On Doing Art in Terrible Times

I am fortunate to have in my life artists of many kinds - writers, musicians, actors, poets, painters. These people, the successful and the struggling, the purists and the experimental, all bring to my life, and to the world around them, an energy and inspiration unequaled by any other influence. Not to mention that I love them - love them not with an ain’t-my-friends-grand kind of affection, but a kind of collective you-are-part-of-my-heart kind of love. 

I don’t see them all regularly, some only when we’re involved in creative projects together, others when the spirit moves one or the other of us to call and say “I need to see you.” But they are always there. More than any other professional or personal community I belong to or have ever, they are always there in my thoughts and in that deep sense of who I am in the world, and they are the kind of people, more than any other professional or practical community, who have literally been there when I was in need.

I love them, and, lately, when I do see them, they’re hurting, doubting, struggling. 

The conversations we have invariably goes more or less like this: 

Me: What are you working on lately?

Them: (shrug) I haven’t been able to do much work. 

Me: (knowing the answer) Why? 

Them: With the world the way it is, it feels (insert: futile, senseless, a luxury, self-indulgent) 

Me: I think there has never been a more important time in our lifetimes to do art. 

Them: Why? 

Me: Precisely because of the state of the world. 

Them: But my art isn’t political. 

Me: That doesn’t matter. 

Them: But…..why? 

Me: Because art makes us more human than any other element of life, and we need that now more than ever. 

Them: (shrugging) I want to believe that. 

Me: Me, too. 

I have had this conversation in the last many months with poets, writers, actors, musicians, close friends and even more casual acquaintances. Each time I walk away feeling inadequate to the task of shoring up them and their belief in the work they do, because, truth be told, I have been, more days than not, having the same struggle myself. 

All of this has led me to read multiple pieces written on the essential nature of art to a democracy, and, actually, to any culture or political philosophy. Art (literature, theater, visual arts) has been shown in multiple studies to increase awareness both in the creators and the observers, to heighten cognitive process, to increase energy, to sharpen analytic ability, and to decrease depression. 

All of that is wonderful, and as a college teacher I have seen evidence of this in the attitude and skill of art students who took my math classes, my critical thinking classes, my classes in logic and argumentation. So these studies don't surprise me, but I think art is much more, and much more important. 

I have been writing as long as I could put pen to paper - immersing myself in a sea of words, in love with the rhythm and clarity of verbal expression, the freedom words bring to create truth woven in words, and to, in fact, create authentic people, places, and passages of life. Two periods of my life as a

writer have been wildly productive: the couple of years of my creative writing graduate program, and the years from around 2010 until November of 2016, when the rise of insanity in our world beat its unwelcome way into my consciousness, as it did for so many others. Suddenly, when I’d sit down to write, I’d find myself staring at the page, thinking of the images and stories and characters swirling in my head, and have them feel futile, senseless, a self-indulgent luxury. What got me out of it?

I’ll let you know when that happens. 

In the meantime, I get up each day and face the page, and continue writing, because I do believe, somewhere in my battered-writer’s soul, that it is an essential act of resistance against darkness. It is a deep refusal to let go of what is best in the human spirit. Someone once said that those who control the storytelling of a culture control the culture, and we have seen lately the impact that stories pushed on the public consciousness, however false and fabricated, have on our world. People respond to stories in myriad ways - out of fear, out of hope, out of a deep connection to a truth being told. For me, continuing to write is an act to appeal to the last two - to get people to deeply connect to truth and by doing so to increase their hope. Stories told in any way - through paintings, poetry, music, or on the stage, can and should do the same. 

Doing art is a deeply political act, regardless of the story being told. It can open eyes or put blinders on them. It can turn people toward the dark or toward the light. It can show both beautiful and terrible truths, or it can create false hells for us to burn in. At its best, it can show people immersed in a dark world how to see the world illuminated

What Happens at the (Expletive Deleted) Intersection

  I’m a word-nerd, and a science geek. I also am a fan of comedy. Add all that together, and I was doomed to be a fan of science fiction that’s comedic (the ‘word-nerd’ part will be back in a minute). I loved Galaxy Quest, and, more recently, Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel. I loved the comic moments in Star Trek and always thought Star Wars could’ve done better in that area. So I quickly became a fan, a few years back, of a quirky science fiction TV show called Eureka. What was great about that show was not the science, but the humor. The basic premise was this: a US Marshall gets stranded after his car breaks down in a small Oregon town, which turns out to be a community hiding a top-secret facility where the best scientists in the world are allowed to do their work, as long as they also work for the DOD.  Because of this Marshall's skill at solving two mysteries while he's there, the managers of the community convince the government to "promote" him out of his US Marshall's job and into being their town Sheriff. So, a man of average intelligence (as we find out in one episode - of 111) is in charge of enforcing the law in a community filled with the highest IQs in the world.

