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I continue pondering about clowns and clowning as I try to figure out how to engage my classroom with performance and clowning. I continue to contemplate the song[1] that asks: What is it that you give me? That has no measure, nor ever will? The clown is the purest excess, the figure of the exaggeration. The clown’s actions are always too much or too little. They carry something more than what is human, that which we all lack, that we owe, that we hope for, that is known to be lost. The clown is life’s box of surprises, Pandora’s box, the lost key to our desires. The clown is the poet of Manoel de Barros who will irrigate the fields with a sieve. What will it be? What has no remedy, and never will? What has no recipe? The clown has the remedy for all the ills in the world, but always forgets the exact recipe for things. It is also a risk because the clown offers us a mirror of ourselves that can frighten us, that makes us revolt. And that’s how it is, either the clown has the medicine but forgot the prescription, or they have the prescription but didn’t take the medicine. A disaster. What will it be? What happens inside us That shouldn’t? That defies the ones who are absent? The clown always defies authorities because they don’t even know what authority is. In the world of clowning there are no real hierarchies. The ones shown are only for the performance. The clown is an anarchist, they make their own laws. The clown lives solely and exclusively on the joy they desperately seek and give. They live in disregard of every law, of every yoke, of all suffering, of all pain. As the comedian Leo Bassi said, “The buffoon respects nothing and no one, be it the president, the emperor, himself, or even God.” What will it be? What is made of brandy that does not quench? What is it like to be sick of a revelry? The clown’s joy is the shadow of all our sadness. Their show doesn’t want to change the world, but just to offer a laugh, like brandy, to make life more bearable, to be able to take another step, to believe once more. The clown is always sick from their revelry, since their revelry is a flame. What will it be? That not even ten commandments will reconcile Nor any ointments relieve Nor all the breakers all alchemy Nor all the saints Clowning is a covenant without promises, a faith without beliefs, a convent of stupid monks who live off in an animist world. When they pray, they get the order of prayers wrong, when they email the prayer they send it to the wrong saint. They confuse the Orixás, call Jesus “Genésio,” think Ave Maria is Maria Bonita, offer padê for Exu while praying to the Holy Virgin, not really sure if she actually is a virgin. They call Buddha “my king,” Jesus “my comrade,” and Muhammad “my partner.” With all due respect! But don’t doubt the clowns, those holy knotty monks! In their shows, some of them carried the magic of witches and learned alchemy from magicians, dances from shamans, and spells from Spirits. What will it be? What has no rest, nor ever will? what has no limit? The world is so complicated now that the task of laughter is an endless, restless task. Joy puts a limit on hate, debunks anger and undoes the knot of resentment. Only joy has no limits in all its immoderation. Only a happy people will engage the revolution! What is it that you give me? That which burns me inside, what happens to me? That which disturbs my sleep, what happens to me? Ask any clown what’s burning inside and what’s more than heartburn. What makes the clown lose sleep is the quest to find a new way to make somebody laugh: a new face, a new choreography, a new tumble, a new song, a new shame, a new trip, a new look. What is it that happens to me? That all the tremors come to shake That all the ardors come to fan me That all the sweat comes to soak me That all my nerves are begging That all my organs are cheering What a fearful affliction makes me beg Clowning, like poetry, is the art of wonder; of the unkempt, disorganized chest; of the incessant search for a fullness that, it seems, was promised to us somewhere. However, the clown never searches for things to fulfill their heart. A flower is enough to fulfill the clown’s heart and make their green nose happy! Clowning is the fullest acceptance of our glorious limitations and its full celebration. Clowning is feeling every organ of the body vibrating and making it all laugh. Clowning is the ability to be kin with other species, to see the earth as a glorious place where billions of other worlds live. Wonders without end! Clowns try to learn to laugh like the animals do. Clowning is the art of listening, of listening where no one knows how to listen. Clowning is knowing how to look where no one else sees. And making people feel heard, seen, and welcomed. The art of clowning is pointing to our broken and breakable hearts, to the most exact compilation of the index of our faults. Clowning is thus our most complete translation. What is it that you give me? That is not ashamed, and never will be That has no government, and never will That has no sense What makes a clown a clown are their mistakes, their faults, their scattered pieces, their stupidities, and their open view of themselves. They know, with the qoheleth, that trying to go anywhere is running after the wind. But they love the wind! They’ve already made so many mistakes, they’ve already tripped over their own feet, too; they’ve done a lot of nonsense; they’ve already hurt a lot of people, they’ve already saddened so many others. But clowns don’t carry the guilt or shame of what they are because they know they are incredibly imperfect, exuberantly limited. They learn along the way. They change! They carry within themselves the feeling we carry within us: a simple, vulnerable, malleable, and vertiginous matter, and it is from this matter that we are all made. Oh, those clowns… they are a joke. What a joke! [1] The conversation is with the song “O Que Será que Será” (“What Will Be Will Be”) by Chico Buarque.

