Michelle Barton has created a short film for anyone who’s tired of COVID, sick of the us vs. them narrative, and stressed by the news. In other words, she’s created a video for pretty much anyone alive today. Destiny Now itself shows Barton against a backdrop of striking images performing a poem about the current state of affairs. We’re happy to be able to ask her a few questions about Destiny Now. Thank you for being with us.
Chris McClure, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): First off, what inspired you to make Destiny Now?
Michelle Barton (MB): Thanks for such a juicy question~
I believe this is a time for building bridges across divides.
Artistically, I was interested in bridging my spoken word/poetry with visual story telling. This piece is one that I had written that insisted loudly to be THE first one. At the time, I wasn’t fully aware of what I was looking to get at for myself as artist. I knew what the piece was about. And I knew there was a drive that I did not yet fully understand as I began the journey towards the fulfillment of Destiny Now.
The timing in my life also coincided with an injury. When we filmed, my hip was in a lot of pain. I was doing a lot to work on healing it. And in the process, I realized that, though I intellectually understood my history and the traumas that were a part of it, I had not yet found a way to really disrupt the patterns in my nervous system and in my life that were the expressions of it. And my hip injury was a culmination of untended to needs for trauma release. I’d been learning more deeply about trauma and seeing, not only my own, but also our world issues through the lens of untended to multi-generational, as well as current life traumas.
A desire formed for a deeper popular culture discussion on what it will take to become a trauma informed society within the systems of media, education, and governance that impact all of our lives.
With these things in mind, my first go to is art, as it also helps me deepen my relationship with life.
This film for me, was a milestone to achieve. It gave me experience in bridging artistic mediums, inspiring a team to form around the concept, and a real intention to look at underlying threads to what we are currently experiencing within ourselves and our world.
(UM): Why was it important to get your message across through poetry?
(MB): Poetry has penetrated hearts over the course of generations. It’s penetrated mine for sure! It’s definitely a love of mine, to create and play with rhythm and rhyme and messaging. I like to let go, and free write to see what wants to come through on a topic and then go back and play with it.
It often comes through in rhyme. I don’t think I knew ahead of time, why this message needed to come through poetry. But as you ask me now, I’m present to the potential of different ways we can disrupt narratives through artistic expression. We can create an experience, and perhaps a new question to form. Even, if that experience is bringing up some confusion, like “what am I watching?”, in that space of a disruption there is a potential for an opening, for a shift in perspective. Now, some people will just shut down and tune it out. Not everything is for everybody. And some will get curious. Within perspective shifts…in that moment, new worlds are possible. This poetic piece is one way that I hope to be a part of the growing movement to penetrate our popular culture with breaking the spell that trauma conversation is something to be kept on the sidelines. It’s time for it to join the mainstage conversation. Poetry is one way. A non-linear experience that can reach our imaginations and emotions in unique ways for different people. We’ve got plenty of people speaking prose on the topic…why not a little poetry to shake things up?
(UM): I see that the video is connected to something called OKTrauma. Could you tell us a bit about that?
(MB): OkTrauma.com is a co-created platform with my director and collaborator on this film, Ted Saunders. We began to form this vision in the early Pandemic days of 2020.
It’s a place to bring people together in the spirit of normalizing the conversation of trauma, how common it is, the awareness that it can be acute or dramatic, as well as how it impacts our lives in mini and grand ways.
We’re at the very beginning stages of building this platform. We see the potential of narrative storytelling that dives into trauma education through entertainment.
There are so many people who work in the trenches of this field every day. We desire to not only promote these people’s work and share the stories of people’s experience in working with them, but also bring up the systemic issue and inquiry of, how can we become a trauma informed society? I mean, I now find myself fantasizing about what it could look like to have trauma informed education for our children, trauma informed governance, and trauma informed journalism,
The way our news is presented today is mostly a trauma loop instigating polarizing force, an information war if you will, to support the agenda that correlates to who owns the network. And, collectively we don’t know any better.
