Make It Until You Break It
Art Always Heals *Somebody*
“in order for me to write poetry that isn’t / political, I must listen to the birds / and in order to hear the birds / the warplanes must be silent.”
Okay, I’ll admit it: I’ve been experiencing writer’s block.
I’m still writing lyrics and poems. I’m always spinning bedtime stories for my son. I’m regularly posting newsletters for my band. It’s just that I’m forcefully having to wring any long-form prose out of myself, whether it be a personal essay or a grant proposal.
Like a thin Turkish cotton towel, I’m more absorbent than I appear. Tech overreach, genocidal criminality, increasing social unrest, targeted violence. The constant threat of being swallowed up by bills, debt and poverty. Most of all, I must assimilate my own hard-won acceptance that I’m chronically ill and have been suffering - despite my best efforts to heal - from a highly misunderstood and debilitating full-body inflammatory disorder for decades. Once it all sinks in, I can only hang in there and wait until everything I’ve been absorbing slowly evaporates, leaving me alone again to start anew.
It’s been awhile since I wrote anything lighthearted. You don't need that from me. If you want to see me smile, watch a live performance. When my words hit the page, I only owe you the truth of the moment.
We laugh a lot in our house. We goof around. We play with cats: one cat rides on my shoulders from time to time. The other drools on us like a Saint Bernard. We watch stupid cartoons and sitcoms. We smile and hug and play. We’re lucky enough to have a home and books and games and screens and stuff to do, and we know it. We enjoy every moment.
There’s also a profound sense of duty within the adults in our household: duty to the arts. To the muse, but also to the world at large. To our child, and all of the children. To stay healthy and sane enough to create art that heals.
It’s not a lofty goal. Most art heals somebody. The artist, to be sure, is rendered at least marginally better by every creation. A single viewer or listener is likely to find solace in a piece as well, whether it be through a screen or via a visceral, in-person experience.
It’s a beautiful mess, this state of being. Creation can be rapid and pleasant or excruciatingly slow. Casualties – in the form of lost sleep, forgotten ideas, or missed opportunities for connection – regularly occur. Books and records stand tidily on shelves while pencils, notebooks, fabric scraps, measuring tapes, thrifted frames and cardboard boxes containing countless hours of mulling and drawing litter the floor.
We may be misunderstood. We all might. Our intentions as creatives might be misconstrued as self-serving when they are more along the lines of public-serving. We are driven to create connection between others - not necessarily to ourselves. Our music, art or words may serve as catalysts for connection.
For community.
For healing.
Not everyone can or will get up and out there and put their work on display. They may never do so, or it just may be a matter of time. Even as relatively public artists ourselves, we regularly retreat and enter quiet, invisible periods of creation in between public posts, performances and appearances.
We don’t actually wish to be on display all that often. We only seek to honour the muse; our higher callings both to heal ourselves and to contribute something valuable to humanity. Something that lies within our skill sets, or at least within reach. We love to learn, and we love to share what we’ve learned. We need answer only to ourselves, but we are open to sharing dialogues with all kinds of people.
We laugh a lot in our house. We goof around. We watch stupid cartoons and sitcoms. We smile and hug and play.
Have we shown up lately?
For ourselves?
For anyone else?
Have we seen connections being made, community being built, and conversations being started in our presence? Joy in others’ eyes?
Lately, the answer has been a resounding “absolutely.”
At rare times the answer has been a hard no. We’ve put ourselves out there, perhaps not quite in the right space or timeline or frame of mind, and been met with disinterest. Nobody noticed us in the room – digital/proverbial or physical – and we would have preferred to stay hidden.
Those situations have fed into our appetite to grow as artists. We show up where we are wanted, firstly, and where we are needed secondly. For the most part, that means simply showing up for ourselves at home, owning our projects and having faith in our instincts as we create albums, essays, stories, and other works of art.
Art always heals somebody, even if nobody but its creator ever sees it.
More often than not, the act of creating it is truly enough.
I don’t need to write about doing; I need only do. That is enough. And yet, writing about myself is part of my process. It is something I do.
So I’ll take it all in. I’ll continue to absorb torrents of tears from near and far, literal and spiritual.
I’ll be clean and dry again someday, if only for fleeting moments. And then I’ll start all over again.
Hang me out on the clothesline in the sun.
Let me wave in the salty breeze, unfettered.
Musical coda: this pedestrian bridge live performance by renowned poet and musician Saul Williams, shot by an old acquaintance of ours, videographer Mitch Fillion in Toronto, brought me fully to full body molecular level changed watershed tears when I watched it recently. I challenge you to do the same. Listen to Saul. Know that this heals.
Art most certainly heals - thank you for the reminder!