The mother noticed the boy tenderly. She said: My son, you are going to be a poet. You will carry water in your sieve your whole life. You will fill voids with your naughtiness And some people will love you for your nonsense -Manoel de Barros[1] If you have followed my two last blogs, I am adventuring into new forms of scholarship and for that I am entering into the realm of performance, clowning, and ecology. The play I am putting together is about a clown called Wajcha (Quechua for orphan) who is searching for Pachamama, his ultimate belonging. Since I am turning Wajcha into a clown, I need to understand the life of the clown. A note about Wajcha will come later in the process, but what is a clown? The figure of the clown has always enchanted me. My father was a clown, without paint, red nose, or big clothes. He had the Buddha’s smile. And he made everyone laugh. Because of him I learned to like the circus, which was cheap to go see, and I fell in love with the art. He loved cinema, did theater, and was a writer, poet, and musician. He played the violin, guitar, and harmonica. It was from him that I learned to laugh. With him I learned to like Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and the Three Stooges. In Brazil, the clown that most marked me was named Arrelia. He always started everything by asking, “How are you, how are you, how are you?” And everyone said, “Okay, okay, okay.” It was the beginning of many laughs. Then I grew up, became an adult, grew stupid, and forgot about clowns. It was during COVID that the clown that inhabited my father his whole life came to visit me. There was so much sadness in the world that I needed joy and laughter. In this search, I had to wrestle culturally: to be a clown and to laugh are both cultural expressions. Living in the United States has changed me in ways I still don’t know. But what I know is that I found my voice here. Strangely enough, living here made me bigger, extravagant, multiple, and shameless, to the point of naïveté, and bold. It was through my immigrant persona that I found a deeper part of myself. On the other hand, living here also made me quieter, suspicious, and more serious, not knowing exactly who or what to trust. It definitely made me more fearful. And it is in between these two worlds within me that my clown showed up. My name should be “Clowndio”! The figure of the clown holds a multiplicity of selves: extravagance and exaggeration, silliness, lack of shyness, and excessive naïveté. How can one be a clown in a prudish, moralistic, and tense society? Or how can one be a clown in a very proper, serious, rational, academic world that also creates so much fear? While humor thrives in so-called proper places, humor does not survive fear. When humor is done with love, it stretches boundaries and casts out fear. If humor is connected with love, then as Saint Augustine says, “Be humorous and do what you want.” For humor is not “anything goes,” but rather a very careful craft of attending, paying attention to, and caring for those around you. Still, humor is not that simple. Humor is cultural and most of my Brazilian sensibilities do not fit here. My family here will say how embarrassed they often are with me. To find humor in another culture is to find its heartbeat and it is so difficult to get when you didn’t grow up in that place. And yet, humor is also universal in its specificities. I hate how clowns are portrayed on Halloween in the US. They are terrifying! I hate this relationship between clowns and horror. But after studying the history, I understand that it includes the the terror-striking clown. This helped me understand the Halloween clowns even though I can’t stand them. It is said that Stephen King wrote It, about the horrifying Pennywise the Dancing Clown, after he found out that clowns are what scare children the most. I couldn’t believe it! However, King was right to portray a clown as a shape-shifting monster dealing with a void, and with its own “macroverse.” That’s true! The clown is not just a sweet person; they carry within themselves abysses and monstrosities. I, however, want something very different! I want my clown to touch the horrors of the world and return them as laughter, lightness, and silliness. I want a clown who pays close attention to the disasters of the world but interprets these disasters in a way that people can engage with and not shut down. I am fine with boredom, but I can’t stand boring things. There’s nothing worse than boring people. I want to be funny, at least for a few! Funny, joy, laughter, silliness: these are all forms of power against capitalism, which is the most potent producer of sadness in our time! The current demand for happiness everywhere is a symptom of this very sad society. No, happiness is not the measure of a good life, but to laugh is an antidote to the forces of death that keep pressing us down into places lacking joy and energy.  My clown emerges as an anti-capitalist character wearing flowers and a green nose as he searches for Pachamama. Sure, Wajcha doesn’t know what he is doing, and in that way we are very similar! All he wants is to make someone laugh and pay attention to the land. The clown is a person who feels a lot, who feels more than they should. They feel something, as the song[2] says, That springs forth from their skin And they ask: What is it that happens to me? The clown knows that they need to go where the people are, where children (small or big) are. Then the clown may even paint their face and do some tricks and, if you ask why the clown does it all, they’ll say: I don’t know, I don’t know what this is springing forth from my skin. What is it that happens to me? that rises to. my cheeks and makes me blush? The clown receives the heart of someone and carries it with care. The clown blushes with joy, never with shame. Holding life is a unique event; the clown blushes with the charm of the simplest things. What is it that happens to me? that jumps out at me, betraying me? The clown sees too much but doesn’t realize that what they see multiplies and remakes itself into other things that no one else sees. The clown is naïve. The clown doesn’t work in linear ways, but keeps looping in symbiotic moves. The clown betrays systems of profit. Fully present in the place, the clown doesn’t have much need for anything. A little flower becomes the clown’s whole world! The clown follows a bee around the world. The clown falls in love with a cactus and makes their life in the desert. What is it that happens to me? that squeezes my chest and makes. me confess? The clown is a confessor of their own stupidities, mistakes, limits, naïvetés, disappointments, sadness, and loneliness... And as a confessor, the clown opens to the confession of all the frailties of the world. The clown is a collector of peoples’ stories. As Zuca Sardan said, “The clown is the ultimate priest.” A disguised prophet, a compassionate one, a coyote trickstering communities, an ambassador without citizenship, a foreigner without a country, the clown despises nations. What is it that happens to me? What can no longer be concealed? The clown is incapable of hiding; what you see is what you get. The clown is so honest that they can’t help but be a tremendous pretender. “He pretends so completely that he even pretends that the pain he really feels is pain.”[3] And he also pretends that it is joy that makes everyone laugh. What is it that happens to me? That's not right for anyone to refuse? No, the clown does not understand the refusal of a smile and is stubborn until they succeed. With their annoying galoshes! For the clown has only one law: It is declared that everyone is given not only the right, but fundamentally, the duty, to laugh! What is it that happens to me? That makes me a beggar? makes me plead? The clown leaves their home, paints themself, dresses in strange clothes as if begging for a smile, even if only from the corner of someone’s mouth. Every clown lives off the crumbs of other people’s happiness. And it is this joy that makes them beg for any smile. [1] Manoel de Barros, excerpt from the poem “The boy who carried water in his sieve,” in Exercicios de Ser Criança (São Paulo: Editora Salamandra, 1999). [2] This is a conversation with the song “O Que Será que Será” (“What Will Be Will Be”) by Chico Buarque. [3] Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems (New York: Penguin, 2006).

