I find that when I listen to music or podcasts while I paint I will faintly recall what I heard when I look at that painting later. It has been like this for the 16 years that I’ve been painting. That’s why I begin my blog talking about what I listened to while I worked. This morning I listened to a Ten Percent Happier interview of a therapist who focuses on trauma. Dr. Jacob Ham talked about his patients and how he tries to be empathetic as they recount their healing journeys. I felt it was appropriate to listen to this podcast seeing as 80 miles from where I live an 18 year old young man went into an elementary school and shot 21 people yesterday. Most of the victims were fourth graders. I have a nephew who’s in the fourth grade and can’t imagine what that community is going through right now. I just can’t even fathom.
As I sat down to write today I wondered, should I write about painting, about libraries? My usual topics. I want to, and maybe I will, but first I need to talk about what happened. I would like to thank Steve Kerr for expressing my sentiments last night before the Warriors played the Mavericks. I wish more people were willing to do what he did - raising his voice in outrage and hurt, calling out Senators for not passing more gun safety measures, accusing them of choosing their personal power over the care and safety of children, insisting that we cannot become numb to this. The gun lobby has a lot of power.
There are memes going around FB about how men can walk into an elementary school with an AR-15 without being noticed but a woman can’t pull into a Planned Parenthood without a crowd of people yelling and screaming at her, calling her a murderer. What if she’s just going there for a pap smear? Just so sad to realize what our priorities are. It doesn’t seem like any pro-lifers care about these 10-year-old babies being mowed down by an unstable teen. And please don’t talk about how it’s not the guns it’s the instability of people that’s the problem. It’s both, and ask anyone who’s struggled with mental illness or known someone who’s suffered with mental illness: gun control is a lot easier to regulate than mental health. That kid could have yelled and screamed at his grandmother (instead of shooting her), drove his car into a ditch, and gotten into a fistfight or walked around waving a knife. None of those things would have ended with 21 people shot beyond recognition.
In my life I want so much to focus on what’s working. In fact, focusing on solutions rather than problems has been what’s helped me deal with my own depression and anxiety, but sometimes you need to vent. Sometimes you need to call out the problem, name it and declare that you’re tired of it. In the interview I listened to, Dan Harris asked his guest, a) Can people survive horrific trauma, and b) What’s the point of suffering? The answer to question one is, yes. People can overcome trauma. They can find ways to move through it and carve out a life that’s fulfilling and healing. The answer to question two is not so clear. I guess it’s the question for the ages: Why are we here, what’s the purpose of life, why do bad things happen? At the risk of acting like a sage I would say that bad things happen because we need them for guidance. If life is a journey then pain is telling us we don’t like the path we’ve gone down and we should find a different one. But I know that when I’m in pain and bad things are happening I want to dramatize it and act as if I’m the first person in the history of humanity to go through it.
I guess you could say that we’re lucky we’re going through a civil war as ‘civil’ as this. We could be experiencing what Ukrainians are experiencing: homes destroyed, hospitals and schools bombed, loved ones killed, running for our lives. No one is getting to stay calm and safe in their homes over there. War and violence have been part of the human experience as long as we’ve been here. In our country there seems to be a small percentage of people with enough power that they can force the rest of us to participate in their power grabs and passive aggression, not so different than Russians and Ukrainians. Toned down a little, but not so different.
What’s appropriate? What’s honest, fair, constructive? Do we talk endlessly about all the effed up shit happening in the world? How long do we vent? When does venting turn into more suffering? I want to think positively about the future. I want to feel optimistic. I want to believe that no matter the circumstances I can feel positive, hopeful, compassionate, caring, and empathetic. I have a goal here, an artistic goal, and it’s important to me because it’s how I express love for life, for not only all the effed up shit going on in the world, but for all the beautiful shit too. When Tops Grocery Store closed in Buffalo last week (after the horrific, racist shooting there) people in the community came out with food. Neighbors (albeit distant neighbors) came out of their homes to offer provisions to those who lost their grocery store. People are beautiful. They are. We are complicated and good and effed up. We are alive and tired. We are fighting and surrendering.
Yesterday, while reading Library: An Unquiet History I learned that when Rome fell, when Europe entered the dark ages, teachers and people with knowledge fled to Persia. They lived with Muslims who learned how to make paper from the Chinese. Because of this, books became an art form and much of the knowledge the West had generated was saved and put into book form. Before the fall of Rome, knowledge was recorded on clay tablets and papyrus scrolls. In Persia, books became leather bound and and stable. Not all was lost.
Not all was lost.
Yes, lives have been lost. Precious lives. Lives of innocent people loved and depended on for love in return. But, not all is lost. It’s hard to turn around from trauma, but it happens. Today I spent time working on a painting of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library. I put on a podcast and I fell into a quiet, peaceful, creative zone, and it was exactly what I needed. I’m so sad. I’m sad for Uvalde, for a community ripped apart by violence. I’m sad for Buffalo, for the Taiwanese churchgoers in Orange County, for Ukraine, for everyone who has suffered at the hand of human cruelty. I’m sad for my own country, for the ‘civil’ civil war we’re living through right now. But life continues and eventually we will realize that not all is lost.
My hope is that we realize guns are easier to regulate than mental health. I hope we realize that addiction is a mental health issue and that it produces mental health issues in others. I hope that we can treat each other with more compassion and understanding. I hope that we can stop romanticizing assault weapons, stop seeking sexual rage as a substitute for personal power, as a substitute for joy. We are a hurting country, a hurting people. But recovery awaits. Healing is possible and it awaits us.