Listen, Practice, Change, Act Justly, Live Well

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“Our bodies tell the truth, even when our minds are in denial. We are called to embodied practice: of stretching sore muscles, of practicing justice, of equanimity for solidarity.”

— Pádraig Ó Tuama, Poetry Unbound

Taking Woodstock

Taking Woodstock (2009)

Has anyone else seen this film?

I dismissed it when it opened last summer because the trailer looked to me like just another “wacky teen comedy” set incidentally against the backdrop of the Woodstock music festival. It seemed trite and trivial. In fact, when I came across it this past weekend on one of the movie channels, I found it to be a profound, joyous, and deeply layered coming of age film tempered with sorrow and loss and brimming with philosophical implication and invitation to reflect. In fact, more than a day later I am still wrestling with some of its implications.

The reviews I’ve seen of the film are very mixed, as though even a year after its release no one is quite sure what to make of it. In my opinion, the film was not promoted accurately or matched with the right audience and so failed both as popular entertainment (i.e. as a “movie”) and with more philosophical/artistic audiences (i.e. as a “film”).

For me, the central question of “Taking Woodstock” was:

How often (if ever) do we reveal even a glimpse of our true selves to each other (or even to ourselves), what are the reasons for and consquences of this self-imposed isolation, and how can we discover more about who we really are and learn to risk sharing these insights in order to better understand ourselves, draw closer to one another, and experience the simple but profound joys of truth and human connection?

Related to this question are several others, including:

• Is it possible to see ourselves in anything but a purely subjective way?
• Is it possible to observe ourselves (directly or indirectly) without the act of deliberate, conscious observation interfering with or changing the subject (in this case one’s self)?
• Do mood- or mind-altering substances (from a glass of wine to a hit of acid) or introspective techniques (such as meditation or yoga) color our perception of ourselves or reveal the truth?
• How might our relationships change as the result of more personal growth, resulting in greater confidence, resulting in more honest sharing/self-revelation, more acceptance, and less judging, enabling still greater personal growth and so on?

One character in the film quietly observes, “Everyone with their little perspective. Perspective shuts out the universe. It keeps the love out.” But as with the festival itself, the glaring, electrical spectacle of our daily experience can all too often overshadow the simple, powerful truth it subtly suggests or enables us at last to put into words. “100,000+ Hippies Descend on Rural Town”, “Governor Declares State of Emergency”, or even “Three Days of Peace, Love, and Music” fail to raise the underlying questions of how and more foundationally why we hide our true selves from each other or why occasionally, magically, powerfully our individual perspectives give way to a shared reality and together and half a million strong we find our way — if only for a moment, an hour, or a day or three — back to the Garden.

Set at Woodstock in 1969, psychedelics figure prominently in the film’s portrayal of the collective lowering of masks, removal of inhibitions, and the revelation of shared experience on both large and small scales. Other methods are alluded to, including confrontational performance art and meditation, but can mature, self-actualized human beings perceive their separation, address the cause, and escape the trap by other than chemical means?

In his poem “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” William Blake wrote that “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.”

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” describes people chained in a cave, facing a blank wall, and watching shadows cast on this wall by objects passing in front of a fire that burns behind them. The shadows are all they know of reality, and each person may interpret the shadows as they seem to him. Freed from our chains, Plato surmises that we might come to understand reality directly and objectively rather than as its shadows appear to us as individuals, but what is the instrument that could bring about this profound perspective change, and if successful would we have the courage to accept its results?

There are moments in the film where the protagonist sees joy from his parents for the very first time in their dreary lives. Their well-worn masks of tragedy, exhaustion, pain, and fear begin to slip and are at last stripped away. Have we as children ever received so great a gift from our parents as the confident and objective self-revelation that only an emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually mature human being can achieve, articulate, and intentionally risk? Can we as parents aspire to anything more important than to dance with our children, to risk showing them our true selves, to share joy and truth with them, and to gently employ our painfully collected wisdom to help them find their way out of the cave?

Can we find the strength to trust each other and to accept each other’s struggle as being as meaningful as our own?

Director Ang Lee employs an intentional ambiguity in “Taking Woodstock” to present not only the explicit film narrative and flickering imagery but to allow his audience to perceive the cave as well as the shadows cast by his characters and events as they are illuminated by the film’s incandescent premise. Is this the artist placing explicit trust in his audience or simply accepting that they may or may not be able to (or choose to) turn to see and share in the reality of the cave rather than the solitary projected spectacle? Whether trust or acceptance, maturity is required on both sides.

Ignorance, fear, and anger beget wasted potential, isolation, and hurt. As human beings we have no greater calling than to struggle to perceive more, to refuse to be ruled by our fears, and to put down anger as the destructive force that it is. Peace, love, and music was and is a great place to start.

“We were talking
About the space between us all
And the people
Who hide themselves behind a wall
Of illusion
Never glimpse the truth
Then it’s far too late
When they pass away

We were talking
About the love we all could share
When we find it
To try our best to hold it there
With our love, with our love
We could save the world, if they only knew

Try to realize it’s all within yourself
No one else can make you change
And to see you’re really only very small
And life flows on within you and without you

We were talking
About the love that’s gone so cold
And the people
Who gain the world and lose their soul
They don’t know
They can’t see
Are you one of them

When you’ve seen beyond yourself
Then you may find, peace of mind is waiting there
And the time will come when you see we’re all one
And life flows on within you and without you”

— The Beatles

“I have heard it said to someone
Or maybe it was me
There is a reason to experience
Psychedelic so we could see
To be growing up before us
Like the black and white of love
Be the focus
Be the chorus”

— Yes

Originally Published: Facebook

Date Published: Tues 27 Jul 2010

Copyright © Douglas A. Wilson and Point Five Past Lightspeed, 2010.
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