Scholarship through Performance – Part Two When I started to think about a play, I never imagined how hard it would be. To write/perform a play to bring my clown--a new entity--into existence, is a lot of work. I have a theater director working with me and he tells me to think from my body. We talk so much about bodies but we are so often consumed by our brains and mind. My Brazilian teacher, Luis Louis, tells me repeatedly: “Cláudio, you think too much! Do something first, then you can think.” Oh, this process is literally painful. I asked my teacher to be patient with me as I will struggle through this process of learning. I am learning with my teacher that I have to feel what is within me gaining form and shape, life and spirit! I have my clown living within me, but I must give birth to it! In order to do that I have to play with the movements of the body, with images, and with objects, clothes, hats, etc. And my teacher asks me many questions: How does this clown act alive on stage? Does he speak, and if so, in what language? Does he have repetitive body movements? Does your clown have large or small gestures? What is the heart of the clown composed of and what makes the clown alive? My teacher said: You bringing your clown to life is like your clown throwing a bucket of water into a world on fire, believing that you will be successful. Everybody knows that this is impossible, even ridiculous, but your clown does not know that. He wholeheartedly believes he can do it and will do it, no matter what! That is his gift to the world. The portion below shows my thinking process in engaging different forms of knowing, doing, teaching, and performing. This is how the play started to get a form and shape.   Main Theme A clown called Pachamama discovers that the Gaia, the earth, is hurting, and goes around the world feeling its pain and struggling with climate disasters. He then discovers that he is Gaia and a part of it. The show is made of several skits that compose a story and a trajectory (still undefined). Everything is yet to be fully developed and needs to go through the test of practice. In each scene I want the clown moving with death and life, disaster and possibilities, sadness and joy, responding to everything with its usual clumsiness, stupidity, awkwardness, sincerity, naiveté, joy, beauty, etc. With this show, I want to help people find courage to go deep into climate disasters and find agency, hope, and faith in the midst of it all, rather than running away from it. In the end I will honor Prof. James Cone and Union Seminary, who shaped me in so many ways.   Major Influences My father, Charles Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Emmet Kelly, and Slava’s Snow Show A Metaphor Emmet Kelly carrying a bucket of water in a circus on fire. “Seventy-two years ago today, in Hartford, Connecticut, someone photographed a clown carrying a bucket of water toward a fire. It’s a surreal image, haunting in the old black-and-white way. The clown is stepping through an arid landscape littered with what appear to be wooden crates, a lone railroad car, and the suggestion of bleachers. As clowns go, he’s the sad tramp kind, a pained grimace on his face. In front of him, to the left, someone is exiting the frame—a portion of a leg is visible—and the clown follows, gripping his bucket, exuding dread. He’s heading toward something unseen and tragic, something almost ghostly.” - William Browning This show is precisely this: the show is about a clown carrying a bucket of water to help the earth that is already on fire.   Place This is a theater play to be performed at Union Theological Seminary in NYC. The chapel has no fixed seating so I hope to have people sitting on two sides of the chapel (or in a U shape) with the play happening in the middle. The space has some lightning that I can use. Here is a picture of the space. How is this all going to be and happen? I have no idea. One thing, and one thing only, I know: this is much bigger than me. It scares me so much! I hope that with practice anxiety will turn into a certain trust and that as my clown starts to move, I will feel more confident. I will let you know how it goes.

This semester I am on sabbatical and I decided to shift some gears in my scholarship. I have depended so much on a certain scholarship for my teaching that I feel now another world is opening for me. Since I opened myself to a different relationship with the earth, one of allowing myself to be affected by it, so many things are happening to me. I have always been eager to know everything I can learn about what I hear, touch, and see. My library is way too big and what could have been my retirement is now composed of shelves packed with books. For a few years there has been something growing in me that tells me to slow down that eagerness and sheer desperation. A while ago I lost 1,600 computer files with all my texts, books, scholarship, research, which was devastating. I was thrown into a place of fear, grief, anger, and loss. I felt like I had nothing to rely on. After a long period of reflection, I now wonder if it was my own unconscious telling me: enough with that, that eagerness, that desperation to know. I started pondering my reasons for hiding under those unfulfilled desires. Was I trying to cover up everything that I actually don’t know and am so afraid people will discover about me? What was this desperate need to try to know everything? I am still wrestling with it. And let me say, books haven’t stopped arriving. But now that I am trying to figure out how to pay attention to the earth, I have more to learn and more to read and have to pay attention differently. There is something in me now that is closer to joy than obligation when I read, when I research, when I teach. As I move closer to the earth, I am trying to do what the Brazilian song says: “Caress the earth, know the desires of the earth.” As I do this I am getting closer to myself and whole new worlds are opening up. And that means other ways of learning, teaching, relating. As I learn with indigenous people that the earth is always inhabited by doubles and multiples and other natural and social relationships, I am discovering the joy of my symbiotic being and keep pondering what it means to live in these forms of world relations. My spirituality, always so much dependent on modern forms of thinking, is now becoming freer, as I search for untapped forms of my own traditions and other wisdoms and ways of being. I feel I need to know the world through my belly button, through my intuition, through my perception, but how do I do that? This discovery is pushing me to a world of feelings and sensations, experiences and knowing, that are pretty much anathema for proper scholarship. But I am allowing myself to feel with other beings in ways that I never allowed myself to do and be before. I am gaining the company of other thinkers: other theologians, artists, anthropologists, biologists, geologists, and indigenous thinkers guide me. It was during COVID-19 that the idea of a play came to me. It started with a visitation from my father who was a fantastic artist with a combination of many gifts: a musician, a clown, a theater actor, a song writer, a movie buff, an inventor of games, a poet. During my daily walks I felt his presence. He came to me as a clown and a question started to circulate in my head and my body: How can we