Everyone has a story. Those stories are as varied and interesting as our own journeys have been. Many of the questions rattling around in the human brain are similar regardless of where you’re from, how you were raised, or what you do with your time. Even those who we seem distant from in the most painfully obvious ways, they still shit, eat, worry about the people they love, wonder if they’re loveable themselves, and so on…
We do not, however, all have the same histories or circumstances. We do not make meaning the same ways even though we all do make meaning. We are not privy to the same information, the same definitions, the same fears, rewards, catalysts, lessons, or opportunities. And so our languages grow differently, and we express ourselves imperfectly. In moments defined by fleeting things such as emotions, health, stress, chemistry, blood sugar levels the distance between one mother tongue and another can be extraordinary.
Words are meant for more than argument, they will never be clear enough for a forever capture. Remember to see the shape they make as a whole, hovering above each word’s organization on a page. Words have many lives, and like cats they too get into all kinds of situations inside and out of their primary residence.
Fantasy is a thing that happens exactly as we want it to with no adjustments needed nor made. When I sing it is not with perfect pitch. When I dance I am stopping my body from falling, and I am not always graceful. When I tell someone my emotions I am throwing a can of soup at a canvas. Communication is art, and like all art some will understand the artist’s meaning more easily than others, some will recoil in judgement, and others will fumble through clutching onto their own foggy interpretations which have nothing to do with the art, artist, or subject matter of the show itself.
We are brilliant little creatures dripping with sunlight and sludge until our deaths, 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 80 years down the line. Why is it that we insist to one another, in these short lifetimes, that we understand someone better than they know themselves? Why is it that we ruffle and pitch, wrestle ideas to the ground in order to Dominate a conversation rather than sit humbly and ask after intent?
Our society right now has a problem with accountability. It comes from all directions, and even the accused become victims at times. We are casting out babies and bathwater that hasn’t cooled. We are acting as though a cold shoulder directed toward to an undesirable is the same thing as healing a wound. This is not so. Our society needs to do better.
The art world knows this. Artists and educators have long been held accountable for the feelings they’ve invoked instead of the content of their actions, or the person behind the persona they publicly carry. Criminals, rightfully and wrongfully accused know this, as they are often held to the content of their past actions instead of the human they have become in the process of growth over time. We humans love a scapegoat. When does a person’s advancement after upheaval or freshly internalized education become the new dance, the new song, the new story, the present conversation we’re having now? Does the world believe each meat sack plays only one note over the span of its entire lifetime?
Aren’t stories created to educate? Aren’t caricatures meant to inspire empathy and a new response in one’s meaning making? Aren’t punishments meant to rehabilitate? And if rehabilitated, where lies the land of opportunity? Are we all so tired, so dissatisfied, so unable to self critique that keeping a line firmly drawn between “us” and “them” is the only way we manage to look in a mirror every day, and so ignore our own infirmities?
I understand that it’s easier to cast stones than it is to trust. I know that there are many who do not deserve to be believed. It is true that there are those who should never return to a certain place or be acknowledged by particular people. But for the rest of us, the ones less involved, the ones who’ve heard through the grapevine, the ones who have no stake in the fight other than staying in the light: are we enforcing the correct response when we draw a dark X over the flesh of another and keep it there forever? Are we part of the problem when we do not make room for growth? Are we also part of the problem when we say we seek to remedy the world but are unable or unwilling to discuss the complexities of time and effort, of education and empathy, or movement and action? It is not for the maligned to teach, it is for the community at large to bring a fallen member back into stasis. This cannot be done without complex understanding of reasons why, cause and effect, otherness, and the languages of those perpetrating as well as those harmed most frequently.
That I shun you for all time and expect our community to fall in behind me, is this a blind eye toward the very world I am hoping for when I’ve called you out to begin with? How do we come back together as humans, better dancers, more whole storytellers and singers, after the world has rightfully been blown apart? Isn’t destruction what makes way for the process of creation?
I do not know the answers to these things, but I think it is time to examine them. As we call upon one another to be better, as we exile in search for a space of healing, what then? Are we sacrificing eternally in social death those who make mistakes or speak languages not progressive enough? What degree of responsibility do we as a community have when we take to task another for their harm? What crimes are worthy of community action vs. interpersonal rebalancing and mediation? Are our own internalized fears and malice kept inopportunely a working part of these equations?
Play On My Friends,
~ Creature
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~Thank you.