Moments of Insight • Vol. 1 Issue 11 • August 7, 2020 A Note from Anna, our Founder & Director Send us a Letter We know we cannot be there in person Hey all, I hope you are holding up well, staying positive and testing negative. with you, but wanted to encourage you I’ve loved creating this Newsletter every couple of weeks. Before this, I rarely received a to check-in with us like we do when we hand-written letter from anyone I knew. But since COVID, we get sprinkled with them are together. You know how Anna each week. You all are sharing your art, writing, poetry, and letting us know how you’re usually asks us to state how the week doing amidst this challenging time - thank you! I wanted to share a couple of the has been and share something we've messages we’ve recently received. Once again, the tenacity and resilience of the human spirit never ceases to amaze and inspire. learned? We'd love for you to write it down and send us a note. Here is an excerpt from E.R. who is in the Federal prison in Sheridan and doing well despite his circumstances: Send us a poem or artwork “At this moment, my state of mind is sound. Here at Sheridan the prison is operating on We would also love for you to share any a modified lock down: 22 hours in cell, 2 hours out. As of today, there hasn’t been any poems, artwork or insights you've had COVID-19 cases since the lockdown began on March 23rd. My spirits are high, my mind that we can include in one of our next is calm, and my health is good. I really do miss the camaraderie that develops during volumes of 'Moments of Insight'. Feel and after the (Insight Alliance) groups begin. I also miss witnessing the shifts in thinking free to share ideas of what you'd like us that occur when the light bulb comes on. I miss hearing the stories about moments a decision is made from a quiet state of mind and how this affects the outcome of a to include in this newsletter as well. seemingly difficult situation. Also, seeing the behavior reflect the calmness from within is most rewarding…... All letters, art and ideas can be sent to: The Insight Alliance …. I give the Insight Alliance all the credit for pointing me in the direction where to find PO Box 820214 such quietness, stillness and presence. Even as life happens, I can find that place…. The Portland, OR 97282 beautiful thing is everybody has access to that very place. Keep your head up my friend. Keep doing the work you do. It’s meaningful and needed. Take care and be safe….” There are so many messages of hope I would like to share but then this would turn into a book! So, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from a letter I received from a dear woman at Coffee Creek: “Hello! Just checking in with you from CCCF. Definitely miss class. The fact you send us newsletters and we can watch your webinars on the TV puts smiles on so many faces. I can’t thank you enough for not forgetting us. These are strange and stressful times, but I haven’t forgotten what you teach: my mind is my own. Others’ actions can’t dictate how I feel and I’m OK no matter what. I realize I can always find a reason to smile. The Insight Alliance is brilliant. Everything you do is beautiful. So, don’t ever stop. I’m strong and I got this. Peace”. Here’s to your strength and your resilience. You got this! Warmest wishes, Anna THE INSIGHT ALLIANCE PAGE 01 'Life of a Song' from the Financial Times UK IMAGINE — JOHN LENNON’S SONG BECAME AN ANTHEM FOR TROUBLED TIMES Coronavirus has done many frightening things to our world, but it has also reactivated something mawkish: the well-meaning celebrity singalong. This arrived in an Instagram post by Wonder Woman actor Gal Gadot, six days into her self-isolation, singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” with other famous friends stuck in their houses (Jamie Dornan, Amy Adams and Norah Jones among them). A few days later, her post had been watched by nearly 9 million people. Many more people commented, positively and negatively, online. British comic Joe Lycett even did a parody video within 24 hours, which began: “Imagine all the bastards…” “Imagine” splits opinion. For some, it’s a moving peace anthem with universal lyrics. But not everyone’s a fan. Rolling Stone critic Ben Gerson wrote in 1971: “The singing is methodical but not really skilled, the melody undistinguished.” Journalist Julie Burchill dedicated a magazine column to tearing it apart in 2000: “[Its] lyrics could have come out of a stoned fortune cookie or maudlin