color

weekly reflection, updates & good stuff 6.8.2021

Friends,

Since moving to Seattle, I walk around town a lot. Actually, meander is probably a better verb. Initially, I started meandering as exercise (I don’t run) and to get to know my new locale, but I kept meandering  to explore the variety of architectural styles in my and surrounding neighborhoods. Along the way, I’ve discovered the rich and varied gardens of Seattle. Nothing too formal - each is a mix of local plants (so much rosemary), invasives (so much bamboo), and productive plants (fruit trees and bushes, kale...so much kale) - but this spring, the standouts among neighbors’ gardens, the real motivator for my walks now, are the flowers. Whether it’s metaphorical or actual, the colors of flowers are more vibrant, more exciting, more saturated this year. I’ve poured dozens of photos onto my personal Instagram page, and I pluck certain images from the albums to serve as focus for meditation. Maybe the colors are brighter because of the extraordinary snowfall we saw this winter, or because of the summer spring we’ve had. Maybe they seem brighter because I need them to be brighter after the past couple of years. As Katya says, “I don’t know; I’m not a scientist.” 

The explosion of Pride flags in the neighborhood has been a lovely complement to the local flora, and one can’t get rid of the silliest notion, that the earth is somehow waving a Pride flag, too, like the earth is participating in both the demonstration on behalf of and celebration of people who have been marginalized because of their sexual or gender identities. That’s a complicated definition of Pride, eh? We’ve come a long way since “Gay rights now!,” partly because, well, we have come a long way, and partly because it’s not just about gay rights. While that’s a moniker that was laid upon a whole group of people whose lives didn’t conform to heteronormativity, it diminishes the diversity of identities that were once lumped together under the general category of “deviants.” The Pride flag has evolved - continues to evolve - since Gilbert Baker, our queer Betsy Ross, designed the first iteration in 1978. As CNN’s pithy video shows, Gilbert attached values to each of the colors (pink for sex, healing for orange, harmony for blue), but over time people started attaching identities to colors, and the six colors in the most common flag, or even the eight of Baker’s original design, couldn’t represent everyone.

The most recent adaption of the Pride flag by Daniel Quasar in 2018 explicitly acknowledges Black, Brown, and trans people with the addition of chevrons of black, brown, pink, light blue, and white, but, as this Reader’s Digest overview demonstrates, a universal Pride flag, however it can be adapted and expanded, doesn’t work for everyone. As Pride season approached, a wide variety of Pride flags emerged, flags that fly to represent distinct sexual orientations (bisexual, asexual, lesbian, demisexual), gender identities (intersex, transgender, genderfluid, genderqueer, nonbinary, Two-Spirit), relational preferences (polyamory, aromantic), and subcultural affinities (leather, bear, rubber...even Allies have a flag!). 

From one angle, the diversity of flags, potent symbols that have for millennia denoted affinities, alliances, and corporate values, contradicts the unity so desired by many, but from another angle, welcoming that variety acknowledges the differences within the group who is demonstrating and celebrating. It’s also a reminder that no single symbol can represent everyone - symbols provide a common denominator, or a common thread, but they can’t (and shouldn’t be imposed to) encompass a group’s shared identity. In this way, it’s a caution against universalism. We want to feel connected and resilient, and there’s a core belief in Western thinking that unity is a necessary component for that.

While we might have various and divergent identities in areas of our lived experiences, our only universally shared identity is that of creature, part of creation. To recognize and celebrate that, we don’t need patterns and color combinations - we just need to open our eyes to the colors around us. 

UPCOMING

• Guided Meditations | Mondays, 4:00pm PST & Thursdays, 9am PST via Zoom

• NWAIS Leadership Institute: “Our Journey Together: Returning to Something New | June 21-23, 2021

UPDATES

In observance of Pride this year, throughout the month of June I’m posting almost daily reflections on the people, experiences, and events that shaped my story. Interested? Here’s the journey so far:

• prologue

• The Belters

• The Valley of the Dolls

• A Boy’s Own Story & The Beautiful Room Is Empty

• Paris Is Burning

• Auntie Mame

• Madonna

• The Song of Songs

Guided meditations via Zoom continue on Mondays at 4:00pm PST and on Thursdays at 9:00am PST! These morning (on the West Coast)/mid-day (on the East Coast)/evening (wherever else you might be) sessions will be just like the Monday session - our aim is to practice being present and finding a little peace and quiet. If you or someone you know could use a 20-30 minute dose of peace and quiet on Mondays or Thursdays, visit the meditation page on my site to sign up! 

