Aura After Aura

A Series of Eight Essays about Art and the Rights Sphere

The Intention to Know, Annie Besant & C.W. Leadbeater, Thought Forms

Dear Unknown Friends,

I haven’t posted here since December. In the midst of the usual beautiful torrent of ‘holiday’ energy, the quiet, inward, contemplation of the Holy Nights, and my birthday, I had the opportunity to deliver a paper at the 100 Years of Steiner Conference at the Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was snowing as I got off the train in Boston in December. I stood on the sidewalk and waited for my ride to the hotel and was filled was a feeling I had never had before: here I am, in the city of my birth, in the month of my birth, in the snow, and I can almost remember the view from my mother’s arms as my father drove us back home through the late December light and the gentle snow falling on the city. I felt a feeling of homecoming.

The ideas in Aura After Aura have been taking form over the last few years. The idea that art has reached a place in its evolution where the old categories or genres are no longer viable is not radical. We see this happening everywhere—old ideas of gender, democracy, beauty, ethics, no longer fit; like a child who has outgrown their favorite tutu, our present epoch asks of us to find new ways of speaking about things like art, politics, and sexuality.

Which is to say, I am back here, now, ready to post a series of 8 pieces I’ve been working on. I hope to publish two of these a month for the next four months. They will be available to all my subscribers. Special gratitude goes to my paid subscribers and your continued support; that I can spend time working on these offerings.

Over the weekend there was a lot of excitement about the Super Bowl. Yesterday evening, the streets here in my neighborhood in Tucson were quiet. As I walked with my dog, I could see the glow of televisions through the windows of the houses. My daughter sent me a text message video of the half-time show; it looked like the art director was referencing Diego Rivera’s paintings of workerss dressed in white in the maize fields. A powerful choice of image in this time of immigration conflict.

Thinking about half-time shows: it is impossible to deny that the “world of yesterday” is receding in the rearview mirror as we barrel down the highway toward an uncertain future. This moment in history is unusual as humanity undergoes a sea change where the mores of the past no longer matter; everything is up for question; the technological advances continue to challenge every aspect of our lives— imagine that moment when electricity started to light up the cities, forever changing our relationship to the night; this is the moment we are in, when the advancements of just a decade ago seem quaint. Transhumanism is a good example of some of developments that have moved from the realm of imagination into our day to day lives. There is a saying, “One door closes, another door opens, and there is hell in the hallway.” I wouldn’t say we are in hell; that said, the deck of cards has been thrown up into the air.

To have a front row seat at this halftime show of Cosmic Evolution fills me with awe. Aura After Aura will attempt to follow some of these threads and understand how we might relate to them in ways the support the things that make us human; those things that we don’t want to lose along the way. There is no stopping the march of time; it is how we choose to meet the changes, in our relationship to ourselves and each other where our agency resides.

The first half of the intro to the series will be posted tomorrow afternoon.