TEXTS FOR JOAN ANDERSON’S PERFOMANCE/EXHIBIT OF RETREAT PAINTINGS

CHANT OF THE WANDERING STARS

In nearby shadows
Rise from the ground, each decked with stars,
Those who watch and bless in secret
The soil and the streams.

The star people have come;
They have come here.
The star people come;
They come here.

Here: fathers and mothers;
Here: elders and children

In nearby shadows
Rise from the ground, each decked with stars,
Those who watch and bless in secret
The soil and the streams.

The star people have come;
They have come here.
The star people come;
They come here
To the red earth.

Now they stop,
Just for this moment,
Here
On their long journey.

Now they stop,
Just for this moment,
Rising from the red earth,
Here
On their long journey
They appear.

They stop
On their long journey.
They show themselves.

Shining in the dark soil,
They rise.
They show themselves;
They show the dream pattern
Of the stars.

Wearing the pattern of the stars,
Marking the brown earth
With the sweep of rainfall:

Wearing the pattern of the stars,
Marking the red earth
With furrows of water;

Wearing the pattern of the stars,
Marking the black earth
With the glare of reflected sun on water;

Wearing the dream pattern,
Red earth
Marked by the plow;

Wearing the dream pattern of stars,
The red earth,
Marked by the scars of battle;

Wearing the secret pattern,
The dark earth
Marked by the scars of memory;

The star people have come;
They have come here.
The star people come;
To the earth.

Just for this moment,
They stop here
On their long journey.

Just for now,
They stop.
Rising from the red earth,
Here
On their long journey
They appear.

They stop
On their long journey
They show themselves.

In nearby shadows,
Rise from the ground, each decked with stars,
Those who watch and bless in secret
The soil and the streams.

III

As the spectacle endlessly ends & vanishes, somehow we refuse to accept the completeness of impermanence. But all the forms and instances of art that now exist, many are damaged, fragmentary, and all are devoid of their original context and hence meaning.

Beyond that, compared to all the things which have been made and still exist, how many more have been destroyed or lost, each of them a Repository of love and intuition, skill and concern, the outgrowth of a civilization that no longer exists.

So that being the likely fate of what we make, could we then embrace this? Could we regard what we do and the doing of it as completely momentary, having no future and accomplishing no communal result?

Momentary, surely. But cause and effect being inescapable, surely what we make and the making of it does influence the next instant in some truly unknown way.

So, making our diagrams of color or cloth, of sound or speech is perhaps like sand painting and may, for a moment, draw something into the world which has only hovered on its borders before being utterly swept away.

It is hard to overcome the desperate habits of permanence and completion. As the spectacle endlessly will be ending & vanishing.

***

FROM AN ACTOR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_ByGXCey68