Later this month, I’m participating in the NWAIS Leadership Institute. If you’re in an independent school in the Pacific Northwest, check out this year’s program which will provide space for educators to breathe and reflect after the last two academic years and to envision the year ahead. I’m offering sessions titled “Moments of Serenity, and Other Myths” and “If you want to change the system, change your system,”  and other sessions with Whitney Benns on negotiation and Lori Cohen on leadership after 2020 prove to be meaningful. Check out the page or reach out to me directly with any questions!

Looking for meaningful conversation without having to prove, disprove, or accomplish anything? Join a Symposium! Symposia bring people together to explore a topic from different angles. Check out my website for more information and to sign up. Symposia are limited to 10 participants and need 4 to run. Upcoming Symposia:  

• Good Stuff: talking about listening, seeing, feeling, and other ings. Good Stuff VI (Wednesdays: July 14, 21, 28 & August 4); Good Stuff VII (Wednesdays, August 11, 18, 25 & September 1; Good Stuff VIII (Wednesdays: August 8, 15, 22 & 29)

• Rituals, ceremonies, traditions: starting points for understanding, engaging, and constructing ritual life (Thursdays: July 15, July 22, July 29, August 5) 

• Madonna: a case study in religion & pop culture (Thursdays: August 12, 19, 26 & September 2)

• Miss Jean Brodie is past her prime: teachers in film (Thursdays: September 9, 16, 23 & 30)

GOOD STUFF

Laugh
“Farrow & Ball. Each colour tells a story.”

It’s common knowledge that Aidy Bryant is a national treasure. Oh, it’s not? Well, let’s get on that. If you’re not convinced, watch SNL’s “New Paint” sketch featuring Bryant as a woman obsessed with her, well, new paint. “Don’t you just love the colOUR?” As Beck Bennett’s and Kristen Stewart’s characters slowly pick apart her obsession, Bryant’s deflects and reveals that Beck’s character is not the father. “Look at the colOUR of his eyes!”

Think

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

from Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Listen 
Just after the start of the pandemic, Brian and Roger Eno released Mixing Colours, their first full album together. I often listen to the album as I’m falling asleep (the music’s pace is parallel to my slowed breathing as I drift off), but it’s not just background or sleepy-time music. Each track is a musical meditation, an extension of Brian Eno’s masterful ability for ambient sound, and listening to the album in a single sitting is a contemplative retreat in itself. It’s abstract enough to float in the background and let your mind settle on other things, and its warmth and swirls and echoes of sounds is calming and comforting. It was a welcome addition to my musical rotation, especially as 2020 got harder and harder. I don’t quite have a favorite track, but I love gently rising and falling melody line that shines through Cerulean Blue. Instead of producing their own visual complements to the music, the Enos invited public submissions of music videos to accompany the tracks - each is a visual meditation on color, form, and motion in itself. The official music video for “Cerulean Blue” is a long close-up on a moth on a piece of fabric. The camera slowly turns around, giving us glimpses of houses that recede before setting on a backdrop of clear blue sky and a bright sun, transforming the moth from insect to living sculpture.

If you stream music on Spotify, I’ve started a playlist called “Bill’s Good Stuff,” including music I’ve loved for a long time as well as things I’ve come across more recently. Feel free to add the playlist to your favorites! Bill’s Good Stuff Spotify Playlist

Read
For this week’s meditation, I used an excerpt from The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky by Ellen Meloy.

Colors challenge language to encompass them. 
(It cannot; there are more sensations than words for them. 
Our eyes are far ahead of our tongues.) 
Colors bear the metaphors of entire cultures. 
They convey every sensation from lust to distress. 
They glow fluorescent on the flanks of a fish out of the water, 
then flee at its death. 
They mark the land of a woman deity who controls the soft desert rain. 
Flowers use colors ruthlessly for sex. 
Moths steal them from their surroundings and disappear. 
An octopus communicates by color; an octopus blush is language. 
Humans imbibe colors as antidotes to emotional monotony. 
Our lives, when we pay attention to light, compel us to empathy with color.