Concerning Forgiveness and Creativity

"By art, humanity is sculpted more tender and more true..."
Jay Griffiths 

Four or five rock pigeons circle around me. Two perch upon the empty metal chairs beside me, as another one lands right on my table at this outdoor cafe.  I look into his bright orange ringed eye and he reminds me of my familial connection to their ancestral tribe. My father and his brother, Nick, raised and raced homing pigeons; I grew up hearing the calming mantra of their endless cooing in the loft on my grandfather's property.  I learned one essential part of the process of racing birds, is keeping track of them by banding them with small numbered aluminum or plastic rings around their legs. It didn't seem to me that there was anything intrinsically wrong with that at the time, just a necessary aspect.

But a quick search online for "banding birds" reveals 2,520,000 results and that is just the beginning of a long list of other kinds of banding bird information. It's overwhelming to consider, it seems we will not be satisfied until every last bird is banded, every animal collared, tagged, leashed, confined, micro-chipped or contained in animal reserves and zoos.  Are we attempting to control nature because we fear the wild and the free?  (See this recent article about “smart collars” for mountain lions as an example of our extreme need to monitor the wild.)  We capture, collar and band animals in the wild, in the name of science, like some general manager of nature in the same way we tether humans, for criminal behaviors, with ankle bracelet monitoring while under house arrest. But the animals have done no wrong, they who have lost habitat, air space, and clear water ways, have been pushed to extermination by us.  A student project by Emily Zurlo at the University of Vermont shows just how far pushed the wild mustang population is in the United States, the data predicts there will be none left by the year 2020. Just a century ago there were millions.

The British primatologist and anthropologist, Jane Goodall, wrote about our deep need to come to the earth in a humble way, asking for forgiveness for the wounds we have inflicted on our environment and of the animals sacrificed and violated in scientific experiments specifically.  As for the mammal-based foods we consume; the animals abused in our technological industry and cosmetic industry- all causing unnecessary pain and suffering, I cringe.  In I Acknowledge Mine, Goodall writes about her experience watching a videotape with her family. “We all sat watching the tape, and we were all shattered.  Afterward, we couldn't speak for a while.  The tape showed scenes from inside a biomedical research laboratory, in which monkeys paced round and round, back and forth, within incredibly small cages stacked one on top of the other, and young chimpanzees, in similar tiny prisons, rocked back and forth or side to side, far gone in misery and despair."

Isn't the first rule of medicine, to do no harm? Though much debate on the subject of benefits to humanity through research has gone before, all life forms considered, the scales tip heavily toward the holocaust of tortures imposed on animals.  How to reconcile all of this - our love of nature, with our need to control it and our continued destruction of it? And as artists, how do we find creative expression in the midst of our pain? Coming in service is one way to be with the overwhelming task, offering small acts of ritual for forgiveness.  A friend, Santa Fe artist, Dominque Mazeaud, made a prayerful practice of cleaning the river near her home for seven years. She said:
Picking up a can
From the river
And then another
On and On
It's like a devotee
Doing countless rosaries.

Peter London in his book, Drawing Closer to Nature, says “when we approach the solemn task of seeking a state of forgiveness with Nature, the many ways of achieving that desired state begin to arise as soon as we quietly and seriously turn in that direction...” Concerning forgiveness as it relates to the process of art making has some precedent in at least one study into whether or not holding onto our emotional suffering effects our imagination. Turns out, it does. It limits our imagination, it limits our ability to be fully alive, fully expressive sentient beings in this shared space where we all deserve to be wild and free.