engage climate catastrophe, devastation, and grief using humor and laughter? What if a clown walked around the earth figuring out its disasters, sadness, and losses and responded like a clown with naiveté, stupidity, awkwardness, lightness, and humor? Since then, the idea of a play has stayed with me. I have written a script and am looking for funds. But how do we raise funds when all we know in academia is about writing books, editing books, articles, journals, and so forth? Furthermore, the word “clown” is a red nose, oops, a red flag to any serious scholarship. I tried applying for scholarships from the usual places I know to no avail. They all look for innovative thinking, but let us be honest, even the word innovative has limits. Clowning? Really? A friend who proofread my proposal asked, “Do you really need to use the word ‘clown’?” It was a great question and I laughed. Fundraising seeming hopeless, I started to save money. I asked my school for help, and I am getting great support which I am so grateful for, and I feel blessed. But this project will need more money and I am trying in every way I can to get some. I decided to include students and created a class on humor, laughter, and performance in order to do this through pedagogical lenses. I will teach this class with a musician and scholar from the Ifá tradition in Brazil. Here is the course proposal:   Humor and Laughter: Resilience and Resistance Across Religious Traditions To be able to laugh, be humorous, and silly are tremendous ways to resist, show love/compassion, and affirm life at a time when depression, anger, sadness, climate catastrophes, and disasters of all kinds are piling up. This course focuses on the following resources of world sense: the Russian Christian tradition of the Holy Fool, Indigenous traditions of Coyote, Afrodiasporic oralities present in the sacred Itan of Ifá, and the multiple presences of Exu with the recognition of the coexistence of positive and negative forces. This course is a theoretical-practical introduction to religious humor and laughter through musical improvisation, sound sculpture, dance, and ritual-performance integrating the senses with the environment. The course will end with a collective performance/play called When Pachamama Meets Gaia. This course is taught by religious teachers/performers who have their foundations crossed by the religious traditions of Christianity and Ifá. Now I need to catch up with my own ideas and proposals. The syllabus is on the way but the most difficult thing now is practicing so my clown can come to life. Next time I will say more about the show and the processes of transformation I am having to go through in order to do this.

In Por Uma Educação Romantica (Papirus, 2003), Rubem Alves speaks about how he found his way to poetry. He describes how woundedness he experienced in life made him understand that literature, poetry, music, storytelling, and the visual arts were not only nutrients for violated and hungry bodies but also joy for anguished souls. He writes: “Science is fire and pans, indispensable kitchenware. But poetics is chicken and okra, delectable food for those who love this dish.” As an educator, storyteller, and world-maker, he was a compulsive fruidor de vita—he conjured new life into being. We have reached the end of a fourth semester touched by an ongoing pandemic that has brought so much loss and grief. Our families, our communities, and our learning spaces are filled with bodies that are carrying an overlay of stories, experiences, and memories that feel like webs spun out of un-rootedness, pain, and trauma. And I have been asking myself how to begin to undo the trauma that we have all metabolized. How can we redesign our classroom encounters, rituals, spiritual practices, and ways of knowing? How can we experiment with other ways of being, invent other vocabularies and grammars, other corporeal practices for grounding, creativity, and connection? I believe Rubem Alves would invite us to pay attention to the spaces where poetic inventions emerge—spaces of art making that are ripe with the potential to smuggle life, joy, and creativity back into these many landscapes of death. What kind of potent conjuring could happen if we cleaned our brushes, wiped our camera lenses, heated our welding tools, recovered our songs, dusted our instruments, located our yarn, filled our confined spaces with pulsating bodies that are not afraid to reinvent erotic grammars of playfulness and ritual, to heal these wounds? Art, as a way of feeling, knowing, and healing allows us to access what is hidden within our most intimate recesses. What our busy minds want to forget, our embodied artistic practices tend to re-member. From rage to grief to wonder, the arts help us touch, sense, and name our emotions and educate our affections while inspiring us to resist, denounce, agitate, heal, connect, and generate tools for speculative imagination, for integration of embodied, emotional, and intellectual knowledge. When we immerse ourselves in acts of creation, we have access to the visceral, the somatic life of the body: its reflections, limits, intuition, answers, desires, and needs. Through artistic languages, we can begin to weave the invisible back into the perceptible. Art also has the power to evoke, to create other possible worlds. And because of art’s power to provoke, we are able to sit with the trouble, to lean into instability, to practice unlearning, and to affirm our inherent capacity to be at once problematic and prophetic. In a way, and as Alves proposes, the arts remind us of the life that is buried beneath the weight of our responsibilities, our angst, and our pain. Sometimes, Alves affirms, life has to lay dormant for years, buried within our sepulchers… Sometimes life only has a chance after death. So, in the midst of the death that surrounds our days, weeks, and months, and the millions of lives lost to COVID-19, I share with you the work of an artist whose work has activated my classroom, reanimating and mobilizing teacher-learners to create otherwise, even in the face of impossibility. vanessa german describes herself as “a citizen artist who centers the exploration of human technologies that respond to the ongoing catastrophes of structural racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, resource extraction, and misogynoir.” german’s work ranges from sculptures to performances, rituals, processions, installation, photography, and much more. As a way of sentir-pensar of the world, german’s work seeks to “repair and reshape disrupted human systems, spaces, and connections.” Her practice also engenders new models for being and becoming in the world that incorporate healing, creativity, tenderness, and collectivity to address our society’s most pernicious violences. In the work entitled Blue Walk, curated by Wa Na Wari, german staged what she named “” In the context of this pandemic and the interlocking systems of oppression, german’s performance invited participants to acknowledge “the holiness of the Black body on the living planet as a healing channel of release and power.” Performers touched, sensed, shared, and metabolized experiences of rage, grief, tenderness, laughter, and the need to rest. This particular pilgrimage was staged in September, during the Time-based Art Festival organized by the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art. Participants