An Ode to Art

The way through our darkest hours is our steadfast, stubborn, perseverant making of things.

I’ve been gobbling up art lately, books by musicians filling pages with bold claims that live concerts can save us from ourselves because it is in those halls and amphitheaters we reach our shared transcendence. It is through pulsing rhythms we find our bodies again and rejoice in each other – together, together.

The movies, too, in theaters so that you’re sunk all the way in, like sensory deprivation. Nowhere else to go but here, here, here. Eyes on the screen, hearts and minds wide open to this singular story about a girl learning how to live.

The film made me wonder what it would be like to be an actor, fully embodying a role, letting a character transform you wholly and totally, lost in another soul.

Oh and the wild sets and costumes – so much delight, the women sitting next to us with their popcorn and giggles, looking away from the fight.

Art is necessary. Art is how we congregate and evolve into our best, most beloved selves.

It’s the place still safe for debates. The most outrageous expressions can live here in this picture, these lyrics, your short poem about death stealing time.

It’s probably all we will have left to signify we are human, our art. Our originality, our intuition, our pulsing hearts and storied lives. Giving birth, making love, suffering and dying, suffering and dying, suffering and dying.

There is no outrunning the facts. Our limitations scare us back into ourselves. Let’s stay closed and automate, let’s refuse our ending.

Art, though, forces us to do the work, to be in our skin, writing a piece of prose for you to devour so that the words fill your throat and belly with warm porridge, a treat to savor for days.

It is in this song that crushes you, this poem lighting you aflame, the film leaving your jaw slack with awe. 

What will we do without these delicacies? Our exuberant ways?