My OperaHAPPY (belated) MAY DAY
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 8:20:54 PM
"If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution."
EMMA GOLDMAN
Emma Goldman, seen in her police mug shot after being arrested in 1894.
Emma Goldman An Exceedingly Dangerous Woman
PBS film directed by Mel Bucklin (2003)
THE EMMA GOLDMAN PAPERS
Sept. 10, 1901 Chicago. Police arrested and photographed Goldman in their
attempt to implicate her in the assassination of President William McKinley.
EMMA GOLDMAN, mid-1890s
"Those who dance appear to be insane to those who cannot hear the music"
Liss Haviv (Executive Director, Take Root)
Fred Astaire dancing with his shadows in "Swingtime"
"I can still see the reproachful look he [Trotsky] gave [Diego] Rivera when the latter maintained (which was hardly extravagant) that drawing had been in decline since the cave period. . ." French author, André Breton, radio interview with André Parinaud, 1952
EMMA GOLDMAN
Emma Goldman's pamphlet answering the Trotskyist account of
the Kronstadt rebellion "Trotsky Protests Too Much"
http://libcom.org/library/trotsky-protests-too-much-emma-goldman
My Disilllusionment in Russa by Emma Goldman
LIBERTY WILL NOT DESCEND
TO A PEOPLE, A PEOPLE MUST
RAISE THEMSELVES TO LIBERTY.
EMMA GOLDMAN
JUNE 29, 1869
MAY 14, 1939
Burial: Forest Home Cemetery
Forest Park, Cook County, Illinois, USA
Plot: Lot 1044, Section N
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The bird dropping on Emma Goldman's grave stone
reminds me of the still from Sergei M. Eisenstein's
1905 film "Battleship Potemkin" (Bronenoset Potemkin).
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from "Living My Life" by Emma Goldman (1931)
"At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.
I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal." (p. 56)
This incident was the source of a statement commonly attributed to Goldman that occurs in several variants:
If I can't dance, it's not my revolution!
If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution!
If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.
A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.
source
If I Can't Dance Agenda
May 27th 20011
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Kaat Schille ♫eitaps # Saturday, May 7, 2011 9:24:57 PM
s-mScattergood66 # Sunday, May 8, 2011 6:15:58 PM
Kaat Schille ♫eitaps # Sunday, May 8, 2011 11:02:51 PM
http://my.opera.com/eitaps/blog/beautiful-radiant-things
s-mScattergood66 # Monday, May 9, 2011 3:52:19 PM
Kaat Schille ♫eitaps # Monday, May 9, 2011 11:48:29 PM
Oh, by the way the statement "If I can't dance.." etc. is attributed to Emma G., but it's nowhere to be found in her texts. While "I want freedom.." etc. is factually from her hand.
s-mScattergood66 # Tuesday, May 10, 2011 2:13:21 PM
Kaat Schille ♫eitaps # Thursday, May 12, 2011 11:18:50 PM
This Taoistic story/lesson shows what Emma G. supposedly meant: why struggle or fight if you don't want to get a better life out of it, or if you don't know what you are fighting for in the first place?
If you are curious about Brecht's 'Me-Ti Buch der Wendungen' (Book of Changes/Revolutions/Turns) and 'Tui Roman' (Tui Novel), Gaby Divay says interesting things about them: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~divay/ps/brechtMeTi.html