hope. continued

I remember a time when I refused to get a cell phone and preferred being nearly completely disconnected to the rest of the world. Internet was a luxury then and I could barely define what the democratic party was let alone what war we were fighting or the rate at which glaciers were melting. I spent my weekends hidden in the forest somewhere, my summers on the road, my nights in the studio. You may have called me a coward, an introvert, a naive college student, and to a certain point I would agree. But there was something about not knowing that gave me knowledge or maybe it was just hope. It was a time when I made art for myself; it didn't require the utmost confidence and drive to be in the studio, it just was.  I just was.

What kind of hope did I have then? Sure there were all sorts of inner battles I was fighting at the time, (we all have something) but in some ways the not knowing gave me hope. The recent break up with my high school love was the worst tragedy I was aware of. I didn't know how it felt to hold a baby of your own, to see her grow out of your womb and into her own being. I didn't have the internet to constantly remind me of how climate change will effect my family's future. I wasn't carrying the scar of graduate school to tell me I wasn't a good enough artist. I didn't have things like facebook to tell me what I should fight for, who my friends are, what groups to join and how big Winona would be if she was still here with us. I didn't know how it felt to love and then lose.

I sometimes wish I could forget some of the things I have grown to know, that I could run off to the woods and hide, and shut out the sights and sounds of the world.  Yes there is climate change that is threatening the future of our kids. Yes, there is famine and disease, war, and a .001% chance of losing your beautiful baby girl to one extra 13th chromosone. There are all those things, but we have to take the ugly with the beautiful. The things I didn't know then and know now have made my life richer. Maybe that is what gives us hope, for if everything were beautiful we wouldn't know what it was like to lose, we wouldn't know how to hope. I'd like people to write more stories about hope.

Again, here, I can connect art with life. Life takes hope and courage, it is both ugly and beautiful. Walking into the studio takes hope. It takes courage. Art can be ugly, it can be beautiful, it is life. Life is art.