Words for a World in Exile
He was concerned – afraid what he’d told me had “broken my heart”. When I heard him say he was fighting a battle on behalf of my work I searched inside my chest and found no panic or pain there. The word for “ heart” in the Irish language is “croi”. It is the seat of emotion, the companion of the soul and the spiritual energy center in the body where personal concerns merge with universal ones. I assured him my heart wasn’t broken. My heart was calm and love still lived there. It was alive with possibilities. But I’d forgotten. The Irish are big-hearted. (They give a larger percentage of their income to charity per capita then any other people in the world.). When you’re Irish it’s easy to forget that an area of your heart can be broken and because of its size you might not feel it right away.
Thirty-five years ago there was another battle over my work. The arena, as it is now, was Public Television. This program and the current one involve Christmas Specials. There’s a distance of three and half decades and 700 miles between them, but the themes are essentially the same; the miraculous made possible during the Christmas season and delivered by divine or beneficent emissaries to humans through the inspiration of dance, theatre and music accompanied by deep spiritual intent.
I wrote the script and directed the performers for the earlier program. It’s twenty-eight minutes long, has a cast of three, and an original score with studio, outdoor and indoor locations. A young girl sits alone on Christmas Eve. As she wraps presents and watches television the weatherman says there’ll be no snow on Christmas. It’s subtle, but clear that the girl is disappointed. As she gazes at the darkness outside the window she becomes even lonelier. Her quiet state of solitude on this sacred eve of celebration allows an aperture to open within her.
A silent emissary manifests in her living room. He coalesces from the atmosphere to embody deep knowing and the spirit of the season. In moments the girl is transported to another world – a place of clarity, precision and possibility where she learns how “to make the invisible visible”. To insure this knowledge can be applied to her world her new companion must accompany her to complete quintessential cultural rituals of season - the selection of last minute gifts and a holiday tree. With this accomplished the girl returns to her living room. Once again, she is alone. Light grows in the once darkened window. The image of her mysterious visitor hovers there. As she watches, his body seems to evaporate into the ether as large snowflakes begin to fall outside the window. The astonished voice of the weatherman announces the advent of a white Christmas.
The station manager’s son- in-law produced this special. She opposed his efforts because she had her own special in the works – but he somehow persuaded her to allow us to go ahead with production. Our program received a Regional EMMY for “Outstanding Entertainment Program of the Year”. I was performing in Belgium when I received the telegram - “Sandy, We won the EMMY! Randy”. The program was also distributed nationally and broadcast by many stations throughout the United States.
My current offering to Public Television, which I conceived, choreographed and directed, is less than four minutes in length. Three angels inhabit it. They arrive suddenly from heaven with news of the precious gift given to us by the appearance of the Holy Child. We are reminded that the urgency of our need has been answered and we are not alone. Perhaps the rejection of this work by Channel 8, Atlanta has many levels of complexity or it may be that a theme so central to the meaning of Christmas has no place in their current programming climate. Although the battle seems lost, my friend and colleague continues to lobby for the angels. It seems possible that many will be denied the opportunity to view this fully realized work that has been performed live on the stage for three years at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts at Emory University for sold out audiences as part of the annual Celtic Christmas Concerts in Atlanta.
These video manifestations of my work are made from the same cloth the Irish poet and dramatists W. B. Yeats used to fashion his artistic expressions. They speak for a world in exile; one that exists within this world – as close as breath and the rhythms of the heart. It is a place woven at its core from genetic, ancestral and cultural memory – full of beauty, sorrow and redemption. Although poetic, it is not essentially a world of metaphor. It is most easily described by images, feelings, words and thoughts that emerge and retreat in counterpoint to our culture’s consensual reality. For many it is a realm of retrieval where components for which there seem to be no words can be reclaimed even though these qualities and historical realities have long been banished from our consciousness. It has found refuge and sanctuary in the realms of Irish myth, poetry, literature, folktale and culture. This is a world that once belonged to us all - grounded and connected to nature, the body and the cosmos. Rather than being some idiosyncratic area of Irish imagination and whimsy it is a remnant of world wisdom and transcultural knowing. The Irish have retained it, died for it and carried it to the corners of the earth as part of their worldwide Diaspora.
As for the fate of my latest offering to Public Television my response at this point is to say that creativity and controversy seem fated as eternal partners. The creative force wants to move us. It’s inherent - a constant by-product of the creative process. Whether we create or partake, we will be moved, set in motion and sent in directions that are unexpected, sublime and, at times, uncomfortable. Comfort often breeds immobility on some level of the personality. Life is motion and flow. Everything in our body moves. When movement ceases so does life in this world. To refuse to move is dangerous - a kind of personal and cultural death wish.
