You’ve got to spread your light like blazes
witnessing the dark. holding steady
You’ve got to shake your fists at lightning now
You’ve got to roar like forest fire
You’ve got to spread your light like blazes
All across the sky
They’re going to aim the hoses on you
Show ‘em you won’t expire
Not till you burn up every passion
Not even when you die
Come on now
You’ve got to try
If you’re feeling contempt
Well then you tell it
If you’re tired of the silent night
Jesus, well then you yell it
Condemned to wires and hammers
Strike every chord that you feel
That broken trees
And elephant ivories
Conceal
Judgement of the Moon and Stars, Joni Mitchell 1972 (on For the Roses)
I’ve been on a Joni Mitchell kick lately.
I find myself going back to her albums, particularly For the Roses and Hejira, written in succession during the 1972-1975 years. The songs are shamanic transmissions of a wide-awake person, moving between worlds. There’s something about hearing someone wrestling so openly with internal demons, pulls and pushes, longings and desires. She turns down a proposal to the man she loves to be a free artist. She shuttles between wilderness and the glamor of Laurel Canyon. Nothing is tidy, or ends in some hopeful solution. No need to create resolution. What Joni shares is something far more real, messy, and human. What it means to be awake, alive to oneself and the world, as one and the same. She registers the currents and world events rocking through our nervous systems and dreams, as she narrates from the wilderness of the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, to the desert highways of the American Southwest; transmitting from saloons and bars, to woodlands and archipelagos.
Joni Mitchell, more than any other artist or writer, has had an indelible imprint on my sensibilities and use of language. And, to the practice I’ve built around the psychology of existential threats and change. Discovering her at age 15 in my aunt’s cottage amongst her record collection, I spent hours in my small blue bedroom in suburban Los Altos playing her albums. As journals piled up around the room, I took to paper and pen to process, metabolize and make sense of myself in the world. Her music expressed to me, at that young age, what happens when we give voice to what can feel incoherent in one moment, and blissfully enlivened another. She wove together the range as threads.
I was listening to For the Roses last night, processing the events of the weekend, when I heard these words:
You’ve got to spread your light like blazes
All across the sky
They’re going to aim the hoses on you
Show ‘em you won’t expire
Not till you burn up every passion
Not even when you die
The lyrics, her voice straight from 1972 , went right into me, my heart.
She holds this tension of wailing at the world, while using an instrument build from destruction (broken trees and elephant ivory).
Oh the paradox. Oh the contradiction.
Oh the messiness.
Oh the beauty.
What we are being asked to do, now more than ever is to develop the capacities to be with the incoherence, without the reaching instantly for the comfort of meaning. To be with one’s breath and care, the fire and the anger, the tenderness and the mutness.
When stakes are high, it’s precisely when we go into the contraction. Our task now is to build out the window of tolerance, internally and together.
I’ve spent my time since those teenage years being acutely preoccupied with what it means to be a human being today, in a world where so much is coming to light. Even back in the late 1980s, I sensed a rising tide of trauma and disowned darkness at the edges of our culture, ready to seep in and be seen. (Recall this is also the era of Twin Peaks.) Back then, I was reading about the People’s History of the United States (Zinn), queer theory (Sedgwick), ecological philosophy, ecofeminism, the genocide of Native Americans (Margolis), and so much more. I threw myself into psychological studies to make sense of what it means to be human, and how we can prepare ourselves for the years ahead.
Back then, American culture was psychosocially thawing from an acute Cold War that had me dreaming about nuclear annihilation (see: “Day After Tomorrow” - great one for kids).
And here we are.
Nothing about what we are experiencing in this moment is out of isolation from every moment previously. Moments unfolding, meanings being made. We are living and breathing in a moving current of events, trauma, repressed shadows and light.
Nothing about this moment is a shock or a surprise.
Everything about this moment is a shock and a surprise.
Can it be both? Can we hold both?
We are being asked to hold the contradictions. The act of writing on a keyboard that was created with minerals mined by who? Built by which humans? Did they get a good lunch that day? What about their families? The act of living in a home, build on land that was once stolen.
If you have your eyes open and are paying attention, you may see that we are woven into acts and practices that stitch us into a world that is hard to take at times. It is a fraught and complex world. And this is the era of awakening. And contracting.
What, did you think it wouldn’t be like childbirth?
This is why we must become ninja level changemakers, who can stay with the trouble, yes — but importantly, move through the trouble like a surfer on a swell, moving towards the land from a tsunami a million miles away, sent to us from the heart of the earth. The earth is saying:
Wake up my people. Wake up my beings.
Wake up. Pray, act and listen.
Becoming friends with the messiness, with the horrors and the beauty and the courage, with the exhaustion and the tenacity, is what it means to be a next-level changemaker today.
This is because it is what it is, and making friends with reality is the baseline for skillful action. Because when we fight it, we are losing energy. We are burning up our fuel in the right kind of fight.
We can “tell it / If you’re tired of the silent night / Jesus, well then you yell it.” This is not the same thing as rejecting it.
And this is what we must learn, now, my friends.
It is time — beyond time — to skill up. To grow. To turn towards evolution.
I have not been sure what to say over these recent days, other than to narrate again and again what I see as the capacities we are being asked to nurture and cultivate in ourselves and each other.
To become Guides. Guides invite, evoke and hold space. They know the destination and have provisions, but they also don’t push. They don’t tell, yell and sell at you.
We need more Guides.
Which is to say, to lead through tumult, to address systemic issues whether that’s food waste or gun violence, the rise of AI, carbon neutral concerts or plastic pollution, messaging about climate change in the movies or TV, or figuring out what to do with your recycling. Yes, I am putting this all together to say this:
If you are awake, you are navigating existential change.
If you are navigating existential change, you need tools for the trade.
Relational skills: skills of expression, of creativity, of accessing our truth and our care.
Practices to be with the mess
First, daily practices of presence. It can be walking, meditation, movement, journaling, sensing your body, Tai Chi. It doesn’t matter as long as you connect with the vitality of your being. Sensing the energy in your system, without judging, evaluating, assessing, analyzing. Make time for presence, integrate presence.
Second, notice your internal narrative and dialogue. Are you spinning out? Are you judging yourself for what you are feeling or not feeling? Practicing self-awareness is literally the most important practice of a Guide. Start now.
Third, please attend to holding containers. Organizations and teams are forms of containers. Containers are where we metabolize and sense-make. We require relational homes. Consider how you can bring this into your team and workplace. (This is what I do for a living - I train changemakers to be Guides, inside org! Reach out!)
As I focus on my forthcoming book with Viking, THE CHANGEMAKER CODE, I am gathering stories, case studies, anecdotes and research about those who are leading change initiatives as Guides. This can be inside a company, community, school, policy, what have you. In the weeks to come, I will begin sharing out more of the insights I am gathering, as a Lab for the book.
Likely, I will start to offer paid-tier offerings. Just letting you know. So please, do subscribe. If each of you subscribed at the 7/monthly rate, it would quite literally change my life: I would have more time to write, and therefore get my book submitted by this late Spring, can bring on some support to start offering some amazing masterclasses and sessions for those who want to go deeper.
Thank you.
Renée
New Podcasts etc
Rob Cooper’s brilliant Climate Unf*cked podcast, you can hear me riff on bad campaigns and why we need to get psych literate here
Montana Public Radio’s Grounding - wonderful conversation.
Burning Questions with my dear friend and colleague, Leslie Davenport!