We are at a turning point in history. Everything is in a state of flux, and nothing is certain. Political and social unrest is at the highest it has been in my lifetime, and I was lost and confused about what to do about it. Here I am in college, learning how to make movies, so that I can tell the stories I’ve always wanted to tell. Stories about love, stories about adventure, stories about loss. This has been my dream since I could consciously think. But, reality always comes to wake us from our dreams. My wake-up came in the form of the 2016 election, and a major need to restructure my life. What this election made me think for the first time in my entire life was: why? Why tell stories? Why create art? Does the world really need more artists?
I thought no - what this world needed was more people to actually go out into the world and make a quantifiable difference. We need journalists, protesters, and everyone in between, but not artists. I tried my hand at this, covered an event that mattered to me, but a week later it felt like it didn’t matter to anyone anymore, and that emptiness settled in me once more.
I had lost hope in everything I thought I needed to do in life. But then I looked at my wall, where the answer had been staring at me for months now. I had forgotten it existed. The answer came in the form of a quote from filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro:
“We come into this world just to shout, scream, laugh – declare who we are before fading… and hope it echoes in someone’s soul.”
And it struck me. Health care is being destroyed, higher education is almost a pipe dream for most, funding to the arts is being cut. The reduction of humans into machines by the government is currently in motion. The world does in fact need artists, possibly now more than ever. We need those few who are willing to rip open their chests, dig deeply into their hearts, scraping away at every last bit of their soul until their fingers are raw and there is nothing left to take, in an attempt to show us, and themselves, that life means something. Artists teach what it means to be human. And yes, being human means experiencing everything from monumental moments such as marriage or death, to seemingly inconsequential things like exchanged glances with a stranger on the bus or the color of a room, and even the most abstract feelings. Things we all experience but maybe ignore while searching for our absolute truths. Artists come along and say that the things we ignore may be the most important things, and that the absolute truths we seek may reside in those overlooked moments.
It’s in that attempt to make a connection, the attempt to find someone who reciprocates their feelings, letting you know that you are not alone in whatever you are going through, where the artist succeeds in the way only they can. Through scathing honesty, humanity is created. Through art, the brutal echoes of the soul are heard.
