Oh, oh, oh, there it is again, the ache. You are too evocative and provocative for claps or nice words. You are due honesty.
Personally, I have always struggled against those who divide the world in half; good and bad, good and evil, right and wrong, black and white etc. While I marvel at those who waltz through life untouched by misery, they appear so shallow, I fear that getting underneath their skin would be to enter nothingness, and that keeps me at bay.
Do not mistake me, I do not welcome misery. Nonetheless, I do acknowledge, respect and value misery’s contributions to my life (and the whole of humanity). My relationship with misery is long. It took me years to confront it, then understand, accept, integrate, and finally use it to empower me (rather than impede me).
Art was the key that unlocked the mysterious wonders hiding inside misery.
Art gave misery its voice and that voice gave me the strength to open my eyes and see the world as it really exists. These days, I hear people speak of “woke” and think “see”. Perhaps misery gave Billie Holiday the strength to “hear”. If so, I wonder if “woke” would have meant “hear” to her.
I grew up in the extremes. My mother raised her children alone. At 6:30 in the morning Mama left for work and returned home at 6:30 in the evening. We moved constantly and each place was worse than the last. Mama always said it was a chance to start over, this time things would be better, but she was wrong. We were trapped in poverty and there was no way out. By the time I left home at 17, we’d moved 26 times. We’d lived in Mama’s car, we’d lived with roaches, mice, mold, mildew, pedophiles, brutes, crazies, and gangs, but landlords – GD, mother-effing landlords – were the very worst.
I also spent a lot of time in the homes of my well-educated, successful, and very wealthy relatives. During a particularly bad spell, Mama sent me to live with her brother who owned a mansion (with a maid who took care of the household and me, and a caretaker who took care of a garage full of cars, gardens, and household repairs and me). For the next 18 months, my uncle took over my schooling. The man was a genius, literally, and a harsh taskmaster.
All told, I missed all of 7th, 8th and half of 9th grade, and when I returned home, Mama sent me to school again. I tested at college level, but public schools insisted I start in 7th grade. Mama fought hard but failed. I dropped out of school and broke my mother’s heart. I could not bear her heartache, and in some wild moment, I walked into an exclusive private high school on the other side of town and told them my story. Three years later, I graduated high school and started college. It was four years before I had to study again.
In the midst of ugliness and chaos, my child’s mind had fixed on the world around me. Most kids played with toy figures (dolls, GI Joes, etc.). I did not care how my toy people were dressed, or what they did. I built entire worlds for my little people. I built them homes. I built them cities. I built them farms and ranches. I built them spaceships and planets. My sketchbooks and journals were filled with ideas for their world. It might seem sad, but it wasn’t. Discovering I could see things other people could not see was inspiring.
As things turned out, people did that kind of work for a living, and I entered the field of design that focused on the “built environment” – which includes anything and everything that exists in the “Commons” – aka public spaces”. I read environments, the way most people read words. While I can translate environments into words and images, I cannot make people see what they refuse, or cannot bear, to see.
Mr. Kenyatta, there is nothing in this country that was built by accident. Nothing magically appeared. Everything built by human hands was intentional, designed and planned to the fraction of an inch and the penny. Unfortunately, those who do the planning are as ignorant as they are arrogant – the arrogance of ignorance never ceases to astound me.
Somehow or other, evangelism got white Christians so screwed up, they started building Hell right here on earth. From sea to shining sea, white Christian Americans built themselves a nightmare, then forced “others” to live in it as well. If you think me naïve, overly optimistic, even childish, I understand. Nonetheless, America as conceived and built by white Christians is falling down all around us. If we let it go, let it fall, and let it crumble, we can build a civilisation in its place.
That’s the long way of saying, I think you got art exactly right.