Christmas cracker.” “Imagine” was written in early 1971, a strange time in John Lennon’s career. Barely a year after the split of The Beatles, Paul McCartney had just filed a lawsuit to dissolve the YOU READING THIS, BE READY band’s contractual partnership. Lennon had just bought a new piano, spray-painted BY WILLIAM STAFFORD white, for his wife Yoko Ono’s birthday. Soon afterwards, he wrote “Imagine” on it. "Starting here, what do you want to remember? How sunlight creeps along a “Imagine” was inspired heavily by Ono, who used the word in many of her 1960s conceptual art works. The night Lennon met her in London’s Indica Gallery in 1966, he shining floor? What scent of old wood climbed a ladder to look at one of these, “Cloud Piece”. “Imagine a cloud dripping,” ran its hovers, what softened sound from words. “Dig a hole in your garden to put it in.” outside fills the air? In a 1980 BBC interview, Lennon admitted that Ono should have been given a Will you ever bring a better gift for the songwriting credit. “A lot of it — the lyric and the concept — came from Yoko, but those days I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho.” In 2017, the credit was changed to world than the breathing respect that Lennon-Ono by the National Music Publishers’ Association in the US. Ono recorded her you carry wherever you go right now? own version, against an ambient backing, in 2018. Are you waiting for time to show you some better thoughts? The lyric “and no religion too” was also influenced by a book Lennon was given, by US comedian Dick Gregory, about positive prayer. “If you can imagine a world at peace, with When you turn around, starting here, lift no denominations of religion… then it can be true,” said Gregory. Not released as a single in the UK until 1975 (to support the greatest hits album, Shaved Fish), “Imagine” this new glimpse that you found; carry eventually spent four weeks at number one in January 1981, shortly after Lennon’s into evening all that you want from this murder. day. This interval that you spent reading or hearing this, keep it for life - In Geoffrey Giuliano’s book, Lennon In America, Lennon described “Imagine” as “anti- religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic… but because it's sugar- What can anyone give you greater than coated, it's accepted.” Covers of it came thick and fast (the website Second Hand Songs lists 402 recorded and live versions). now, starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?" THE INSIGHT ALLIANCE PAGE 02 CONTINUED FROM PG 2. Lockdown Diaries (Inspired by the Willamette Week) Unusual versions include one by US rapper Nas in 2006 (later deleted for not having its Lennon sample cleared), and one by jazz legend Herbie Hancock for 2010’s The Imagine Project. Bringing together Pink, Seal and Jeff Beck with Congolese band Konono No.1 and Malian singer Oumou Sangaré, it won a Grammy. “Imagine” has long been a clarion call for world peace. Former US president Jimmy Carter once said to American network NPR: “In many countries around the world… you hear John Lennon's song ‘Imagine’ used almost equally with national anthems.” Brandon Its final lyrics have a strange resonance in a world ruled by Covid-19: “I hope some Insight Alliance Teacher day you’ll join us/And the world will be as one.” Time can only tell if its sentiment of 1. Occupation: Supervisor/bio hazard tech. hope and unity changes society as much as the pandemic which has inspired it, once I'm an essential worker again, to be sung. 2: Age: 38 3. How Many people do you live with? 1 and From ‘The Havana Lectures’ a 1/2(my daughter is mainly at her BY FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA boyfriend's house)so it's just me and my “Everything that has black tones has duende.” And there is no truth greater. girlfriend. 4. What have you been eating? Whatever I These black tones are mystery itself whose roots are held in the mulch we all know and can get my hands on - I'm a foodie. ignore, but whence we arrive at all that is substantial in art. Black tones, said the 5. What have you been watching, listening popular man from Spain and the contemporary of Goethe (who defines duende when to or playing during quarantine? Peaky speaking of Paganini), are a “mysterious power which everyone feels but which no Blinders, Cursed, Umbrella Academy and philosopher can explain”. lots of movies. My Parent is a Serial Killer podcast So then, the duende is a power and not a method, a struggle and not a thought.