POEM: Halving No Interest

Wile a capital idea to sum
I halve no interest
In how you make a living
Rather
That which
Makes you
Come alive

I would dare say that most of lost is in the chasm between making a living and doing that which makes you come alive.  I would even dare say that being distant from having to worry about basic needs — “having it made” — is a greater threat to coming alive than what palpitates within us when we are connected to struggling for basic human needs.  This narrative runs counter to the , artsy of not having to worry about so you can be free to pursue “more important things,” presumably as luxury rather than as necessity.

The of living is essentially doing that which makes you come alive.  This is where art is a necessary reflection of our overflowing aliveness, or, in less flowery language, art is a basic human need.  Art lives coequal with our basic material needs of , shelter, , an free of and full of affection, and the long litany of inalienable to .  Art flowers in our connection to others and art serves as a critique of and destruction, which often comes at the hands of first — sometimes driving a cruel bargain for our ; more often offering a seductively easy price for our .

Personally, my art is rooted in both the privileged of a first world nation and the surrounding larger of vast material deprivation more common than not on this planet we share.  I was literally born into this .  As a helpless baby, I was not helpless.  While I was born in , the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, I was not fated to live a anything like the countless babies born within a stones throw.  I was born to well-educated, white Americans — a doctor and a nurse.  As a toddler, I would fly off in an airplane, already then cementing myself solidly within the of less than 1/20th of the world's inhabitants.  My rant above is perhaps one of privileged .  I may never know for sure.  However, as I grow in my art of living, I find it much wiser and productive to root for humanity, not .  The of any above assertions is probably best demonstrated by the fact that has the largest concentration of artists, predominantly painters, of any nation on earth.  Perhaps art is a necessity, not a luxury.

 

 

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