That leaves a lot of room for humor, which they pull off in every episode, to the delight of fans.  A Particular schtick that the writers regularly use on this show is that when the IQ types are discussing the failure of some experiment and the problem created, and letting out a string of quantum-enveloped thingamajig terminology, someone, seeing the blank look on the sheriff’s face, will say, for instance, “an ice ray of death.” And he will say, “why don’t you just say​ ‘ice ray of death’?” It comes off much better with the skilled actors in the show (Colin Ferguson, who plays Sheriff Carter, is a master of these moments, and much more). 

This particular schtick is relevant to us, today, in our normal lives in an important way, and the problem created has come more and more to my attention lately. In an effort to make language more specific, we have not only sacrificed clarity, but damaged our collective cognitive function. Those were big words I just used, meaning (with - I hope - at least some clarity) we try to have a specific word for everything, and in the process have become less and less able to communicate with any expectation of shared meaning or understanding. 

There are several examples of this, the most recent of which (and the one which got me thinking) is the word “intersectional.” This word started with a really good idea. (see article link at the end). In a 2016 TED talk, (just two years ago) a woman examined a case where a court had declined to find on a case of combined racial and sexual discrimination, saying (unfortunately, correctly) that they were not allowed by the existing law to consider them as combined influences. The speaker asked the audience

to imagine this situation as an intersection of roads where two lines of traffic come together. It was a great idea, the colliding lines of racism and sexism, like vehicles colliding at an intersection, creating damage exponentially greater than any one vehicle alone. It was a really good idea, because it allowed those without direct experience to imagine (inadequately to the actual experience) what happens when layers of prejudice are piled on a single person. It was a useful idea for persuading the legal system about the necessity to examine multiple prejudices combined. A useful idea - and soon co-opted.

A while back, I ran into a friend at a local store, who introduced me to another friend of hers, visiting from out of town. On hearing (from my friend) about just some of the elements of my life, this visitor gushed to me “your life is so intersectional!” 

I was taken aback - this woman’s connotations of the term were positive, it was a compliment to her. I thought perhaps I’d misunderstood the term, as I understood it the way Crenshaw (the TED talk presenter) had voiced it. So, I looked up a bunch of references to intersectionality, examinations of the term, explanations and critiques. (Amazing how many there have been in just two years), and here’s the conclusion I came to: the exact conclusion in the piece I’ve linked at the end of this post. That is, people taking on this word have tried to expand its meaning and have in the process actually muddied meaning to the point of it becoming a hard impenetrable clay. It means different things to different people, the end result being no one hearing it can be sure what the speaker means when they say it. 

This brings to mind a particular conference I had with a professor as an undergraduate. It should be no surprise to anyone who’s read …. oh, pretty much anything I’ve written… that I’m a wee bit of a science geek. I was in an undergraduate class in Microbiology with a professor who became one of my mentors and friends (and, later, when I was teaching, a colleague). We had as assigned reading a portion of a classic microbiology text that dealt with Koch’s Postulates, and which was written in entirely incomprehensible blather. I went to the professor’s office to try to get clarity. Like any good teacher (and he was very good) he wanted me to find the answer for myself, and sent me off with a couple of resources I could begin with to get to understanding. I read them, and five or six others I found myself, and went back to his office a couple of days later with a definition I’d written out in a couple of sentences of what the Postulates meant. He beamed and nodded. I looked at him, down at the copious notes in my lap, and at the text sitting between us on the table. My professor, Dr. Parson, waited. 

“So it’s really just about something the organism produces itself rather than a microbe that can be cultured or produced in a lab?” He nodded again. I looked down again, up again: “Why don’t they just say that?” 

