Set in the United Palace of Spiritual Arts, ABRACADABRA is a visual poem exploring Jungian principles of the shadow-self and the collective unconscious. The visual poem symbolizes human fallibility on the path to spiritual enlightenment while also satirizing the hypocrisy and illusory nature of new-age spirituality in the digital era.

ABCRACADABRA

Visual Poem, 2023

Written, directed and performed by SOL

DP: Josh Spnr

Co-production: Sol Street + Nxsleep

Styling: Shavonna Jackson

Runner: Marley Davis-Hewitt

Artist Statement

I wrote Abracadabra while sitting on my fire escape reflecting on a fight with a friend. I was angry, and the feelings of betrayal our fight surfaced in me had become a poison. My shadow, which had governed so many of my actions unknowingly, had merely bumped up against this friend’s shadow. Though I’d internalized the dispute as targeted and malicious, what had actually transpired was far more simple: the unconscious pain in me responded to the unconsciousness in her, descending a darkness upon our friendship. Thankfully, as is the law of energy, the poison was also the medicine. Our discord illuminated my repressed feelings of fury, abandonment, and exploitation sown long before our fight. Suddenly, I realized that I was not angry about one thing but everything. I could see how my capacity to communicate in love was hindered by my unrecognized animosity toward the world for its hardship, and given my interconnectedness with the world, this was also indication of animosity toward myself.

There is much I can say about the faith systems that have helped me to unearth and heal the fragmented parts of my spirit that gravitate toward judgment rather than understanding; those parts of me that have given materially, at times exhaustively, while still withholding a generosity of spirit. But instead, I will say this: the horrific violence unfolding globally with particular ferocity in Gaza, Sudan, Tigray, and Congo is the manifestation of someone’s—most likely many people’s—horrific imaginations. Before these violences could be systemized, they existed as germs of hatred in someone’s subconscious, and then in their disposition and later in their conscious mind where that germ infected others through speech, action and policy. Now, we are subjected to an atmosphere of spiritual illness actualized via war, genocide, and general distrust of the other. We, as individuals, would like to believe that we are incorruptible, and yet our refusal to contend with our own tendency to hate, judge, ignore and discard one another is what enables such violences to persist.

This is an uncomfortable project to offer the world because it reveals the feelings of disgust, condemnation, and self-righteousness that I have felt for some time; feelings that our society rewards us for either concealing or propagandizing. It is not the typical voice attributed to a spiritually sound person, which is due to the fact that many supposed spiritual workers today do not truly embrace their anger and other negatively perceived emotions publicly or privately, which only leads said feelings to dictate their thoughts and behavior in secrecy. It’s true that I consider myself a person of goodwill, a student of metta bhavana, and yet the contradiction between my sentiments and my delivery—the conflict between aesthetics of kindness and the exercise of true altruism—cannot always be so easily reconciled.

My hope is that in animating my inner dialogue of wrath publicly, you may consider your own hidden voice. Wrestle it. Nurture it. Redirect it in service of something creative rather than destructive. In sharing this with you, I renounce rage as a driver of my thoughts and actions, make an admission of my mental and political struggle with good and evil (if such a binary exists), and transition into the work of true caring awareness.

By acknowledging my shadow, I attain proof of my light.