Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Sunny's Imperative

The character I have called Sunny, The Sinner, is the first of Aurora's spirits. She is first because her primary imperative is repentance, contrition, confession. Repenting means dealing with shame. Her pathway, her life story is nothing if not a course of uncovering shame. Without dealing with shame, no progress can be made.

Here is an interesting blog by Frank Chimero about the rising consciousness of shame.

It always feels like there’s a comedian willing to address contemporary concerns with insight and honesty for each moment in time. All the greats had their focus: Richard Pryor and Chris Rock had race, George Carlin had absurdity, and I think Louis has hit on some sort of subterranean undercurrent of emotion that I didn’t realize might be swelling until I listened more closely: shame.

http://blog.frankchimero.com/post/14480225720

Laughter is a way of uncovering shame, but really dealing with the cause of shame is necessarily painful. Like peeling a dressing off a wound, uncovering shame will hurt, but this is the way to a cure.