Author and poet Dr. Drew Dellinger uses spoken word performances to challenge science’s narrow view of human consciousness.

photo by: Gary S

I don’t quite know how the artistic gene skipped me. I have a whole side of my family who are incredible artists. I have an uncle who’s an amazing painter and sculptor and a bunch of aunts and uncles who are artistically gifted. I am not. But art speaks to me, like it speaks to many of us. The arts tell us we’re something more. On today’s show we explore the arts as an embodiment of the repudiation of materialistic science. We’re going to do it with a very talented guest who is an author and spoken word poet, Dr. Drew Dellinger. I don’t think this interview needs much of an introduction beyond that so let’s get right to my conversation with Drew Dellinger:

Alex Tsakiris: One of the things that you do that I think is really fantastic, and anyone who is familiar with your work will immediately find, you bring this–and I hesitate to use the word ‘performance’ aspect to it because that has such a strange connotation for a lot of people–but you bring a poetic, spoken word energy to it that I think is fantastic because in a lot of ways it’s the embodiment of a complete repudiation of just what you’re talking about. This crazy reductionistic science. This crazy idea that we’re biological robots. That we can use this meaningless planet that we live on as we will. It’s not just what you’re saying. It’s the way you’re saying it. That in and of itself is, like I say, a reputation of science that says, no, that doesn’t matter. How you say things doesn’t matter. Stirring people’s emotions? That doesn’t really matter. Emotions aren’t real. What do you think about that in terms of spoken word as the vehicle for the change for the movement?

Drew Dellinger: Absolutely. I really think what you’re tapping into says so much about what I call the power of art. One of the things I look at inspired by Thomas Berry is what I call the power of dream; the power of story; the power of art; and the power of action. I talk about building a movement that connects ecology and social justice and cosmology using the power of dreams, story, art, and action. So I think art is absolutely pivotal to understanding our relationship to reality, and also how we’re going to move imaginatively into the future. Those are just some of the links that I make between art and activism. It really comes down to what you’re saying about embodiment. There’s a social justice term where we talk about pre-figurative politics…that we need to embody the kind of politics and the kind of political change that we seek. [It’s] what we need to embody right now as we do this work for social transformation. That’s what pre-figurative politics means and so I think what you’re tapping into–that’s really what the arts give us an experience of. The arts give us an experience of liberation. The arts give us an experience of compassion, and equanimity, and awe, and wonder.