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I listened to a beautiful speech last night, full of ideas I believe in, from a president I respect and admire.

Words and ideas stuck out as if they were little dancing memes:

The most important office in a democracy: Citizen.

All, not just some.

WE.

We all need each other. We are powerful. We can. We are not alone, and we shouldn’t try to do big things alone.

The art of WE.

 

When I need a break from hard things, I turn to art. Hell, when I need to understand hard things, I turn to art. Beautiful art. Funny art. Fascinating art. Challenging art. Motivating art.

That’s the whole point of this blog. That’s why I’m writing about art every day for 30 days, leading up to the Inauguration. Because I need to get grounded and get ready. And the only way I know is through art.

I’m not alone. (Isn’t that cool?!?) In fact, there are endlessly amazing people who are making great art, sharing great tips about art that bolsters them, and encouraging us to share.

On Twitter, there’s a new hashtag: #ReadersResist. Every Friday, readers post quotes and tidbits that lift them up. It’s new, and it sounds amazing. Check it out.

One of my favorite podcasts these days, Our National Conversation about Conversations about Race, dedicated its first episode of 2017 to those modes of art (and self-care, also good!) that motivate and inform. It’s worth a listen. And I especially love Baratunde Thurston’s recommendation: Search “Grover waiter” on YouTube. Lots of delightful ridiculousness will ensue.

I hope that we continue an endless stream of sharing the art that keeps us moving forward. Because for every political action we take, and every good interaction we create or support, and every step back we inevitably have to suffer, we’ll need art to keep us whole. And understanding what inspires one another is another step to understanding each other better – which is always one of my goals.

We have to remember that, no matter what happens, art will help. Because we’re not alone, and it’s not impossible, and isn’t that what art reminds us?

I love action movies. But sometimes I wish I didn’t have to compromise my values just to enjoy them. I mean, do all action movies have to be grossly prejudiced and built on stereotyped tropes?

I get it, we need a good side and a bad side. It’s no fun if you can’t root for the good guys. But do the good guys always have to be the white, patriotic Americans fighting against the terrorists of [name that color/religion/other category]?

As a woman, I appreciate that we’ve had some good female action characters dating back to Leia in Star Wars. I surprised myself by binge-watching Jessica Jones last year, just because she was a tough woman who could get herself out of jams.

But we can do more. For the love of action movies, we have to do more.

Sometimes, the tropes are enough to make me wish I could swear off action movies altogether. The other day, I started watching the original Iron Man, and much as I love the quirky character that Robert Downey Jr. embodies, his origin story is painfully full of torture techniques and enemy Muslim terrorists. I couldn’t get past the first half hour.

This same discomfort and discouragement makes me especially excited about Black Panther, a comic book written by Ta-Nehisi Coates based on the original Marvel character, also called T’Challa. He’s a rare instance of a Black hero, and in this case, an African hero.

Coates has gotten some heat from comic traditionalists for his writing of T’Challa, mainly because Coates has written T’Challa with flaws. A superhero with flaws? For many that’s a no-go. But I really like it. And I like even more what Coates has to say about writing more complete characters, even in comics:

I have to ask questions. I have to ask questions of human beings. What are their own private individual wants?

We talk about empowering women and sexism in comics. All it requires is you elevate characters as human beings. You don’t have to make them perfect. Ask human being questions of them.

[Read the whole wonky, comic-book enthusiast’s interview with Evan Narcisse.]

According to IMDb, Black Panther is coming out as a movie in 2018. Man, I really hope they do better and create full characters without sliding into tropes. There’s such potential in this story, and I just don’t feel like stowing away my values for the sake of yet another action movie. Is it too much to ask for entertainment and humanity at the same time? We can do that, can’t we?

If Coates can do it in the comic, we ought to be able to make it happen in the movies. After all, isn’t art about evolution?

You don’t get to pick your passions. Your passions pick you. Much as we might prefer to be passionate about one thing or another (what’s cool and would set me apart? what could make me a million dollars?), our passions tend to emerge unbidden. And if we can turn our enthusiasm on and off? Then it’s not really a passion.

In college, I used to love sitting around the dining hall and hearing what folks were thinking about, just because their passions were so diverse. Solar car racing. Ultramarathon running. 1920’s fashion. Speaking Chinese (that was me).

A colleague told me once that she could sense a passion by the way someone’s eyes light up when they talk about a particular subject.

Art, so often, is about passion. Passion that we didn’t really get to choose.

I know a young art student whose passion drives him to do interesting, unpredictable things. He had an idea of something he wanted to make out of clay. So, having never taken a ceramics class, he figured out how to make what he was inspired to create: a giant octopus. It’s a magnificent octopus. But if he had told someone in advance that he was spending all that time for an octopus? Would someone tell him he should work on something “more productive?”

If we could each harness just a little of that authentic energy, we could make magic happen. But only when we do it for our passion. Better that we each do something to make our passion speak, than that we try to force something else because it’s what we should do. (And no, I don’t mean quit your day job to be a traveling bard! Our lives have room for responsibilities and passions and lots of things in between.)

If we all supported our passions and threw ourselves into the joy of that, wouldn’t whatever we created be amazing?

 

My grandmother used to make rag rugs out of pantyhose. They coiled around, textured and tan, with an occasional scrap of hot pink sprinkled throughout. I used to wonder if she put the pink in on purpose or if she just couldn’t bear to waste them. When did she wear hot pink tights anyway?

She and her friends made quilts, too, a patchwork of our outfits over the decades. We could spend hours tracing the events of our lives through those squares. Snuggling up with them was just a little bit cozier, knowing that they held so much of us in their very threads.

So when Hartford Prints featured an artisan quilt maker, Denyse Schmidt, in a fantastic panel of women designers talking Color last November, I paid extra attention. The whole evening was fantastic — hearing Vanessa German, an artist, talk about color and her choices; sharing with a group of creative women struggling to make art and a living; coming together around art.

It’s quilt season now, and so I recently went back for a visit around Denyse’s website. This particular couture quilt was a favorite. Aptly called “Drunk Love in a Log Cabin,” I love the color, geometry and layering of this art.

Drunk Love in a Log Cabin, by Denyse Schmidt

It’s definitely not my grandmother’s quilt. But it still reminds me of her.

And isn’t that what art is all about?