I wonder,

Does anything every fully prepare us for peace?

Perhaps, that’s because Peace never turns out to be what we imagine it to be.

What if it’s INSURGENT?

– Gail Conrad

OPENING:
Hello all you Vanguards & Visionaries, Innovators & Rule-Breakers!

So glad you landed here today!

Here we explore the creative and metaphysical, the link between consciousness and invention, so—let’s break some boundaries, turn things upside down & use the chaos to create in a whole new way!

 And if you haven’t already, subscribe to my podcast. This way I can let you know exactly when the next episode arrives.

You can do it wherever you go for podcasts or at gailconrad.com. That’s https://gailconrad.com

And now—here we go!

(OPENING continues, with MUSIC:)

Hello and welcome to the Wildscape Podcast, sharing tales of stepping into the unknown to create more art, beauty, and magic in your life. I’m your host, Gail Conrad, and today you’re listening to:

INSURGENT PEACE!
—

How do you know when you make the right decision?

Lately, that’s what people have asked of me. And often, my answer is simple. I say:

If after I make the decision, I feel peace.

And it’s true, that if, at that moment, I make the right decision for myself, almost instantly, my mind, body, and yes spirit – calm down.

Afterwards, I often don’t even think about the decision anymore, nor all the questions that were swirling around it, because to me, it’s settled. I’m taking action on it, and I feel peace.

Except—I realize, that it’s not quite peace at all.

It’s insurgent. Or what I’ll call insurgent.

But to explain what I mean, I need to tell you a story. It happened a while back, and of all things, it’s about creating a shape-shifting wall.

And perhaps, I should have known better. Sometimes my titles for projects are prophetic—they happen, and often, they come back to bite.

At the time, I’m changing everything about the way I work. This installation is to be my “simple” project: to be easier, less complex and costly than creating another large theatrical show.

So I decide, I’ll go for efficiency—won’t use live performers.

I’ll just design an immersive experience around a wall.

The only thing is, I call it:  INSURGENT PEACE.

All I have to do is construct it. I think, I know how to build this shape-shifting wall.

I’ll make it 20 feet high. Do it all with projections. The wall can live at a special site, like a warehouse gallery, or in a museum.

Isn’t this just the way some decisions go?

You get an idea, decide something quickly and take steps to move on it right away?

So for a few weeks, I’m rolling along, until it hits—wait! Where’s the surprise? I want this wall to implode and big-time activate at least a few times a day.

No problem, I play with it in my mind, decide—I can schedule it—make it all happen by remote control.

I bet, you might be snickering about now. In hindsight, l laugh at myself too.

As if anything called insurgent can be kept under control.

Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode! And stay with me here, for you may agree, or wildly disagree.

We all want peace don’t we?

But do you ever find it?

And if you do, just consider—how long does it last?

Ok, back to the wall –

Was this project a response to the scary events happening in the U.S., my own country?

Or was it inspired by the state of refugees and to my mind, the archaic and inhumane borders worldwide?

Probably all of it. All I know is, I get the title 1st, then the image of a wall that comes to life.

I begin to storyboard Insurgent Peace.

Picture a wall covered with roses. It borders a garden. Peaceful & serene. You hear the sound of birds, maybe the buzzing of bees. The light is warm and welcoming. You feel protected, in a sanctuary of sorts.

That is, until the roses fade, it’s nighttime. Dark. And you see the large shadowy figure of a human being in the wall. Then three more appear.

My first thought is this installation is a shapeshifter, its façade a series of reveals. Nothing is what is appears to be, and how we see it will change in a flash.

For isn’t this how our perception works? 

So within minutes, you see not three but dozens of figures taking shape in the wall. They look like a still life, all glued to their spots.  Until—one of the figures starts to agitate and move.

It takes only one. This signals the rest.

I’m reminded about a certain kind of conversation. I wonder if you’ve had it too.

Ever ask a friend:

“How you doing?”

And your friend says:

“Ahh, at last—I feel peace.”

And then maybe you say:

“Hey–that’s great—so glad to hear,” but often after that, there’s a lull. Our thoughts don’t go further; the conversation ends.

For we think:

It’s done, it’s settled, it’s over, that’s it’s the end.

But—what if it’s not?

What might this mean Peace?

I invite you again, to revisit your own experiences. Pick a time when you felt at peace.

If you rewind to that moment, can you remember:

What happened after that?

Meantime, I’m having a fine old time imagining an elaborate progression—revealing layers of human figures in the wall. My vision expands, to three levels, then four levels of moving silhouettes.

I decide, I’ll film it with live performers, then edit it any way I choose.

So I am siked. Sailing along. Until I wonder:

Even with all this high-tech projection, won’t this get boring? A bit predictable?

Is this the experience of Insurgent Peace?

No! It needs to be more visceral!

I can start off with projections but—

I want real, live physical human beings in the wall.

Okay—this is when I hear the warning bell but choose to ignore the sound.

For now the wall needs to be higher, deeper, thicker—re-engineered to hold all those restless, curious, human bodies—those live performers on multiple catwalks and platforms in the wall.

And then, there’s the moment, when my designer refers to those moving/sliding/ climbing dancers on a wall now twenty-five feet high, as “ninja performers.”

And I think:

How do I insure this?

And next:

What if someone falls?

