(Spiritual) Tribes Are Us

Whenever I start in pondering existence I always end up in the same place, that is, that the main explanatory factor is that we are all members of tribes and that we are here playing out the objectives and affections of said associations. And by this I mean spiritual tribes, the relations that exist outside this realm but which have a huge say in the nature of our respective incarnations and relations. This manifestly does not mean "political tribes," the shabbiest and most dysfunctional of our earthly tribes, if they even can be identified as such. 

It is true that there are deep affiliations of life orientation or disposition that tend to match up with political parties. It occurred to me that if one were to describe each US party in extreme terms, the Democrats would be "all excuses" and the Republicans would be "no excuses." Another one is that some people would rather see a guilty man go free than an innocent man be falsely imprisoned, and vice versa. The former position here would seem to line up with Democrats and the latter with Republicans. But it's not so easy. If I had to choose from among these choices, admitting no other options, I would choose no excuses and never imprisoning an innocent man. So that doesn't really match up neatly. Maybe there is a spiritual tribe that reflects my orientation, but there is no political party. Political parties are cobbled-together coalitions of interest groups, who, because they are "right," basically are fine getting their way at the expense of others, with power, shallowly understood, being the lingua franca and truth a fungible thing.

There are earthly tribes that exist in all manner and size. Here in the US there are the people fanatical about football, both the NFL and NCAA. That's a huge one, true also, or even more so, of global football. Then there is the tribe devoted to fencing. Not so big. Minuscule by comparison. If we were to cast these in spiritual terms, perhaps the football tribe is composed of beings who desire to experience the huge energy of intense group, competitive spectacle. E.O Wilson has even identified the football phenomenon as having the evolutionary purpose of sublimating and transforming the violent consequences of biological tribalism, which may work in "nature," being "red in tooth and claw" and all that, but surely does not work in human society as it has developed. So, spiritually speaking, these fans are contributing to that process. As for the fencing crowd, their spiritual orientation might be toward the exploration of modes of expression that depend on the understanding of fine distinctions and which thrive without popular support or approval. My identity as part of the jazz tribe seems to fit this bill. Could fencers and jazzers belong to the same spiritual tribe?

Actually it was jazz itself that sparked this whole meditation. A very particular jazz: the lineage of the free jazz of the 60s, which pushed the boundaries of the music in every direction at once, toward harmonic and rhythmic disruption on the one hand but toward community on the other, the whole enterprise being propelled by a liberatory/exploratory impulse. Specifically, it was two distinct strands of my personal associations that interconnected at this year's Vision Fest in Brooklyn, the greatest free/exploratory jazz fest going. First, I received an email informing me that the documentary "Janz in the Moment" (which I wrote about here, impressionistically) would be showing as the featured film for the festival, with the Janz of the title being our late friend Robert Janz. Then, when I was scrolling the performance schedule I noticed that the cellist Tomeka Reid was playing, recalling that the daughter of my friend and collaborator Judith Trepp, Selina Trepp, is friends with Reid. When I mentioned this to Judith, she said that Selina would be collaborating visually with Tomeka at a jazz festival in New York, but that that was all she knew. So I went back to the schedule, and there was Selena listed as part of Reid's group. 

Well. In earthly terms, these people knew nothing of each other, but suddenly there they were, participating together (if posthumously in Robert's case) at one of the most specialized and aesthetically unique and challenging gatherings in the world. If this was a Kieslowski film we, the viewers, would see how these lives, without conscious connection, were converging upon a dramatic event or encounter, their lives resonating the whole time without their knowledge. I am sure that all of us who might have anything to do with Vision Fest or this kind of music, have known each other before, and that our tribe is dispersed on this planet and others too, sensing the presence of others devoted to this exploratory yet communal spirit, knowing our associations remain elusive on this plane but also, if we keep our hearts and minds open, as tangible as the sun on our faces.