were invited to walk “in the power of the Blues. Moving in the power of Water, Creativity, and Dimensional Wholeness. The Ritual is the Goodbye Song and The Lifting Up Song. We learn this in a short period of togetherness pre-ritual. These songs are about listening, giving permission to the voice and the body, and taking up space and sky.”                                   vanessa german’s potent performance enfleshes art as a way of feeling, knowing, and healing. Through storytelling, mixed media, assemblage of bodies, and textile, german mediates ritual and collective acts of togetherness to reclaim the right of Black people to share in power, spirituality, and presence. Non-Black participants are invited to witness, to be mindfully present, and to confront the ways in which we internalize and externalize anti-Blackness in our relations and lives. Collectively witnessing the work of artists such as german opens up a “capacity to relate deeply and respectfully across differences,” while maintaining a “receptivity to the unknown,” to borrow Laura Pérez’s language (Eros and Ideologies [Duke University Press, 2019] xx). Inherently polyvalent, these works have a tremendous power to connect, reverberate, and reveal what is hidden within our interiority. As sites for world-making and choreographing new possibilities of being, feeling, knowing, and healing, the visual arts can cultivate in us an orientation and openness toward wonder, mystery, and that which we have othered, forgotten, disposed of, or violenced.  This pandemic, the ensuing uprisings, and the incapacity of governments to decently respond to the urgencies of our times have impacted us in ways that we cannot fully grasp at the moment. By inviting these works of art into our classrooms, learning communities, and academic spaces, I believe we can conjure new possibilities of life that allows us to sense and comprehend the world differently—even in the face of impossibility, interruption, and derealization. Works like Blue Walk are, indeed, nutrients for violated and hungry bodies as well as joy for suffering souls.   *Photos by Tojo Andrianarivo. vanessa german, Blue Walk, curated by Wa Na Wari, September 2021, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art.

Introduction to the Series The cinema has become an important means of cultural communication, a contemporary language in need of understanding and explication . . . Some even believe that cinema studies is positioned to become the new MBA, a means of general preparation for careers in fields as diverse as law and the military.[1] Although multimedia literacy is not one of the accreditation standards for theological schools (yet!), add theological studies to the diverse fields mentioned in the quote above. As seminary education continues to follow the higher education trend toward online teaching and learning, instructors are recognizing the need to enhance their multimedia literacy. Minimally, it is important to note that many of our students are already literate in the contemporary language of cinema. Many students would agree with the following:  Movies serve not simply as a commodity but as a primary storytelling medium of the twenty-first century, interpreting reality for us, providing us with a common language, and acting as a type of cultural glue.[2] For many, “image” has replaced “text” as the central tool of communication. This substitution challenges theology’s centrality of the Word (text) and revives a longstanding love/hate relationship between the pious and images. The obstacles are especially palpable for an oral/aural ecclesial practice like preaching. After all, faith comes through hearing (Romans 10:17), not seeing, right? Despite such challenges, the Reformation spirit asks us theologians to embrace new means of communicating the gospel. Cinematic competency seems to be today’s printing press. So, in an attempt to meet students where they are (and teach others along the way), I’ve tried to boost my multimedia literacy by becoming a student of the cinema and seeking convergences between filmmaking and homiletics for the purposes of enlivening the preached word, communicating the gospel, and impacting hearers and their/our world. Part 1: Nobody Goes to the Cinema to Read the Screenplay Despite numerous obvious differences between the two fields that might render them too dissimilar for comparison (for example, films take years to produce and preachers generally have to squeeze sermon preparation into 6 busy days; films are primarily visual experiences, sermons are primarily aural experiences), preachers have much to learn from filmmakers. In this 4-part blog series, I will propose elements, concepts, and techniques from filmmaking that can serve preachers. We begin with this week’s reminder: Nobody goes to the cinema to read the screenplay . . . or even to hear it read. In the same way, nobody goes to worship to read a written sermon . . . or even watch the preacher read it. Oh, yes, people in the pews have become accustomed to the latter, but they should expect more from us preachers. You see preaching is inevitably a kind of performance. These two “p” words are often considered to be at odds since preaching is not solely for entertainment or to heighten the performers ego (to be sure, performers in a variety of arts, including film, expect their performances to move beyond these two outcomes as well). However, preaching is a performance in that it “completes, carries out, accomplishes” something, as its Old French etymology suggests (par-fournir). Indeed, preaching brings an experience to life. T.S. Eliot noted that “Literature was turning blood into ink.” Preaching, on the other hand, turns ink (the written biblical text) into blood; that is, it intends to bring the sacred text to life. Therefore, a sermon is a road map or a blue print for a transformational experience. “Road map” and “blueprint” are often used for screenplays as well. Preachers would do well to consider the following analogy from a screenwriter. However brilliant, [a screenplay is] always in a state of becoming, forever on the way to being something else—a film. You can admire a cocoon for its marriage of function and form, but ultimately it’s the butterfly that will make its way in the world.[3] Or, as another puts it, “. . . screenplays don’t really exist until they’re made into movies.”[4] In the same way, one might consider that a written sermon doesn’t really exist until it’s preached. So, how does this connection to the digital world guide the teaching of preaching? First and foremost, simply making the analogy explicit quickly resonates with preachers-to-be. Therefore, students are challenged to make their “scripts” (yes, I call them scripts) a means to an end, and not the ends themselves. Sermons that pay attention to sermon delivery from the beginning of the writing/crafting process tend to create more of an experience for and with the listeners. Such preaching has more of a chance to turn ink into blood and “make its way in the world.”   [1] Robert K. Johnston, Craig Detweiler, and Kutter Callaway. Deep Focus: Film and Theology in Dialogue, 11. [2] Deep Focus, 10. [3] Dan Gurskis. The Short Screenplay: Your Short Film from Concept to Production (Aspiring Filmmaker's Library), Kindle Edition, xii. [4] Joel Engel, Oscar-Winning Screenwriters on Screenwriting (New York: Hyperion), 2. 

