Conference quark::mennotes-v1

714.0. "The Men's Movement. I don't get it!" by MILKWY::ZARLENGA (back by popular demand) Sat Jan 04 1992 12:41

    Hooves Above the Ground
    One man's attempt to warm up to the men's movement, by Gregory Jaynes
        [source: American Health, Jan/Feb92, pp26-28]

        For some time now, on assignment, I have been tracking the men's
    movement, searching under the hood for a possible connection to my
    own dark soul. By now almost everyone has at least a glancing famil-
    iarity with the territory: the painted faces, the wild-man weekends,
    the hairy haunches in sweaty lodges, the tears.

        I began by reading the enormously successful _Iron_Man_ by
    Robert Bly and _Fire_In_The_Belly_ by Sam Keen, fine starting blocks
    for a run at the maleness circuit. On paper there is reason to raise
    a fist in recognition of the sorry lot men have to live with: alien-
    ation, dislocation, feelings of inadequacy. It's pretty easy to
    start thinking you've spent your whole life chafing under some sort
    of onerous authority. Go home at night, and that too is a fairly
    dicey world. Any tombstone survey will tell you your wife will
    probably outlive you, even if she is on a more stressful business
    track than yours. After all, middle-aged males addicted to alcohol,
    drugs, sex, gambling, whatever, far outnumber females. And did your
    father ever really talk to you, teach you anything? Well, did he?

        So join the quest. Reclaim the depths of your masculinity. Pull
    away from that woman who raised you (your father didn't take much of
    a hand in it; admit it, he was off working, brooding, womanizing)
    and find a male mentor (a dead poet will do). Get in with some men
    and get strong. Access that "hard wiring."

        I went to see my father, a sweetly retired, untroubled man. His
    most horrible childhood memory is the death of a mule. Made to dig
    the grave by his father, he miscalculated the depth and wound up
    with four hooves above the ground. A thing like that will stick with
    you. Lately he's had a problem with a neighbor who feeds her dogs
    some sort of loose, dry cereal that the blackbirds peck out of the
    dish, swoop down to my father's garden and drop into his birdbath
    for softening, preparatory to lunch. Makes a mess of the birdbath.

        As I moved about the country listening to men's groups, I felt
    almost guilty that I didn't have more against my father. These men
    seem to want to hear that your father never said he loved you. Mine
    may have, once when I was in some jeopardy on the far side of the
    world, but maybe not. He does love me though. He may not be very
    articulate but he was always there, him and his bourbon and his
    guitar, and I love all three of them.

        I have an articulate uncle, and I went off to see him too.
    During a two-day blow down on the Gulf of Mexico I tried to tell him
    what I was up to. I may have misstated the case or he may have
    missed the point, but I like what he said all the same: "I gave it
    about 30 minutes of thought," he said, "which may make my thinking
    on the subject about as shallow as your men's movement. But these are
    complicated times, and though it's nothing personal they do bang on
    you if you're sensitive enough to let them. It's probably natural to
    look for the verities. A man, a job, the elements. Easy to draw an
    image: a rangy, weather-beaten figure. A single-tree plow. An Owen
    Wister-penned world: 'Smile when you say that, pardner.'" He snarled
    that line again then laughed. "Only the pardner didn't possess
    nuclear capabilities." My uncle also said a cure for baldness might
    do more good for men than the men's movement.

        It struck me in San Francisco a few days later that nearly every
    man in an audience of 750 had been in therapy. I mean nothing per-
    jorative here; it may be a flaw in my nature that I haven't been. We
    could all stand to live a little more consciously, though there is a
    difference between awareness and being stuck inside your own head.
    In any event, the 750 men paid $75 apiece for eight hours of talk by
    Bly, a therapist named Robert Moore and a drummer and storyteller
    named Michael Meade. The men lined up long before the doors opened,
    and once inside they beat the hell out of a slew of drums (endorsed
    by Bly and Meade) for sale in the lobby.  Inside the hall itself
    they danced around to a 20-drum band on stage, an occasional cowbell
    coming in contraptually. In such a din there is the feeling you have
    stumbled into something big, like the collapse of a small
    government.