I go blank, so pivot to flesh out the audience experience instead.

For yes, I now see you, the visitor, as a full-blown audience.

And by the time I’m thru, I have you entering, as if you’re invited to a garden party. I create a pre-show before the show, a post-ending after the ending, then switch it all around.

And yeah—I recognize the signals.

Somewhere, deep down, I know that this won’t work.

Have you ever had a project, a relationship, or any special undertaking spin out of control?

Did you see the warning signs?

And now the hard question—did you ignore them, as I did?

Let me share one possible scenario, probably my 20th storyboard, of what you might have experienced with this shape-shifting wall.

Imagine–

That you’re invited to this beautiful garden. You hear piano music. There are picnic blankets for you to relax on; waiters to serve you something refreshing to eat and drink.

You’re invited to stretch out on the ground. Yes, the garden is bordered by a wall, but it’s covered with roses. You’re enclosed and you feel safe.

But— what if, little by little, the garden doesn’t look so beautiful? Strange trash keeps popping up, as if unearthed from the ground.

You begin to hear other sounds, shouts of angry and distressed people. And soon the roses, don’t look like roses at all.

Before long, the piano stops playing; all the servers with food disappear. The wall of flowers in the garden turns into something else:

It’s a wall, all right, more like a high ugly barricade. And in this wall, you see at first one, then three, then dozens of human silhouettes watching you.

Now the silhouettes morph into live human beings. The wall grows transparent—has five levels, and the action escalates up.

You might feel a bit of discomfort, as insurgent ninja performers climb over the top of the wall, break thru the middle, navigate a crawl space, and come up thru foxholes in the former picnic area where you, the audience sit.

I’m still debating whether part of the wall breaks apart—whether insurgents pop up behind the audience, while the audience naturally, must flee—go thru the opening—the break in the wall.

Maybe there, the audience is trapped, or has to confront something else on the other side.

I never figure out what.

But—

Why would the audience just sit there, like sitting ducks, as ninja performers pop up all around? Where’s their power?

What if they don’t do what I expect? Climb up on the wall or decide to leave early or…

At this point, I pause.

In truth, this project is everything I didn’t want it to be, but also, the project has no end.

I’ll come back to this because by now, my title’s talking, and I’ve just had my own personal hit of how Insurgent Peace can act.

We often reserve the word insurgent for the enemy: the independent fighters, renegade opposition, the “other side” that takes unpredictable, unsettling, unsanctioned action—action that we want to stop.

On other hand, we’re always seeking peace: seeking that inner and outer experience of calm and contentment, balance and harmony. When peace comes, we think, we won’t need to struggle. We’ll be happy and we can thrive.

We can relax into peace.

But think about it, no sooner do we, even for a moment, feel that perfect alignment and harmony that we call peace, then we shake it up.

It’s our curiosity, our impulse to create, our mind making one more decision, taking on one new thought or—suddenly challenged by someone else’s new thought and bang—off we go.

We lose our balance, and seemingly lose our peace, and so—go searching for it all over again.

But what if –

Peace is inherently insurgent?

And what if –

Insurgent isn’t the enemy but the activist, our driving force compelled by curiosity & vision to take one more step and venture into the new?

What happens if we think of them as one?

What happens when Insurgent marries Peace?

I think about this. A Power Couple. The kind of activist energy that can’t simply be contained in any treaty, and certainly, not by any wall.

But like any Power, it has a few demands:

Insurgent Peace demands our highest awareness—our most lucid energy and—it demands that we consciously act.

For otherwise, it’s still a force, but it may not take us where we want to go. Like it did with my wall.

When I began this episode, I give it a secret subtitle. Call it:

Insurgent Peace – Don’t Relax!

And know, I am a huge advocate of meditation, of relaxing and taking care of our bodies, our whole selves, and of savoring those fleeting moments that we call peace, but –

In any arena, if we stop paying attention, ignore the warning signals, or maybe get too comfortable or complacent, just put blinders on, get into a sleepy dull lull or just want to glide –

What happens?

Easy to dig thru the past, but Insurgent Peace can live only in the present.

So, consider your own life. Maybe ask:

Right now, where in your life, is the energy of Insurgent Peace most needed?

In other words:

Where might something: a situation, a relationship, an undertaking—be falling thru the cracks?

What step might you take to shift this?

I wonder,

Can we more fully embody the consciousness of Insurgent Peace?

Back to my wall:
I never do it.

Keep changing it.

It remains an installation design in my mind.

I can’t figure out the project’s end, maybe because—I see that Insurgent Peace never can end. It is our ever-present quest.

But it does change how it appears.

So right now, for me, it doesn’t look like a wall. Instead, it’s popping up as this episode, only –

I give it the same title!
I pray it won’t implode as I press record.

How about you?

Where is the illuminating, curious, activist and balance-seeking energy of Insurgent Peace calling to you in your life?

Will you honor it?

Even though this will change endlessly, and you will create and re-create Insurgent Peace, as long as you’re alive.

Thank you.

—

I’m Gail Conrad, your host of the Wildscape Podcast. The opening music is by Chip Barrow, and I want to say:

If these episodes are meaningful to you, please do share them with friends.

Also, I always love to hear from you, so if you’d like to contact me directly, you can go to gailconrad.com

That’s
https://gailconrad.com

Thanks so much for listening, and bye for now.