Click Here to Read Part 1 Somewhere along my life’s journey, I learned to play an Australian Aboriginal instrument called the didjeridoo. The didjeridoo is a percussion instrument, said by the Aborigines to be older than the African drum. They use the didjeridoo for meditation, rituals, and rites. A didjeridoo is a long, usually wooden instrument (looks like a rain stick) which is played by blowing into one end. Any didj plays only one note. By manipulating the breath into the didj, the player can shape, prolong, and play-with the one note to create different kinds of sounds. The sounds are often described as basic, primordial, ethereal, and other-worldly. As if the ability to play the didjeridoo is not quirky enough–I can also circular breath. Circular breathing is a technique used by players of wind instruments to produce a continuous tone without interruption. This is accomplished by breathing in through the nose while simultaneously pushing air out though the mouth using air stored in the cheeks. I can circular breath with my dijeridoo. I play my didj for my own meditation. I have, over the years, played two or three times in our seminary chapel services. I have never thought of playing in concert–until March 20, 2019. On March 20th, five-time Grammy award winning, renowned jazz bass player Victor Wooten came to our campus for a day of teaching and to give an evening concert. Wooten, author of the book The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music, is a master teacher. He infused his lessons with wisdom from his mother and stories of how he started to play the bass at age 3, then, by age 5, he and his four older brothers were on tour as the opening band for Curtis Mayfield. Wooten coupled his life stories with his vast knowledge of music theory and his ability to play the bass in innovative ways. He is a creative genius. At some moment during the day, Victor asked me if I played an instrument. I told him that I play the didjeridoo. He said, “Good–you’ll play with me at the concert tonight.” The moment of emphatic invitation was that spontaneous, that casual, and that unexpected. Reflecting now upon that moment, I suspect I routinely do that to students. I hear that they have an ability, a capacity, a talent and I, without hesitation, incorporate that/them into the band that is our classroom. I am accustomed to being the band leader–I was surprised, on this day, to be a member of the band. I had confidence that I could do what Victor asked me to do because I knew I could play my instrument. What I did not anticipate was my own nervousness and stage fright. Near the end of the Wooten concert, I sat in the green room knowing my song was next. I could feel the shallowness of my own breath. I was self-conscious. As I sat, my feet began to cramp. I told myself, “Since I don’t play with my feet, all I have to do is hobble out on stage and sit down, then I can play.” I reached for some water to calm my cramps, but then reasoned that I would need to use the bathroom . . .  I was panicking!  Inside my head was a voice of confusion and terror. I knew enough to make myself take a few deep breaths and that calmed my fear, if only a bit. As Victor ended a song, I left the green room and went to the wings to wait. The panic rose again–this time my feet were not cramping, but instead I could not focus. I felt like I had lost control of my body. I heard Victor call my name and I stepped out on stage–smiling and terrified. I retrieved my didj which had been pre-set on the other side of the piano and took my seat in the band. Mark Miller was on piano, Elias Aponte-Ortega was on cajón and Wooten was on bass. The music started and I realized I could not hear–I was deaf! I began to play my didj but all I could hear was air and not a note from my didj. I grew more panicked. I closed my eyes. With eyes closed I could hear myself playing, but I was not playing well. Then I heard Victor say “yeah.” I looked up and Victor was looking at me, smiling and bouncing his head to the rhythm of the song. When I saw Victor, I relaxed–just a little bit. I reminded myself to keep looking at the band leader. Victor, with bass in hand, walked over closer to me and kept his eyes on me and kept smiling at me. As I played, I grew stronger and more focused. He turned and walked back to the middle of the stage. As we had planned, Victor and the other instruments brought their part of the song come to an end and I, on didj, extended my part so the last sound was the didj. I played solo for several moments then ended. The crowd erupted with praise, applause and wonder. I stood, raised my hands above my head, and basked in the surreal moment of it all–still terrified!  By all reports, no one knew I was terror stricken. I, from the vantage of the audience, had played brilliantly (thank God and thank Wooten!). One week later, I recounted my experience of stage fright and terror to my class who had studied Wooten’s book. My story surprised them. I asked if they had had such experiences. The majority of the students yelled “YES!” then some continued–“here, with you, every week!” One student said she had been in terror since having received her admissions letter (she’s graduating this spring). I told them I knew nervousness and butterflies, but this kind of terror was new to me. They looked at me silently as if to say, “Welcome to our world.”  Another student asked if there was a moment that I calmed down. I thought–and remembered the moment I heard Wooten’s voice. His voice brought me back to myself–just a little. Then, when he walked over to me, I was able to restore a bit of my own confidence. I told the students that when I got in touch with the fact that I had a band leader who knew what he was doing, I could believe in myself in that moment. New experiences make for better, more empathetic teaching. My experience of terror and stage fright, as well as my experience of having had the band leader lead me through the moment has made me more aware of the depth of students’ fears and the power of the band leader, in the midst of that fear, to create a beautiful and innovative song. Instilling confidence in students to move to higher accomplishments and supporting that confidence through the presence of an expectant and knowledgeable teacher is my renewed focus. And, if Wooten ever needs a didjeridoo player in another band–I’m available!

