Recently I watched Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris for the second time. One scene that has
stuck in my mind is the part when, after reading Gil’s manuscript, Gertrude
Stein returns it to him and tells him not to write such depressing things. “The artist's
job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of
existence,” she says.
I’ve been thinking about this for weeks now. Lately, there
is much to despair about. We are at the
brink of a terrifying election. We are entering a new (warmer) climate
in Earth’s history, one that we as a race have instigated. It’s almost December 2012, (but don’t worry, lovely readers, I don’t believe in that). The list
continues.
When I look at the facts, I don’t feel hopeful, but I do
think fictional Gertrude Stein has a point.
As Bread & Puppet’s Cheap Art
Manifesto so aptly puts it: “Art is food. You can’t eat it, but it feeds
you.” The question is, how do we as artists acknowledge the despair, write
about it, sing about it and make images about it without succumbing to it, and
better yet, how do we find the antidote? Mary Oliver offers these words:
“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
It is as simple and as complicated as that. Isn’t creating art, by its very nature, an act
of speaking up? Getting out of bed every morning, sitting down at your desk or
your piano with your manuscript paper is an act of defiance. Today, you say, I
will write just one new measure. I will not give up. Most likely that puny new
measure has been informed by the astonishing things you have seen and heard
somewhere in your life. Even though you may be alone in your room, you are now
telling about those things. Even though you are racked by self-defeating thoughts,
somewhere in your deepest insides, you know that some day, someone else will
hear your completed piece and feel as though they have been fed.
And this is why I think Gertrude is
right. Even though Romney could win the election, even though my future
children may never build a snow fort, I still plan on writing at least one measure a day, wild and defiant, because the mere act of creating, in whatever
form, is what keeps us standing, what propels us forward and forces us to have a voice. Despair is real, but so is beauty. We can be present to the emptiness of
existence while simultaneously finding its balm.
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