Freedom, Responsibility and Artists 4

I entered Grace cathedral on Saturday  

with its three-story high arched Anglican ceilings,

its neon lit Jacob’s ladder, “Jacob’s Dream A Luminous Path” created by Grace Cathedral 2016 Artists’ in Residence, Benjamin Bergery and Jim Campbell along with traditional stained-glass windows and saint depictions, to sit in the quiet with a room full of observers as a robed dancer swept a pile of rice back into one pile, having pulled it out of the 30 pound mound of rice before I came in) and observe an arts meditation, Our Labyrinth For Grace by Lee Mingwei  

As I watched the program, I did not feel a find myself exploring “issues of trust, intimacy, and self-awareness” as was suggested in the church’s promotional materials. What I experience was a large round black carpet encircled with tea candles in small votives where a thirty-pound pile of rice was being swept with grace and precision with a broad straw broom.

A constantly changing pattern appeared as the pile was spread around the disc and then was rearranged as the dancer reassembled the rice into a single mound. Patterns appeared, were altered, and then disappeared.

All that could be heard was a hush of rice shuffled into piles and an occasional whispered bell tone from the belled ankle bracelets worn by the dancers who worked as soloists, one dancer relieving the other after just over an hour.

I watched the whiteness of robes and the cream of the rice and wondered how much rice would result if it was steamed to feed how many starving children, women, and men in Somalia. (Currently over two million Somalis are dying of starvation due to years of drought combined with war complications and international lack of attention) The music of the rice spread like a soft spring rain settling on a grassy meadow as the church’s bells echoed each half hour inside the high arched ceilings and coated the stained-glass windows with their lingering chimes. Each of the dancers swept the disk, and the patterns created were lovely as we watched in silence and a candle would go out with an exhalation of smoke as I pondered if in that candle’s last breath another child had died across the globe.

At that point I found myself wondering what, if any was the responsibility of an artist in today’s world, especially in the United States of America which has often been called “the belly of the beast?”  Is it sufficient to entertain, to amuse, to beautify or should we in these specific times when so much is at stake, be using our art to inform, to question, to address to demand the issues of our times from climate change to oppression, from racism through famine, from violence in all its iterations to poverty, from war and genocide, cultural and human.  Not that an artist need address them all, but should their art be in service to any of these concerns, these issues?

Perhaps these thoughts came emerged due to the recent publication of Black Fire This Time an anthology that is a tribute to the original Black Fire anthology that was an explicit outgrowth of the Black Arts Movement. I came to myself as an artist, first as actress and dancer and later as poet and multi-genre writer, where my political ideals and my art were inextricably bound.  I am not sure that  I have left that construct but I do think my ideals have become more nuanced, community remains a value, but self, in my definition of community expanded to be inclusive of people worldwide who are seeking a world where all flourish, the people and the planet. Reading that anthology which includes authors from the original book as well as some of the younger sisters and brothers of that arts movement such as myself as well as writers who are the children of the movement, I once again was reminded of the excitement in which I developed my craft when the work was fertilized by the heady politics and indeed revolutionary actions and rhetoric of those times. Art, we all asserted should serve the people not the rulers.  Art had a purpose, beyond beauty and skill, although those attributes were valued.

But if the artist is deeply involved in the struggle to secure and maintain freedom then certainly to express one’s own imperatives is critical. The question is, when given a platform to express oneself, be it local, national, or international, in these days, in these times does the artist have a larger responsibility?

What do you think?

I also took some time seeking places to donate towards the Somalia food crisis. These are a few of the resources which seemed to be the most effective and honorable:

My first thought was Oxfam but one’s money goes into a pool not specifically to Somalia, but they are there.

I also read this article: Donating to the Somalia Famine | GiveWell

which seems to say that Doctors Without Borders is the best bet

I think I’m either giving to them or Somalia Humanitarian Fund •  a UN body but the funds are earmarked for Somalia