Click Here to Read Part 2 Spectacles create excitement. Experiencing the excitement of spectacle used to be reserved for such moments as the circus’s annual appearance, bringing elephants, lions and clowns. Or it happened on the rare occasion of a World’s Fair, which was considered one of the most exciting events to visit a place in a lifetime. Now, we live in a world where spectacles are available to be viewed or participated in on a daily basis. Bigger-than-life stories flood the internet. Our senses and sensitivities are bombarded through the 24-hour news cycle. Personal participation in social media keeps our imaginations revved-up and our cell phone cameras at the ready. Movies and video games have special effects so keen you think you are inside the action. Virtual reality headsets invite persons to meet up with friends from around the world at live sports, concerts, or just to watch a favorite TV show together. We can now, on a daily basis, dial-into excitement. In comparison, our classrooms, filled with lectures, discussions and the occasional field trip seem humdrum, ho-hum–just plain boring. Even our on-line courses typically replicate the patterns and learning modes of brick-and-mortar classrooms inviting adult learners into lecture and discussion in digital classrooms. We merely recreate a digital version of incarnate passivity. The change in season from winter to spring usually helps make the semester seem longer and more boring. By April in the spring semester, we are not close enough to the end of school year for a sprint to the end, and we are too far from the beginning to still be eager and anticipatory. It is a dangerous moment in the semester that could, if not tended to, derail the best course. Since there is no calendared spectacle, and since mid-semester is a low energy moment in our community, I planned something that I thought would be EXCITING. I planned something I thought would wake up, shake up, and get learning juices flowing. I invited renowned jazz musician, Victor Wooten to our campus to teach and give a concert! It is a worthwhile question to ask–“How did you get five time Grammy Award winning Victor Wooten to teach an entire day at Drew Theological Seminary, and do a concert?” Our day of teaching and conversation with Victor Wooten had everything to do with his graciousness and accessibility. Victor is a humble and kind soul. It also had everything to do with my want to make learning exciting–to create a spectacle of teaching–at least for one day. Armed with a grant from the Luce Foundation, I described my want to my colleague and friend Paul Myhre at Wabash Center. Paul is an amateur bass player and lover of jazz. I asked if he knew anyone to recommend who understands their artistry as a vehicle for social good and who would bring excitement to our community. He said the perfect artist would be jazz musician, Victor Wooten. Paul said that what distinguished Wooten, for our purposes, was his book The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search For Growth Through Music. I was intrigued. I said, “Ok, but how would we get him? I can’t just cold-call Victor Wooten.” Paul said, “Victor is on Facebook!” Then he simply reached out to him. In less than five minutes, Victor replied to Paul and provided his manager’s name and contact information. I called Wooten’s manager and the rest is history! On March 20, Victor Wooten re-energized and re-inspirited our Drew University community. It was a spectacle of the best kind. In preparation for our day with Victor Wooten, the faculty read and assigned many courses to read The Music Lesson, published in 2006. The book is a fictional account of how Victor learned to play the bass better. While talking with our faculty at brunch, Victor said about writing the book, “I wanted to write a book that would allow me talk about my particular approach to music theory and freedom without having then to defend my approach. It took me a long time to figure out the way to write it was as fiction. Since it is fiction, people read my story, enjoy the characters and get my meaning. If they do not like the story, they do not attack my music theory because it is my story.” Several faculty persons reported to Victor how much our seminary students resonated with his book and teaching philosophy. Students, even those who know little about music, were strengthened by the liberative pedagogy and life lessons woven into the book. The first of two classes Victor taught after brunch was an undergraduate Music Theory class. He talked with the students about the meaning of the musical term “key” and explained techniques for a better, more agile understanding of keys and key changes. A student asked Victor how to avoid writer’s block. Victor told a story which illustrated that the way to overcome writer’s block is to write as many “bad” songs as you can in order to get to the “good” songs. The second class of the day was Prof. Mark Miller’s Musics of the World course. Victor delved deeply into his book, answered questions about such things as the meaning of mistake making, what it means to hear music all the time, and the spiritual journey of becoming such an accomplished musician. A highlight of the session was Victor’s conversation with Tiffani Wheatlley, a first year student who said her sons were taking drum lessons and she wanted to learn to play. Victor brought her to the drums. With a few instructions and coaching, Tiffani played along with Victor Wooten and Mark Miller–and it sounded great! It was a pleasure to watch Victor’s lessons on teaching be embodied, enacted, and demonstrated before our very eyes. The evening concert was magical. Mark Miller played the opening number on piano, then Victor–now at home in our community–joined in. Wooten continued wowing the crowd with both jazz, blues, and gospel pieces. After an hour or so of solo bass performing, Victor announced “a friend is joining me on stage.” That friend was faculty member Elias Ortega-Aponte, who accompanied Wooten on the Cajón. The next faculty person to join Wooten on stage was me! At some point in our day-long conversation, Victor asked me if I played an instrument. I have been asked this question hardly ever in my life. My answer is one that usually is unsatisfying to the asking person because I play the didjeridoo–and few people know what that is. When I responded to Victor–he of course knew what a didjeridoo was, and instructed me that I was going to play with him in the concert that night. OMG!  During sound check, Victor listened to me play, announced that my didjeridoo was in the key of “D” and asked what song we should play together. I looked at Mark. He said “Wade in the Water.” Victor said–“Good, we’ll do that.” When we finished playing the piece during the concert the audience erupted! Just imagine–the very first time I play my didjeridoo in concert and it is with renowned musician Victor Wooten! The finale of the concert was an original arrangement which moshed-together the two songs “Halleluiah” and “Amazing Grace.” An improvisational genius, Victor led his band, composed of Drew musicians and the audience, to the highest heights. The piece was magnificent. The audience, rising to their feet to sing along with the moving and soulful rendition, cheered wildly at the end.   The day of teaching and performing ended in typical gracious Wooten style. Victor lingered more than an hour after the concert signing books and CDs, taking pictures and talking with students, faculty, and fans. It was an historic day of joyous excitement and improvisational learning! 

