Trying (and failing?) to change the subject...
The sorry state of the world. The power of art and story.
Ouch! My head/heart hurts…
There is too much going on in the world right now that is dark and frightening. Too many people without compassion or goodwill are in a position to misuse power on a grand scale. How many articles and posts can I read about the next terrible thing they have done, or are about to do, the cruel and idiotic things they say, without my nervous system crying uncle?
I recognize that my nervous system does not have the cred of actual people who are being directly harmed by the evil intentions of this administration. Still, we have to live in our own place and time, and self, and figure out what to do with it.
We have to pay attention, and we have to not pay attention. Not paying attention means not letting the bastards get us down. It means paying attention to something else. Our attention to what is more creative, more loving, more sane, than anything these jokers can dish out, will dim their pathetic little death star.
I’m not going to stop writing (ranting?) about what I see happening in the world. I yearn to repudiate the unjustifiable justifications for bad behavior that are being thrown around as though they mean something, when they don’t. For example, the excuse that rounding up, disappearing, and deporting people who have protested against genocide in Gaza is ‘fighting anti-Semitism,’ and/or ‘activities aligned with Hamas.’
What a sick joke. People who have been protesting Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians are not protesting Judaism; they are protesting Israel’s lethal aggression towards a whole people. The Israelis could be little green Martians, little green Catholic Martians, and the protests would be the same. It’s not a religion or identity that is being protested; it’s what they are doing, for Yahweh’s sake.
There’s so much more I’d like to say about the mountain of lies and delusions that these wannabe dictators use to justify their actions. Increasing efficiency and eliminating fraud? These people are masters of fraud. Fraud is their middle name. Incompetence is their other middle name.
Their dream is to have so much power that they don’t need to lie. But ruling others by cruelty and intimidation is always going to be an uphill slog, and breaking apart a democracy, that for all its flaws, has survived for 250 years, is not like taking candy from a baby. It’s like taking candy from the Hulk. At least I hope so.
All the efforts in this world to contain, control, prevent, obstruct, and even destroy human volition are unsustainable because they contradict nature. Human volition does not want to be contained or controlled. It is when the human spirit is least trammeled that it is most powerful, in a real way… most exuberant and creative. And though this frightens people (and always has) who are afraid of whatever they cannot control, our evolution as a species depends on the freedom of the human spirit.
Art and Story
In addition to ranting about the treacherous behavior we are witnessing from the usurpers of our government, and other cultural artifacts, I want to talk about process, story and art. I want to make story and art. Until I am rounded up with the rest of the dissidents to be sent to El Salvador or Siberia, I want to work on art projects, because art is the antidote to all this total domination foolishness.
Art for art’s sake is art for our sake
There have been many artists, cartoonists, and writers who tackled current events head on with insight and passion, thereby instigating political and cultural change.
There have been, and are, many artists who have affected change in their culture and times, not necessarily by direct engagement with the powers and questions of the day, but by their vision, their awareness.
Writing and visual art that does not address specific cultural and political issues, that, even when it references these issues, exists primarily to tell a story, may be as transformative as any brilliant polemic or discourse. Maybe more… I think that is the question I keep asking myself. What works? And what can I do? (Also, who am I is an evergreen question.)
By ‘tell a story’ I mean any work of art in any medium that exists for itself alone. I am using the word ‘story’ in a broad-strokes way to mean a whole that cannot be defined by logic or ideology.
Art/Story is a remedy for narrow vision that works because it expands, enlightens, encourages, without the use of coercion or force. Art/Story does not command; it invites. Art/Story is a Trojan Horse that sneaks into emotional awareness and breaks through its boundaries from the inside.
A good story, whether made with words, pictures, or any other material, is an expertly-crafted commentary on what arises in an artist’s heart and imagination. If you want to make something that reverberates in others, then you have to do some reverberating yourself. Or as Robert Frost said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
Stories R US
Stories work on us so well because we ourselves are stories. We have a beginning and an end, and what happens in between is a mystery that cannot be contained in any ideology. We live and learn, or we don’t. Our stories are tragic, romantic, thrilling or disturbing. They don’t add up to anything except their own validity. Even the most unremarkable life story is a world unto itself.
I was trying to change the subject
It’s not really possible to change the subject. We are the subject. No matter what I’m thinking about, writing about, trying to express in words or pictures, there is a quality of presence that connects everything to everything else and that is the subject. So much of what I love in other writers is not what they are saying; it’s how they are saying it. It’s their vision, their insight, their humor, their creativity.
I don’t always want to think/write about the macro level of how screwed up things are because people are idiots. I want to think/write on the micro level of paying close attention to my own interactions and experience.
The meaning of life can’t be understood without first looking at the self and its interaction with the world. In effect, this amounts to examining the inner workings of the soul of the universe. ~Wynton Marsalis
Looking at the self and its interactions with the world doesn’t have to be your very own self, straight no chaser. Writing about imaginary characters requires just as much close attention to interior process. Whenever we see, through art, someone else’s interior process, it helps us to see possibilities within ourselves.
This whole post is me trying to understand what I want to do as an artist at this time in my life. Not what I think I ‘should’ be doing, but what my deep self shows me. This is absolutely a work in progress, in process. We shall see.