Rehumanize

From Vesperisms Season 1, Episode 12, Aired November 2020

Greetings and Salutations, and welcome to Vesperisms: The Art of Thinking for Yourself. I’m here to help you recalibrate toward an artistic worldview. So grab your coffee, and have a seat in my studio, and let’s have a chat.

I’m coming to you after a bit of an unintentional hiatus here on Vesperisms. I’m in the middle of drafting my new novel about the Berlin Wall, and I always forget how intense the beginning of the novel-writing process is. Regardless, I’ve been consistently hearing from listeners how this podcast is helping them stay grounded amidst all of the noise, the shouting, the demands for polarization  and names on lists and heads on spikes.

I’m also coming to you as someone often on the verge of tears. I don’t really know how to get us out of this moment, when literally half of my country thinks the other half is evil. A clue is to watch for self-righteousness combined with vengeance, and a demand that one align or denounce, “or else”. And you know what, as an author of historical fiction, there may be partial truth in the outcries. Some evil may be afoot, but what’s truth and what’s hype? How much is true because it’s true, and how much has been manipulated messaging, forcing you to declare an alliance on one side or another? If you’ve been following some of my personal philosophy through Vesperisms or Instagram, or especially through my books, you know that I find the political worldview, while obviously powerful, to be the most low-resolution way to view both the world and other people. Instead, I hold to the value of “loving your neighbor, so that maybe you might know how to love your enemy.” This kind of love is something that has to be intentionally chosen. It’s not something that comes naturally. It’s not the same as being “nice.” In fact, sometimes it’s the opposite of being nice, or of going along to get along. Sometimes love means not letting your neighbor get away with self-delusion. If you’ve ever loved someone with mental illness, you learn that the healthiest thing you can do for both yourself and that person is to refuse to indulge their distortions of reality. And one of the true illnesses that is coming over our societies is the distortion of each other’s humanity through the greasy lens of politics.

If you’ve been finding value in what I’m doing here on Vesperisms, I’d like to introduce you to a hashtag: #rehumanize. Everywhere we see evidence of dehumanization. Just this week I saw prominent journalists talk about how their desire to see political opponents to hurt and suffer. I saw several prominent politicians talk about creating lists for revenge against their political opponents. I saw several fellow artists stand their ground in rage and demonization—including artists who, like me, create work for children. This kind of rhetoric doesn’t just polarize, it drives people underground. We must, as artists and citizens, resist this dehumanization with all our might. We must intentionally and proactively rehumanize.

This comes from my belief that when art is properly oriented, it is human-centered. This means that we create from within a human body, and we create for other humans. We do not create out of self-hatred for spectral beings, abstractions or caricatures. Look, it’s fine—let that be part of your sketch phase. Get it out of your system in some sketchbook or journal, or in the privacy of an empty dance studio or rehearsal space, that will never see the light of day. Dance it out. Blast it out. Get your rage down however you need to. But then collect yourself, and…rehumanize.

My friend Will Ford III, who you may remember from Episode 6?, often asks this question: “What storyline do you want to be part of? The healing or the hurt? The blessing or the curse?” This is an important question for artists. Artists are, by nature, storytellers, whether you’re telling a story with a Dvorak concerto or a color field painting or a novel. We are telling a story about the world. When we forget about the human-centered aspect of our work, when we create out of displaced utopian rage, we create caricatures. Simply put, we make bad art. We make propaganda.

The opportunities to make propaganda are legion. There will always be a market for the easy and cheap. There will always be the pressure to conform. But remember, artist, you do not live in this paradigm of the easy, the cheap, the conformist.

Let me take a moment to talk about conformity. My husband and I watched a great documentary the other night called “Hype”, about the grunge music scene in Seattle. I was simultaneously filled with this emotion of elation that I came of age at that time of free expression. It was before the internet made shells of us. It was a time of experimentation, a time before pocket devices stole all of our glorious boredom, a time when you could bash it out with your friends in a garage. And that’s exactly why it made me grieve. Because once social media came on to the scene, once interests coalesced into these binary choices we’re given, artists got sucked right out of the margins where we belong and shoved us into tight boxes.

Listen, being non-conformist has absolutely zero to do with how you dress or do your hair or tattoo yourself, or making shock art or glorifying ugliness or being sexually subversive. Those things are now so mainstream as to be mind-numbingly boring. OK? No one is impressed anymore. Being non-conformist and subversive is about knowing who and what you are. You, artist, have a very specific and important role in the world. Do NOT let them put baby in a corner. Don’t you believe the hype for one minute that you have to subscribe to these low-resolution political camps. You. Do. Not.

You put your thinking cap back on and get back on the margin where you belong. You live outside the camp, OK? That’s the only way to have proper perspective. Remember another Vesperisms tenet: Artists SEE. We are meant to be witnesses to our world. But how in the world can you see properly if your every way of perceiving the world—all of that glorious sensory perception and discernment—is being injected into you from outside? If everything is right up in your face—if every voice is shouting in your ears—if your hands and feet are tethered to fetters you were never meant to wear?

Are artists exalted beings? No. But we have a specific role to play. We are witnesses. We are humans, called to rehumanize both ourselves and others, to call ourselves and others back to reality. That’s true resistance. Resistance isn’t alignment with party or candidate. Resistance is saying no to manipulation that wants us all to crawl on our bellies. Resistance is recovering your individual—not your group—identity, dignity and beauty. Resistance is rehumanizing. Resouling. Respiritizing.

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