Throwing myself into work has kept my mind focused and calm this month, and helped to quell some of the rising anxiety produced by the uncertainty of Covid and the upcoming elections here in the United States. Staying focused on the things in my personal and creative life that I can control, and the local actions I can take to help the community here in Los Angeles has been helpful, when the vastness of the world's problems can feel overwhelming.
Artists are no stranger to uncertainty. There is so little we can actually control about the outcome of our work. We can dream up a vision, try to make a plan, we can choose our materials and apply our effort and skills towards that vision, but a good artist must be flexible, must allow for deviations from the plan, be prepared for outside forces to affect the work and for it to take on a life of its own. An artist must learn to be open-minded, accepting that the outcome may result in either pleasant surprise or disappointment.
"Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the pre-requisite to succeeding."
- Art & Fear
Interestingly enough, with the amount of uncertainty in nearly every other facet of life these days, art has felt oddly safe and "certain" by comparison. Being able to throw myself into the familiar uncertainty of creating art has kept me grounded, and the physical process of making has helped me to literally "work through" some of the emotions of this month.
There is a Langston Hughes poem called Let America Be America Again that has been on my mind for months, and it has inspired a new series of small works on paper. I find this poem incredibly moving, and it's continued relevance is only further indication of how little has changed in our country since 1935 when it was written.
A short excerpt, below:
"O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!"
There is something haunting about the similar phrasing of Langston Hughes' words "make America again" and Donald Trump's MAGA slogan. Yet simply removing one word reclaims the phrase, transforming it into something more positive, powerful and unifying.
Hughes' is the original message.
It is a call for America to fulfill it's original promise — not to return to something it ever actually was — but to finally become something it has always had the potential to be. Like Hughes in 1935, I am still hanging on to hope that one day, for all of us, "America will be".
xx