        Then Meade, accompanying himself on a drum, commenced a story
    that would last all afternoon. A tailor and a shoemaker set out on a
    journey that would take either two days or seven. Not knowing the
    length, and with risk of starvation, for which does a man pack? The
    audience split into two-day men and seven-day men. "I used to be
    a two-day man, but now I'm ashamed to say I'm a seven-day man," one
    said, adding "I can't take the risk." "My father said 'Plan your
    work and work your plan,'" explained another seven-day man. "That's
    exactly what we're talking about," said Bly, "these little things
    left inside of us." Debate got hot there for a bit, with the careful
    seven-day men arguing that the light-footed two-day men traveled on
    faith, expecting help. I was taking notes and my one ballpoint ran
    out of ink: I was obviously a two-day man.

        Well, the day wore on. In the story, the seven-day tailor gave
    the starving two-day shoemaker some bread but put out his eyes for
    his trouble. Bly told us the anger of our seven-day companions was a
    little deeper than they thought: "They've been carrying a lot of
    burden for a long time."

        I hitched a ride back to my hotel with a 50-year old jazz
    drummer named George Marsh, who lives on a cattle ranch south of
    town near Half Moon Bay. He said, "You heal there even if you don't
    want to." He handed me two steel balls saying, "The Chinese have
    been using these for 500 years. They massage all the acupuncture
    points in your hand." He said the day had made him feel good. he
    also said jazz is dead as an art form, "I'm a healing, alpha drummer
    now."

        I talked to Moore later. "This is a road show," he said. "I have
    no problem with that. I'm a Willie Nelson fan. It's entertainment.
    Its virtue, he said, is that it draws people in, directs them to some
    resources that may be helpful. Moore believes there is something
    vital missing in our inner lives. I went home thinking too much
    introspection will destroy you. Rousseau said "Man is born free, and
    everywhere he is in chains." Henry Adams said "Chaos is the law of
    nature; order is the dream of man." Frank Sinatra said "Whatever
    gets you through the night."

        Off in one of those dreamily lighted states of the Southwest I
    joined a band of 20 men who took very seriously this need for ritual
    process, this initiation into manhood they had missed as boys. I was
    astonished at how they could break down and bawl at the drop of a
    drumbeat and afterward sigh a cathartic, world-class sigh, like
    something you'd hear from a blind man whose sight had been restored
    in a revival tent. Three days later we were told that we were
    leaving sacred space, that we might find it difficult to drive, and
    that we should sit the next day out rather than return to work in
    our enlightened, magical, distracted states of mind. My own mind
    felt like something that drops out of your shoe after a day in the
    stable. I had my face painted. I had drummed. I had tried. I had not
    cried. I had found the thing sorry, sad, excruciating.

        Never have I felt so outside my subject, so supernumerary, as at
    these assemblies. It is just not the crying, the hurt, the hugs; it
    is the ritual I cannot get the knack of. I come away feeling silly
    and a little off in the stomach, as if I had lost my mind and joined
    the John Calvin Mystic Order of Comanches or something. And having
    joined, _I_just_don't_get_it_. I feel like the only member of the
    audience the hypnotist can't reach. I am sorry, gentlemen, but I
    have to pull off the road.

        I make no charge of sham. If it helps you, I support it. Go off
    and be little boys, go on. Come back and be the stronger for it, and
    be gentler. I hope your search ends in treasure, fulfillment and
    peace. As for me, it takes more than war paint, drums and a hug from
    a stranger to drive away the furies. But that's an accounting best
    left for another day.

    Good article.  I think I would feel the same way if I ever attended one
    of these things, which is why I will never bother.  I can cry in the
    privacy of my own home, or in the public seclusion of a dark movie
    theater.  I don't feel the need for an audience.
    
    					- Vick

    
    All I keep thinking about is the $56,250.00 that was taken from the
    flock, nevermind the sale of the drums.
                                 
    I think Bly and people like him, feed on weak, mixed up souls, for
    pure profit.  Most of these men need a good slapping to wake them up,
    and they need to get a good dose of self-control that comes from
    within.  What a show this must be!  Setting around, banging on a stupid
    drum, cooing at the moon...
    
    I'd almost pay money to watch the show over a brew... and laugh my *ss
    off!  It's amazing how much money can't be taken from 'loonies.'  Look
    at the type of folks that give to TV preachers.... hey.... same
    difference.
    
