Headspace - Shake #5 Poem - "Dear Beauty in the Rubble"

Headspace: when we think about how the amazing capabilities of the mind to imagine and  agility of the brain to calculate, reason and deduce, we always imagine it to be an electrifying place to be. It should and always be.

Shake's Headspace 2014  is about how we connect with these abilities, how we learn and how the brain and mind should be maintained as healthy places. Shake thought about the brain and mind in relation to the human spirit and the well being of the body.

Environment and relationships will influence how the headspace interprets and creates the world we live in. So all that said what did Shake Headspace discover or reveal? 

For one week we explored how the education system and the environment young people learn. Often learning is exciting. Often they feel stressed and pressurised. We spoke about how when a regimented, conformist, often discriminatory  hyper-consumerist and oversexualised society becomes too much, confidence and esteem are so affected, the body will react. The human spirit might be distracted but the mind is an amazing thing and will create all kinds of coping mechanisms to keep the body alive and "safe". Here is where assessing and taking care of our mental well being comes into play. 

We heard stories of first hand experiences with medication for depression and many shared other less mentally aggressive means to get through another day. Sharing our day to day sanity self maintenance was one of the weeks highlights, along with the brilliant games to provoke discussions and debate which inspired some very cool creative work.

Through images, poetry and film, we unpacked one of the most crowded places on the planet - inside our heads. Orla Prices image, which we have used for all Shake August 2014 promotion, is a perfect illustration for our headspace inquiry.

Here is the video of Shake! poets group piece that the Shake! filmmakers produced with our brilliant film duo, Dershe and Patrice from NuWave Productions. 

"Dear Beauty" puts the system we live under in the spot light and praises the subtle energy of  the human spirit resisting modern day pressures.

Powerful stuff as usual...  

Dear Beauty Amongst the Rubble

Eternally conflicted

I pray for the day

They tell you that your beauty can only take you so far

I am breaking through

Burning up inside

The base of a tool you proclaim necessary

The weight of thousands on me

Lost on earth my forefathers reigned the land

My existence displaces that which came before me

abused so freely  with confidentiality 

you created me

A fever constantly rising 

you created me

Your power can beat me?

I might be forgotten, faded now

but the Earth used to be mine

yes I look happy, I feel yellow

But they don;t tell you without their version of beauty

you're given permanent scar

How does my thinness grow green out of this dense grey?

The wind blows the tune

The gentle flower dances happily