And I need to specify, it’s not that I have figured something out am wanting to make people and institutions wrong. We are in an evolutionary moment that has a momentum built from years ago without any thought to trauma informed actions to support a healthy humanity. We are learning. And at the moment, as a dear powerful woman I know, Samantha Sweetwater said, “we are in a structural pickle”. I agree with her.
OkTrauma.com hopes to continue to grow as it promotes the work of people who are, like I said, working in the field every day. People like Thomas Hubel, who’s working and bringing forth summits on the topic of how to heal collective trauma. People like Dr. Gabor Mate, who are diving In and creating films like “The Wisdom of Trauma”, so we can begin to see what it can teach us. Organizations like Arc Angel Six who are working to help re-civilianize vets after service.
We’re curious as to how we can artistically, engage, these deep systemic needs, to shift our structures into trauma informed systems that truly support a healthy human experience personally and collectively, in a media savvy way.
(UM): Why do you think things are so much more out of control, especially in the US lately?
(MB): The crossroads of fear. Greed. Untended to Trauma. Desires to be safe and healthy. The practicality of dealing with health for the mass’s vs the individual, systemic issues in our medical field. A medical conversation is happening without any structure for a collaborative respectful conversation between opposing viewpoints. We are experiencing the crossroads of a society dealing with a virus that has been coopted by the information war of varying agendas. That includes the agenda of being healthy. Many people are aware that we have an issue with our pharmaceutical industry. Though I know and completely honor there is a time and a place for western medicine, I thank God it exists, I have to ask, is there also an issue with the needs of business mixed with medicine? In navigating financial bottom lines for a business, within a company that is dealing with health issues, it seems to have gotten messy. Some are aware that people have not always come first in the industry. Real healing has not always come first. And it’s created a distrust in the messaging that’s coming through from different sources. And other people are fully in trust that listening to those same sources is the safe healthy thing to do. And everyone just wants to be healthy and safe. There is not a uniform agreement on the path to that, nor is there a public discussion that is bringing to light different sides of the situation into a responsible town hall kind of scenario. Instead we have major media (as well as minor) sources giving out completely opposing information which is pitting the people against one another on a subject that is hugely important and directly impacts all of us. People are spewing hatred at one another and there is so much fear leading the way, people cannot really hear each other. We are having trouble not being immediately defensive.
(UM): Where do you think the solution lies?
(MB): Oh wow… I recognize that we are in an emergency mindset at the moment. And from a solutionary viewpoint, there are so many long game structural shifts that need to happen. Like I said earlier, trauma healing is something underlying the situation. The more we can begin to recognize the need for normalizing the trauma conversation in our popular culture, the more possible it will become to consider creating and integrating trauma informed system upgrades across the board.
And our media, I love the potential of our media. It’s a hugely powerful resource. Yet, our addiction to pain is being fed by the majority of how news is presented. We need to evolve our addiction to pain. Rarely do we see good news (what’s actually working) come across our headlines. At this point, as a society, we are addicted to clicking on the dramatic pain narrative headlines. I am including myself in this tendency. It’s a reciprocal relationship. At this juncture we are all in it together, the viewers as well as those presenting and spinning the stories we take in.
As for right now, with Covid, there is an information war that is actively causing us to divide into polarizing sides of an issue, ripping apart families and friends as well as colleagues… What could be a solution for this? For me, what I keep bringing myself back to is compassion. Compassion for my own psychological and emotional journey. Compassion for anyone taking in information from any news source and believing it to be true. Compassion for the fear that is being propagated in the populace. Compassion for the process we are in as a global society.
If we can find a way to hold our own fear with compassion and allow ourselves to de-armor our hearts, then we can begin to take back our power together. From there, can we remember, when we are speaking with someone who has a different viewpoint, to open to a compassionate place and really ask one another curious questions about it, though it may not solve the issues at hand, it will begin to reweave a notion that we are not against one another. This practice alone, in the face of fear that people are navigating, is the beginning of something new. That would be a sensational experience.
