Good thing we have so much work to do, so many friends to hang out with and our love relationships to figure out. Without these time-consuming diversions occupying our minds and stopping us from getting any reasonable amount of sleep at night, we would have even more to stress about. We might get really worked up about the National Endowment for the Arts having their funding cut by 10.5 trillion dollars, not to mention the Standing Rock Sioux’s pleas being ignored after so many months of earnest protesting and the threats to our future that lurk behind the current disregard for industrial regulations.
To be honest, something that really stops me in my tracks is how tired this whole topic of our new government taking away everything that those who care and/or with soul intact might value is. I know I’m not alone in zoning out or avoiding the heated conversations that some people still have the stamina for, and I admire them although I seriously don’t want to hear about it anymore.
I do care and I’m not broken, which makes me wonder if we are shutting up too early.
Maybe they think our attention spans are too short or that we only want to talk amongst ourselves about stuff that is considered fresh. Maybe it’s time to throwback to the 60’s and not get tired of expressing these twisted knots of displeasure we feel on hearing about our fellow Americans being mistreated and our cherished creative and environmental organizations getting slashed and burned after decades of productive service.
There have to be new ways to express our feelings about these developments, which affect us physically, emotionally or simply causes us chagrin. In his essay “Artists in Times of War,” Howard Zinn presented the idea that people should create art when they feel the most horrified by the upheaval and violence around them. If you still have something to say, but think no one wants to hear it again, say it in a different way.
Make art, write music, poetry and prose to give yourself a break.
If the mood calls: make a statement with color, sound or word choice.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/07/dakota-access-pipeline-approved-standing-rock-sioux
