Considering Individuality

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Healthy, free, the world before me, leading wherever I choose.

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A learner with the simplest. . .a novice beginning.

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. . . I wanna be somebody

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These are the voices we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.

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Why?

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Slow down here. Is there something I can say to delay 
this troubling attitude from sinking in?

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You are here,

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The powerful play goes on and you can contribute a verse


because nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

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Believe your own thought, believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all.


Isn't this more like it?  Raise them confident.  Raise them Bold.

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Nobody living can ever stop you.

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Then again

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For nonconformity, the world whips you with its displeasure.

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Be bold.  Be confident.  Be yourself.  Such basic advice, we hear it in commercials for cars and for in jingles for jeans.

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But these are just ads--unreal ways of being.  In the end, what if it just leads to pain?  Not to mention rebellion.

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But the play is going on.  I want them to contribute a verse.

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I want them to say 

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1. Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road"
2. Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
3. Saul Williams, "List of Demands"
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
7. Brian Jonestown Massacre, "Wasting Away"
9. Walt Whitman "O Me! O Life!"
10. Walt Whitman "O Me! O Life!"
11. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
12. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
14. Woody Guthrie "This Land is Your Land"
16. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
18. Levi's Commercial, "O Pioneers"
21. Jurassic 5, "I Am Somebody"

Create Community. Create Art!

Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.  Among the hardest hit areas is New Orleans's 9th Ward.  Since 2005, local, state, and federal funds have been used to re-establish the institutions that are necessary for a community's survival: housing, schools, health services, etc.  While these are all necessities, there is one more requirement for a robust community: a sense of shared experience among its people.  

It's easy to overlook this last necessity in the midst of the tangible rebuilding efforts.  But this intangible is crucial.  With a sense of shared experience, people are more willing to support one another, be empathetic towards what others are enduring, and work together.  So how do communities nurture these connections?  One way, according to Candy Chang, is through art.

Although her project, "Before I Die, I Want To," is not targeted specifically at communities most affected by the Hurricane, it did turn an abandoned space in her New Orleans neighborhood into a giant chalkboard on which she asked people from her community to share with each other their hopes, goals, and dreams in a very public way. As she says in her inspiring Ted Talk, "[A community chalkboard is] about knowing you're not alone. It's about understanding our neighbors in new and enlightening ways."  As she shows pictures of the statements people left, she expresses her incredulity at the project's popularity.  Not only did her neighbors flock to the wall to share their profound and humorous thoughts, complex and simple goals, but people from across the country and around the world began to do the same in their own communities.   

Lately, I've been wondering about the degree to which art can help affect social change. This short, spirited talk by Chang provides me with an uplifting answer: art can do much to rectify issues within our communities.  With this idea in mind, I have curated a number of artists who provide examples of using art to affect change on large and small scales.

Edi Rama has affected change on a large scale. The mayor of Tirana, Albania, Rama, like Chang, employed the vocabulary of art to convince his constituents to take ownership of their city. Instead of using text, however, Rama used color itself.

In his Ted Talk, "Take Back your City With Paint," Rama describes the immediate effect that painting buildings had on the citizens of Tirana: "When we painted the first building. . something unimaginable happened. There was a traffic jam and a crowd of people gathered as if it were the location of some spectacular accident, or the sudden sighting of a visiting pop star."

Of course, this is an art project on a grand scale.  Grander, even, than Chang's. In order to succeed with his project, Rama used the political leverage at his disposal. 

So what happens if an individual does not have this kind of political muscle?  Or even the wherewithal that Chang shows in taking over an abandoned building? Perhaps that is where an individual can participate in projects made possible by social media, like JR's "Inside Out" campaign.