Why is Covid here? How did it happen? We could dive into the info war and be swept away into our own bias, or we can allow a moment to pause and not immediately attack the opposing view. Take a deep breath. Notice that there is an opportunity to engage each other in a way that allows for the experience of fear, and brings forth our will to ask another question. How did this person come to this conclusion? Instead we are yelling, closing one another out, and decimating the people we love.
For any of this compassionate communication to be possible, it will take a willingness to be present for stepping out of our immediate fears, to cultivate a solution. For that pause moment with breath to be possible, we also need to be willing to notice our own need to be right, or whatever it is that has us rear up our need to control the narrative in the moment. It’s not new to go into a reaction and attempt to dominate and control a situation. It’s a tactic to create safety in our nervous systems. If we can remember we all want to belong and we all want to experience safety, perhaps this will lead us to creating the space for a new solution to arise that we cannot see in the current extreme climate.
(UM): This is as much a piece of performance art as Destiny Now is a short film. Do you have a background in the arts? In literature?
(MB): Absolutely I do. It’s my jam for sure!
My experiences are in acting for the camera, traditional and immersive theater, various types of dance and a love or creating rites of passage with people. Lately I’ve been swirling my artist self with my global ambassador vision. My curiosity for how we can create our legacy for humanity moving forward as we collectively dream with in the arts as creators and patrons is quite expansive! It’s a pretty constant channel within my creativity.
(UM): Could you tell us about producing Destiny Now? How long did it take to shoot? Did anything unexpected happen on set?
(MB): Well the actual film shoot was one day. The pre-production experience was about 6 weeks. I connected with my friend, and director, who also produced this with me, Ted Saunders of Infinit Studios in Los Angeles. I shared my initial vison with him and we decided to bring it to life together. He was really excited about exploring the technology with creating ghosting effects and projection mapping. Our process of creating the visuals together was a lot of fun!
The studio we shot in was massive! And it had some special history with the film shoot for Gone with the Wind. I was kind of geeked out by that! I walked into this huge space and felt so honored to be there and bring this vision to life. Our whole team was a dream to work with. I think the most unexpected thing that happened on set for me, was how smooth it all went. It really was a dream team. I give Teddy all the credit for bringing this team together. I hope to work with everyone again.
(UM): Could you tell us about any future projects?
(MB): Yes, I’d love to~ My company Pulvis Solaris Productions is packed up with projects right now. We have co-created, www.downthemiddleseries.com, which is a completely different tone, but equally relevant in this day and age. It’s an odd couple comedy that explores how two people can, with two completely different backgrounds, skillsets and lifestyles, come together to fulfill on a legacy that they both care deeply about.
The power of two perspectives working together to encompass the entire spectrum of beliefs into one project, inside of a really heartwarming and fun comedy, has been so fantastic to get to create with my team!
We partnered with Heather Dowling and Drama ¾ Productions to bring it to life. We were also extremely lucky to have the beloved and generous Tom Bergeron, one of America’s favorite hosts, join us as a co-producer and lend us his charming acting talent as my characters, wildly alive father.
Luck continues to be a part of this project. We finished shooting our proof of concept in February of 2020.
We’ve got a sci-fi series that has been in development, a really playful travel series exploring our ancient and present relationship to bees and honey around the world.
Last year I spent time volunteering with Artists for Amazonia, and got inspired to find a way for people to have fun relating to the importance of The Amazon Rain Forest to actually stay a Jungle. I produced a demo that I wrote the lyrics for. Our vision is to create a really fun jam that you cannot but help to dance too while supporting the Amazon. I am also a Dancing Freedom Facilitator, which also informs my creative process immensely.
You can stay tuned for this and more at: MichelleBarton.Love. It’s a great place to see what I’ve got cookin’. And of course, Instagram: michelleleebarton
Thank you for this opportunity to delve into such a deep and tender topic. I hope this interview is seen as its intended, an inquiry into how we can continue to grow and evolve the way we are going about this wild moment in time, and really life itself. We need all hands and hearts on deck. For Realz.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.