You know that moment in the story where you think all is lost: the hero is down for the count, the bad guy is gloating, and you’re crying ragey hot tears over the mistakes, the betrayals, the bad luck, and the horrible injustice?
There’s a foot on the hero’s neck and she’s eating dirt.
It’s awful.
Remember, this is also the point in the story where the hero digs deeper than ever before to find resources that can only be found at the very end of what we think are our limits.
To all the artists, innovators, visionaries, creators, and makers out there, take the time you need. You just got flattened and everybody saw it and it’s painful and mortifying and it won’t be easy to just shake this one off. It might even feel like the best solution is to stay down, they rooted for the bad guy, they relished his win, why fight for these people? Let them have their giant wall if they want it so bad. But, it’s important that you rally. If half the country gets wall-happy and starts bricking everything off and everything becomes one big Keep Out sign, you must get busy making the words and images that melt divisions.
Do your work. Dig a tunnel, knit a ladder, be a bulldozer of love.
Make art that re-introduces us to our humanity, that shows us who we are, that we are the same, that we have all endured loss and pain, that we’re all fucked up and perfect and biased and unlimited in our potential to make a better world, and that we can’t prosper if we’re separated by walls of ideology, status, identity, competition, and stupid nonsense like what color body we inhabit.
Maybe the keep out signs don’t affect you, but I can guarantee you that they affect someone you love - someone who will be walled off from health care, walled off from feeding or educating their kids, walled into violence, dehumanization, or poverty with no escape.
Take the time you need, then git up and mill your fear, disappointment, rage, and confusion into a song, a story, a comedy set, a community center, an app, a thing of beauty, a thing of shadow, I don’t care what you make, just make it with everything you’ve got and tear down the walls wherever you find them.
theartofmadeline
2087
prguitarman
gummygunk
baratheonpilled
stormborns
dededos
izzy806