    Of course, this is my opinion, (for the dear souls who are about to
    tell me that this is my opinion because although I entered this note
    and it has my address on it... they might not can figure out that I
    must have written it... but there's hope for them as Robert Bly is
    still touring his road show).

>I think I would feel the same way if I ever attended one
>    of these things, which is why I will never bother. 

 It's so funny how notes can give you impressions. If we had to take
a guess as to which mennoters would be most likely to go to such an event,
I'd have put you at the top of the list. Strange...

    Never beat a drum in my life and don't intend to start now.  But just
    because I don't think I'd get much out of such an event, I'm not
    bad-mouthing what, for others, might be something to turn their lives
    around for the better.  And I have a lot of respect for Robert Bly, 
    particularly Robert Bly the poet.
    
    						- Vick

    Welcome back, Z-man!
    
    The Doctah will probably be surprised to know that I'm not willing to
    shell out the beans to see Bly, either, though I did spend 20 bucks
    on "Iron John", and considered it well spent. I also like Bly's poetry.
    I get more out of the written word, than the experiential stuff. I
    would like drumming, probably, because I like music, particularly
    percussive music, but I can buy my own drum, if it ever gets to that.
    An African talking drum would be the ticket.
    
    To me, all that Bly and Meade are doing are looking at alternatives to
    the way men have been brought up, not necessarily that they have found
    the answer or answers. What they do is fairly original and entertaining, 
    if nothing else, and appears to have meaning to those that participate
    in it.                                       
    
    -roger
    
    

    I mean no offense to the base noter, but I would ask the men here not
    to fall into the trap of defining men involved in the mens' movement as
    burpers and farters who howl at the moon. It is deeper and essential for
    our survival as a respected gender. 



    			HAND
    			Wayne

    re:.5
    Same here. I attended a lunchtime video with Bly and the storyteller
    and was disappointed.  SO much so that I left after 30 minutes. It
    wasn't anything like I expected.

    re:.6
    While I may agree with parts of .0, I did not author it. Understood?

    Nice to see Henry Adams get quoted.
    
    Ray

    re.7

    		Understood Mike. I wanted to criticize the text and yet let
    you know I was not criticizing you. OK?


    			HAND
    			Wayne

    I agree with those who say "if it works for you, go for it!"
    
    I couldn't imagine myself participating in a Bly seminar or
    "wild man" weekend, but I won't criticise those who do participate
    and benefit from it.
    
    As with anything that strikes a strong emotional cord in large
    numbers of people, the men's movement is ripe with opportunities
    for con-artists.  But that doesn't mean every seminar/book/event
    is simply a scam to make money.
    
    /Greg

RE:  Note 714.10  CRONIC::SCHULER 

>    for con-artists.  But that doesn't mean every seminar/book/event
>    is simply a scam to make money.

They don't do them for free.  Somebody is making money.  This isn't to say that
none are worthy causes... just that money is certainly involved.  Everything is
sold today... up to and including God.

    RE: .11
    
    I guess "scam" is the key word.  Unless the group/event is non-profit,
    making money is an integral part of what goes on.   Nothing wrong
    with that in my book. 
    
    /Greg

    Wayne, I loved your comment about not referring to the men's movement
    as a bunch of "burpers and farters howling at the moon".  I'm laughing
    even as I type this.  This is exactly what the media would like us to
    believe, or at least those who have a negative viewpoint of the whole
    affair.  After all, wasn't the women's liberation movement deemed a
    bunch of crazy "bra-burners"?  But movement is what it is and it is
    time for the men to have their own movement.  From identifying the need
    for a new consciousness, hopefully there will be a lot of learning that
    will fall out in less public ways and places and we will be on the road
    to a true "meeting of the minds" between men and women.
    
    I read Robert Bly's book and have heard him recite his poetry in
    Worcester, MA at Assumption College and Worcester State.  I think he's
    pretty good and credit him for starting the ball rolling.  My lesbian
    niece would say he's a reactionary force but I don't believe this is
    his intent - to put man back on top.  I think he just wants men to
    define a space for themselves and stand up for themselves.  And maybe
    to create some new rituals and myths.  I believe in the notion of
    father hunger.  The mother's role has been too dominant in our society
    
    Linda