He laughed loud and long, and we got into a long discussion of specialized terminology, how linguistics look at them, how scientists look at them, and what they do to create a sense of mysticism that blurs or actually hides the fundamental meaning from most people. 

My point is that complex ideas do not and SHOULD NOT attempt to have simple or single words to express them - they should require a complex mix of words and phrases, descriptors and qualifiers to bring them into full understanding. Science needs all the words it can get. Racism needs all the words it can get. Philosophy needs all the words it can get. Diplomacy needs all the words it can get. Sexism needs all the words it can get. We should not -- I am begging the world and readers and academics (particularly) not to-- reduce ideas. We should instead take time and effort and force of will to weave clear, fundamental words into a sharp understanding of their wonderful complexity.

Speak truth to me all you want, but don’t think it’s truth when you try to make complex concepts simple. Struggle with words and ideas, talk and talk and talk until you have clarity, no matter how many words it takes, and don’t -- DO NOT -- try to cover beautifully complicated concepts by using a single popular, vague, or trendy word. When you do that, what happens at that intersection is that two lanes don’t just collide, a bomb is also dropped on top of them. No, my life is NOT intersectional - it is (as is any one person’s life) too complex and rich to be reduced to a single word. 

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ENDNOTE:  I completely agree that intersectional resistance is essential. I'm just not sure - no, I'm fully convinced - that not everyone means the same thing when they say that.

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Article referenced in post:

Intersectional - what?

Where All This Has Left Me

NOTE:  for 518 days, I have tried to keep politics out of this blog.  That ends NOW.
I wanted to write about writing, but sometimes the world mandates what you must write.

________________________________________________________________________________

“It was all probably part of his plan,” she said.

We were on a social media thread, this unknown-to-me female and I,
arguing over the separation of children from their parents at the border.

“He needed to get things moving to solve the problem, to enforce the rule of law.  It was all probably
part of his plan.”

I could barely breathe as I typed my response.  “And you’re ok with him traumatizing children
as part of his plan?  As a political maneuver?”

After which she called me negative, angry, and hateful.  “You didn’t answer my question,” I typed,
“You’re ok with him traumatizing children as part of his plan?  If so, I’m honestly sorry for you.”

She never answered that question, but others have.  On a separate thread, someone posted the
much-circulated picture of an approximately four year old child crying in a cage, with the
question:  “Are you Trump supporters ok with this?” Many answered proudly that yes, they were,
and other comments far too vile to repeat here.

They were proud.

In my youth, not long after McCarthyism had died, not long after blacklists and internment camps
and the HUAAC, my mother used to say, as dramatically as she could manage, “God save me from
good Christian people.” I didn’t then really know what she meant, but I get it now. For years I have
railed (with friends and in public) against the stereotyping of all things Republican/conservative/right
as “bad” and all things left/liberal/Democrat as “good.”  It is still worth noting that such sweeping
generalizations are never true and always divisive, but I have no time for that argument any more.
I am neither Democrat nor Republican - I have been an Independant my whole voting life, and I
approached the 2016 election as one, and have approached every issue since the same way. The
Republican party once deserved the moniker “Grand Old Party,” and the Democrats the label “the
party of the people.” Neither is true any longer, and hasn’t been for some time.  I have been guilty
more than once of enjoying an “outside” position more than I should, proud of weighing each issue
and each candidate on merits, and not party affiliations or recommendations by unions or interest
groups. I have enjoyed the pride of feeling right in a logical approach based on evidence, on careful
research, on factual basis. But let me say this right now: I am neither a moderate nor a centrist. I
take sides.

And I can’t think of a single person in the current administration who I would count on my side,
or want to be on theirs. I am wholly, completely, and to my bones, opposed to them. They are, in
unmitigated terms, my enemy.

I wanted to keep this blog about writing, but sometimes the world mandates what you must write.  

Reaching Beyond Your Grasp... and Dancing with Words

One of the most remarkable musical performances I’ve ever seen I witnessed at Eluwa Special School in Ongwediva, Namibia.  Eluwa is a school for deaf and blind students located near the northern border of Namibia and Angola, and I had gone there for a summer (their winter, our summer) to teach computer skills to a couple of classes of the students, to help the blind students learn to use software that would allow them to use computers, and to teach instructional use of computers to the teaching staff.  Eluwa is a remarkable place, and even more remarkable are the students and staff.  Students come from all parts of Namibia, and also from Angola, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.  When I was there, out of the 300+ students, about 80 were blind, the rest deaf, and a very few both blind and deaf.

