Earlier this evening I listened to a recording of Howard
Zinn’s talk ‘The Artist in a Time of War.’
He was speaking not long after September 11 and before the Iraq War had
started. Zinn heard the drumbeats, and
urged artists to use their gifts to raise the difficult questions, such as ‘Why
do we have to bomb?’ ‘Why do we have to send troops?’ Were he alive now, I believe he would raise
questions that would fill pages. Would he even recognize the government we now
have?
Zinn spoke of ‘transcendence,’ the ability of artists to see
beyond the immediate; to see life from outside the boundaries, to look beyond
the accepted wisdom. In a world where
everyone is defined by the job that they do, we are brainwashed into believing
that those in government are the only ones with the ‘expertise’ to have
opinions on the ‘big questions.’ Each one of us, by virtue of being alive,
living in this time and place, has as much right and as much responsibility to
ask the questions, to discuss, to debate, to hold opinions. No one has the profession of citizen. We
all have the identity of citizen.
Paraphrasing Zinn, where journalists and other non-fiction
writers endure public ostracizing if they ask these questions openly and
publicly, the artist can through metaphor, fiction, acting, visual, musical and
dimensional forms raise the questions obliquely. Picasso said that ‘Art is the lie that tells
the truth.’ In my own opinion, using art in this way also allows the audience
to absorb the truth in their own time and in a way that does not crush them. Once they have revealed it to themselves,
they can determine their own roles and actions in facing that truth.
There are many ugly events before us now. While it is tempting to cocoon ourselves and
hope another election will free us from this madness, a review of the past 16
years will show how vain and hollow that hope is. If you are an artist, I urge you to employ
your gifts for beauty, for joy, for solace, but also to stretch them to tell
the heartbreaking truths.
I Say Unto You
One day in the National Mall
there will stand a Camp
of chained link fence and razor wire,
where punishments fit the crimes
and the history of White America.
Those who embrace a code of justice
will be answerable to it.
The tick of the flick of a whip.
The tock of a rock hitting fence.
The cycle of privilege will fall to its knees,
where every person of color is armed
every woman voice-ful, every child protected.
Where courts are well-versed in faith-based law,
justice is meted out by the victims and
those capable of answering violence with violence.
Is cruelty all that the cruel understand?
For those that terrorize children
we will not spare the rod.
Every child torn from parents,
who entered a pristine white tent
or huddled in a kennel
and was never seen again
will be remembered.
The tick of the drip of the rain.
The tock of the stomp of their feet.
The Sentenced stand in pillory
while the curious and wronged circle
and gawk at their shaved heads and torn silk suits,
their arms and legs tattooed with the Names.
Above the Guilty a marquee reads
‘Suffer the little children to forgive us.’
Do the shameful respond only to shaming?
The child in me is growing older,
for my ability to forgive and forget is fading
and the clock is ticking.
