Free. There are famous street artists who not only have artistic flair but bring a message to us. I happened upon a link to the Brisbane
Times with an article by travel writer Richard Tulloch visiting the back blocks of
Brooklyn and his encounters with graffiti. He spoke with a local guide, Matt Levy, who explained that the difference between street art and graffiti is that street art is graffiti with a college degree. While I object to people taking
liberties with anyone’s property, I also see that these days not all artists have the means to become well known for their art through the gallery infrastructure. If you walk down a back lane where
there is a huge amount of graffiti, I bet you will feel the strong energies of the graffiti and street art. There is an undeniable surge – almost like being in a Gothic cathedral for me – creativity poured out by the hearts and souls of talented people often working three storeys high. As you can see, I struggle within
myself to find the line between vandalism and allowable art. I seem to condone talented art on buildings rather than tags. Matt Levy, that guy from Brooklyn cited above, also said, “Graffiti is about someone saying, ‘Look at me, look what I did’. An effective street artist is saying, ‘Hey guys, maybe we can look at the world and this environment in a different way’.”
That’s a pretty good understanding
of the line I reckon. All the while, though, I keep thinking of the quote attributed to Edmund Burke, but probably from a film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s book, War and Peace, in which the narrator declares, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”.
So if I need to sacrifice a bit of my
inner peace on a train or put up with tags scrawled over many side walls in an effort to allow the young people to express themselves so that a few will shine and help jolt the ‘good men’ [sic] of society out of their malaise, then I am prepared to do it. I hope you are too. :) Creativity is big in this issue of the
magazine, and it’s undeniably a measure of our society and individually our own psyches. If we are free to express our creativity (in whichever way it manifests through our personas), then not only do we have more fulfilment, but we also have a connecting path to the Godforce. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the articles about this. The other themes that popped up
for this issue are ‘just getting through your day’ and ‘home is where the heart is’. Not surprisingly, the two themes are interwoven with each other and with the topic of creativity. When we are creative in our personal living spaces we are expressing our heart and putting more heart into our home. Even the tiniest act of creation allows us to feel better about ourselves and our lives – and that means it’s easier to get through the day. When I read Stella’s Stargazer column
this month I laughed. The time we have just entered in June (and lasting until next June) is one of putting the heart into home too.
Do please read the interview by Dr
Muhammad Yunus. He’s an amazing man who put his heart into his homeland people back in the 1970s by lending his
HOROSCOPE HOUSE
village people the sum of $27. This took 42 people out of the clutches of the loan sharks and built a new life for them. From that sprang the Grameen bank, which lends small amounts of money, mostly to women, to set up their own businesses. He now reports meeting women who were financed by his bank all those years ago, and were therefore able to educate their families – and now their daughters are professional people. This unassuming man has single-handedly changed the lives of millions of people. The life of Sadhguru is amazing too.
You’ll get a kick out of reading how he started manifesting signs of being a holy person when he was three or four, though at the time his father thought he needed psychiatric assistance. It’s not only a good read – he has a great sense of humour – but there is a message there for us all, even if we don’t show signs of being a mystic in this life. :)
With love
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july 2012 03
Street art by Be Free, photographed by Rowena Naylor
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