My porch-conversation group

Every teacher who works there (several of whom were there as students when they were young) is required to lead an extracurricular activity with the students. When staff found out that I had an interest in the arts, there was some early competition for me to participate in theater, dance, and visual arts activities - I was, early on, invited to observe all these groups while I settled on the one I’d “volunteer” with.  Unofficially, I sat outside the visiting teacher’s housing every afternoon with a group of teen and pre-teen deaf girls, while they showed me their writings (in beautifully-illustrated diaries) and talked about their goals, and I talked to them about stories, poetry, and the female writers I admired.  These “conversations” were slow and required considerable patience, as the girls worked with me to learn, understand, and become proficient in Namibian Sign Language (distinctly different from ASL, though the signs for letters are the same). This probably benefited me more than it did them.

Because of the small size of the school, students often participated in multiple extra-curricular activities, so when I walked into the dance class, I wasn’t surprised to see many of “my” girls - my NSL-writing-porch-conversation group - in the dance group.  The teacher/leader of the group, a woman named Deena with whom I got to be great friends - explained to me that the reason there were huge amplifiers setting well out from the wall, the CD player on a stand behind them, was that the music would be played loud enough to vibrate the floor, so that the girls could feel the music through their feet as they rehearsed.  They would dance barefoot.  She offered me earplugs, which I declined.
When the music started to play, I didn’t recognize it, but I recognized the type - a solid rock beat, skillful drums and guitars, and a beautiful male voice tenor singing in a language I did not know, but I did recognize the passion and vocal range (which was impressive). The music pounded through the room, and before I had a chance to think, the girls were in formation, going through what was obviously a carefully-choreographed routine, never missing a beat as they responded to the music they could not hear, while their teacher beamed.  At the end, I broke into applause, and they blushed.  Later I was told they had twice won the National Dance Award for girls in their age range.  They did two more routines before I had to leave, and I left awestruck.

Watching these girls, seeing in their eyes not just intense concentration, but absolute joy in the music they were feeling rather than hearing, I was overcome with the resilience of the human spirit, and the absolute power of music.

When I am writing to music and the words are not coming, I think of them, and close my eyes, seeing their slender bodies,  at one moment sitting with me on that far-away porch, laughing or crying over their shared writings, and the next moment swirling and stomping, swaying and strutting to music with which they shared resonance if not audibility. Every one of them knew that there were aspects to music they would never know, but that did not matter to them - they lived the music in movement, they shared it in physical elation and embodied music in every gesture and motion.

What impressed me so much was not just the beauty of their performance - which was a thing of heart-stopping beauty - but their courage.   These young women, rejected by their mainstream society, written off by everyone but the people at this school, knowing that those who watched them were aware of something they could never share (what the music sounded like), set all of that aside - all that judgement, all that skepticism, all that rejection - and just opened themselves. They found a way for something that was supposed to be out of their reach to instead be within their grasp, and they embraced it fully  - they lived it.

I could go into a litany of all the ways I witnessed the courage of these young women, but it was all there in their dance. When I struggle with a character or a plot or even just a sense that 'something’s

wrong' when working on a story, what I need to remember to do is see those girls in my memory, see their exhilaration as they swirl and sweep around a floor, the light in their eyes, the perfection of their movements, and their delighted laughter when a routine is finished.

With each writing project I start, I create (at some point) a writing playlist - different for each story.   Lately, as I write, I’ve had a variety of music and music styles playing, and nothing has yet settled.  I often play Mozart, but also have found myself listening to The Eagles, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin, several different jazz albums, and things as diverse as Ray Charles and Jean-Luc Ponty.  Harry Chapin and Harry  Nilsson.  While no “playlist” is emerging for this particular story, the image of those beautiful young women dancing sweeps through the background of my thoughts, and I settle into whatever is playing, feeling and embracing it, and the words keep coming.  There may be something in the story I cannot yet hear or see, but I can cease to worry about what’s out of my reach and find what is in my grasp within the story, and dance with the words.

This is something I wish for all of you.  Listen to the music - reach….and write.