What Now?
I wrote this a day or two after the Notorious R.B.G. died out of the sadness and despair I felt at the loss of this icon, especially at such an inopportune, unfortunate point in our nation’s history. I look to the future now, and in two days we will see if we’ll be able to breathe easy, or if the hopelessness and wretched sickness I felt as I wrote the words below had weight. I’m not a pessimist, and especially cannot be so on a day like today when we honor the late, great Dr. King.
I hope that the forces for love, justice and peace shine down on us, especially now as we approach the inauguration of a new administration. One that isn’t hostile to democratic values and otherness as was our democracy during the calamitous, disgraceful reality show of a Presidency under the reign of 45. May we keep focused on the ways in which we can be an agent of creative, not violent change. This quote from Dr. King feels especially important given the times we’re in;
“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. ”
I, like all of us am looking forward to brighter days, and I vow never to forget the damage done to our democracy over the last four years. We marched this past year for change and demanded accountability for centuries of racial injustice, we made calls on behalf of those fallen, we held meetings and had difficult conversations and we voted to make our voices heard. We didn’t back down though the specter of fascism was a very real threat. We have a lot of work to do, but the orange man is going away, whether he like it or not. May the transition be peaceful and may we move on gracefully and hold the violent seditionists responsible for the disgusting attack on the Capital via the civilized route of the rule of law.
Our ability to be able to speak and to express freely, to make artistic and subversive work was acutely under attack over the last half decade. We need to support freedom of expression and come back to an agreed upon reality so that we can have a touchstone that grounds us to one another, reminding us of our common goal as a culture, people and nation. I only hope we continue to grow in love and that the forces for truth and peace reign king. We can no longer allow our fellow humans to deify any one person or thing or culture or set of ideas. Knowledge is power.
!Viva los Artistas!
*Given the spirit in which “What Now” was written in, I find it best read aloud.
What Now?
And, what of the artists? Of the youth, now that our democracy is all but gone. What of the hopes, ideas, dreams they held onto and planned to nurture, foster, rear and watch go out on their own, daringly into the world, to live their lives, bouncing off the cold-hot, soft-hard, thin-fat, young-old, new ideas floating around, existing for the sake of existing and born of love and pain, alive to inspire more and others like them. Not like them in their sameness of being but alike out of the solidarity and similarity of the way in which they came into existence, born of freedom and made from the leisure time that having one's needs met, allowing for self-reflection, brings.
Will their ideas and dreams shrivel and turn to dust, laying dormant until the winds of their once valued creativity stirs up in their minds, kicking up the beloved, no longer valued expressions, causing them to choke and wheeze, blinding sight and causing stinging, vengeful pain, burning the throat and creeping into the lungs, leaving a thin layer there, the breeding ground for sickness? And not one that would end life soon, but instead be allowed to rot and fester the tiny hairs of the lungs, laboring movement and breath slowly over time, so that one was allowed to, and left to watch with indignity, their dreams die, along with others like them.
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