The power of affirmation lies in the acknowledgement of a job well done.  When colleagues applaud our success, we feel more a part of the enterprise, more connected, and more accepted. Being affirmed is being seen, noticed, made visible in erasing workplaces where so much of our work feels like it goes unnoticed or simply taken for granted. Feelings of isolation and separation are lightened with applause. Recently, I facilitated a workshop on teamwork and collaboration for a group of women who work as administrative assistants for a large corporation. For the most part, they feel unappreciated and under-valued. I led them in an activity which was intended to spark appreciation amongst them. I divided them into pairs and instructed each pair to interview the other. The interviewee was to share two of her recent successes at work. Then the roles were switched. When it came time to report back, each pair member was told to tell the entire group one of the interviewee’s successes for which the entire group would then applaud wildly. I gave the instructions and asked if there were any questions. One woman commented that if we applaud too loudly security might come. I told her we would risk it. The group quickly divided into pairs and began the conversations. After a bit, I reconvened the group and asked the first pair to report. I reminded the group to get ready to applaud for each person. The first woman told of her partner’s success. I began applauding and the group members joined in. With each success story, I extended the applause and added a cheer and called out the woman’s name. The group followed suit. Smiles appeared on each face, and the woman being applauded sat up a little straighter in her chair and smiled--a little bit. By the time we finished, the energy in the room was vibrant. It was an affirmation fest! At the end of the last session, as our benediction, we repeated the exercise. Rather than being interviewed, each woman told of an accomplishment she had in the last week or so. Without prompting, the women applauded wildly for each other. Security did not come. I encouraged the women to find ways to routinely inquire about each other’s professional successes as well as personal accomplishments. I ended the session, gathered my belongings, and opened the door to leave. A senior executive was standing in the hallway. He looked surprised when the door opened. He commented, without smiling or making eye contact, in a chastising tone, “You all are very raucous.” I said, “We most certainty are,” as I walked past him without stopping. The postal service was still the preferred mode of communication for important documents when I was working on my dissertation. I had sent my advisor a draft of two chapters. When the mail was delivered to our home, there was a thick, thick envelope. I looked at the address label. The huge envelope was for me, from my advisor. My heart sank. I was mortified. Why was the package sooo thick? I assumed that she did not like my work and had included the paperwork needed for me to withdraw from the program. I assumed she hated my work and wrote, in many pages, to inform me of my inadequacy. My fears paralyzed me. I left the package unopened for a day–too afraid to open it. Finally–after having driven my family crazy with my whining and self-criticism–I opened the package. Much to my surprise, relief, and delight, my advisor had so thoroughly read my work that her comments, affirmations, and edits were two pages for every one page I had written. My advisor had done the closest read I had ever received on my work. Her extensive comments were on the ways I could continue to strengthen already sound chapters. Her affirmation reduced me to tears. What she thought of my work meant the world to me. Hearing that my work was good and could be made better was a life-changing experience. Knowing that she poured over my work, considered my assertions, and resonated with my argument, made me take my own thoughts more seriously. It made me want to write better, deeper, more clearly. She had sent me a package of affirmation. When I was in elementary school, on report card day, my brother and I received $1 for every A, 50 cents for every B, nothing for a C, and we owed our parents for anything lower than a C. My parents were not paying us for the grades we made. They were affirming us, in a very tangible and pleasant way, for our hard work. They were teaching us that our good grades needed to be celebrated. They wanted us to know that our good grades were noticed and that our good grades were a point of pride. After we were paid by my father, my brother would ask to go to the store so he could spend his bounty. I, more frugal, put mine in the log cabin bank on my dresser. I was planning on buying a blue Ford Mustang on my 16th birthday. Our faculty has a ritual which has been quite meaningful for me when it was been my turn, and for which I love to participate for others. At faculty meetings, when someone is tenured and promoted, we read aloud excerpts of the letter sent to the Trustee Board. The excerpts extol the value of the work by the celebrated colleague. The excerpts make reference to their successes and accomplishments, and proclaim the good efforts of the colleague. Once the words are spoken, the colleague receives thunderous applause and the entire faculty lifts champagne glasses and toasts the colleague for a job well done. It is an elegant gesture. It is a moment when the collected body affirms the individual for the contribution made for the flourishing of the whole. It is a lovely moment. Performance, per se, is not the world I know. Beyond third grade, I have never taken a bow with other cast members of a play; I have never bowed after performing with a band or choir. What I have experienced is, after giving a scholarly paper at a guild meeting, noticing the decibels of applause after my paper. In those moments, I am appreciative of the applause. If/when the applause seems to linger, even a bit, I am especially pleased that the audience signals their affirmation of my work. It is a small thing, but it sustains me, lifts me; there is no applause after writing a book. A challenge of teaching adult students is that they want to be affirmed for what they already know. When the desire for affirmation is at the expense of openness to learning, this is not applause worthy. Refusing to learn, yet still wanting applause, can be disconcerting to the hopeful teacher. I recently survived end-of-the-semester student presentations. For the students who engaged the assignment, worked at exploring new materials, and created a meaningful and feasible project, I gave strong and clear affirmation. For at least three students I clapped loudly, uproariously, gladly. For the students who presented half-baked projects which lacked thoughtfulness and made me, at times, question my vocational choices, I did not give negative words of criticism. I instead sat in silence, withholding the anticipated affirmation. Students seemed confused when their paltry presentations did not garner the expected affirmation. I am disappointed when they choose to opt-out of working hard in a course they have enrolled in under their own volition. I am amazed when they are confused about not getting affirmation for poor work.  Here’s the thing about applause. It is a gracious and generous gesture which is needed by us all. It is not to be squandered or provided disingenuously. It is not to be demanded for lazy efforts. The sound of applause and the feeling it conjures is that for which so many of us yearn. This yearning is not selfish or grandiose. It is a heartfelt desire to do work that counts, to do work that is meaningful and held in high regard by our peers and elders. The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.