Whether or not you believe in a divine entity, this time of year serves to remind us all that the mighty dollar should not be our de facto deity, and that department stores, however glorious, should not be our surrogate churches. Reverend Billy, performance artist and leader of The Church of Stop Shopping, is a man on a mission to save the souls of those who spend their lives in the service of credit. On an individual, national or international level, the darkness of debt results in hell on earth, damning those who succumb to its power to a future eternally in the red. We therefore asked the good Rev. to shine a light on the shopocalypse. In this special SuicideGirls sermon he shows us the path to redemption -- through congregation (outside of the now literally as well as metaphorically empty malls) and communion with our own vital human spirit -- and offers some surprising commandments for our personal and global, financial and spiritual, wellbeing in 2009:
"...it was as if she were alone in the world, beyond happiness and sorrow, and she wanted to dance a little, right away, to listen to music, to hold hands with other people..."
Hi Suicide Girls, and the men and women that love them. I'm honored to address your church today. I am from the Church of Stop Shopping, and I address you after Christmas 2008, in which so many of us Americans withdrew from the super malls and invented a home-made local-made celebration. This is a time of opportunity! Now -- looking out across twelve months, the complete circling of the blue and white rock upon which we live, what would we promise ourselves in the way of change?
This New Year's Resolution -- who really has to change? Are WE the ones who have the bad habits? What about the leaders of finance, government, religion...the big boys have the EVIL, and they have been OH SO BAD! We the People want to ask Bernie Madoff -- what were your resolutions for the last 40 New Years? Will you tell me I'm bad now, Bernie? Yes, Bernie I drink, dance and make love and I want the government to go and die and be re-born...AMEN!! BERNIE??
While our most powerful institutions contend with their sins, my suggested resolutions are that we continue to act, more and more, on simple desire. With this resolution strategy -- the desires of the flesh will and should continue, so you Suicide Girls and your masturbating parishioners should all rest assured. Also, praying, seeing, shopping locally or bartering, laughing inappropriately, making art for neighbors, smiling at strangers, birdwatching and... re-reading the paragraph above, yes, we have the simple wish to dance, listen to music and to hold hands.
What am I driving at here? Can a resolution be that simple? Yes -- to DO, to BE, to LISTEN, to TOUCH, and in a word, in 2009 we need to return to direct human experience. The idea is so basic that it doesn't occur to us that practicing experience would be necessary. But to do these things so directly, "beyond happiness and sorrow," is to do them non-commercially, without the participation of the sinning big boys. Dancing and holding hands THAT way means communicating powerfully with our fellow citizens. Sometimes this is all it takes to risk arrest. In New York City we can be arrested for shouting too loud in public, and there are thousands of jukeboxes near which you cannot dance without special permits...
This re-magicalizing of the simplest human expression is what makes possible standing up in the hot wind of the emergency all of us face. Can I preach now? We must all stand and confront that flash of HELLFIRE and that our consumption hath made. You see, we are dying. We are committing suicide, a consensual world-wide suicide. We are dying in America as a society because we seem to lack TOWN CRIERS and listeners who then go straight to ACTION. Where is that someone who rises up and scares us a little and gets us going. Is it you?
Listen children, a good New Year's Resolution would be to be able to shout the truth, and then to be able to hear such a crying out from others, too. We have to hear the cry from within ourselves as well as hear it from an orator in public space. I believe that the criers are out there, but we are so dulled down, emptied, hurried, shell-shocked by advertising, iPodding, Facebooking, sitting in traffic, waiting in line...all we do every day to pursue Consumerism.
Climate change? -- that's only one option in the 500 channel mass suicide that we call "The Shopocalypse." The corporations hope that we still call it "Climate Change," as we drown in the hot, rising saltwater. And surely if that's all we come up with to describe what's happening to our world, then we will drown with our colorless words. These words cannot OUT.
The powerful conservatives hope, as new diseases buzz-saw toward us like tornadoes, that we only have worn out words to use -- "pollution" or "brown fields" or "toxicity" or "EPA certified" or "insecticides." They are like "Climate change" -- clichés that make our minds go blank. We will use these weak words if we continue to live without direct experience. If we remain consumers, fans, tourists, demographic groups, investors -- and not sensual citizens, we will never make our way back to persuasive language. A phrase that carries far into the air starts somewhere back in its evolution with our gyrating hips. Hip-a-lujah!
And we will die or we will live -- it is our choice. If we die, we might die standing up with our eyes open, buying something we don't need with money we don't have. That is modern Hell. Right now, in 2009, we have an opportunity to defend ourselves against those who find every detail of our lives a potential profit center. The corporations have stumbled, they are smashed on their own greed. We have a unique window of opportunity -- maybe have a few weeks or months in 2009 -- in which to cry out.
All the fake happiness and sorrow of advertising is less powerful now. Remember how the supermodels and giant celebrity heads on the cityscape seemed to shrink down after the world trade towers crashed? They were suddenly so ridiculous. The spell of Consumerism was broken for a time. Now it's happened again. And what are we doing? We are trying to clear our heads. We get up on one elbow. We know what we must do. We need to dance, hear the music, and hold hands.
This year, we pledge to find the power again by being human. We will die if we don't come alive with the simple things.
The Church of Stop Shopping is project of The Immediate Life, a New York based arts organization using theater, humor, and grassroots organizing to advance individuals and communities towards a more equitable future. They work with citizens, grassroots organizations and progressive visionaries to promote their core values: participatory democracy, ecological sustainability, and the preservation of vibrant communities and local economies. For more info go to RevBilly.com.
Reverend Billy and his Stop Shopping Gospel Choir are the subjects of the Morgan Spurlock documentary, What Would Jesus Buy?, which takes a tongue-in-cheek look at our consumerist "values" and proselytizes the Church of Stop Shopping's 'buy less, give more' message though humor and song. Buy it HERE or rent it on Netflix (that doesn't count as shopping right Reverend?).
nicole_powers
NEWSWIRE
I'm lost
DEC 30, 2008 10:58 AM