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it is cold now. we are already longing for summer. we are holed up in our apartments with so much of our own thoughts and potential for productivity. and i am never quite productive enough for my own desires. i have nothing coherent to write and yet i am desperate for some form of creative output. the winter is shriveling my creative fertility. or something like that.tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. tuesday is Obama's inauguration. i am on the couch reading children's books about MLK, deciding what to read to my students. and i am reading a magazine that sketchily says little about who put it out, but contains moving pictures and articles related to Obama. flipping through it yesterday i had something like a body memory of election night. and flipping through it today i started crying again.
and i cannot bring myself to watch the video of Oscar Grant being murdered. (sign this petition.) and i cannot bring myself to look at any more pictures of Palestine. and i am reading eulogies written for a girl i sort of knew, a girl who went to my summer camp, was a year older than me, had the same name as me, and who recently took her own life. she was a photographer, a writer, a feminist.
it is a new year and i feel heavy. i want to re-educate myself on how to be fearless. when i was 13 i argued with everyone and i think it was because i was invested in everyone, was an incredibly idealistic person. i've tried, as i've grown, to hone my confrontational nature into something a little more tactful. but now i'm afraid i don't know the line between complacency and realism.
here's what i mean- i did not go to a single march against the Israeli attacks on Gaza. i was too busy. i did not make any phone calls about it. i did sign a few online petitions. but i sat at home reading the news and feeling angry and ashamed to be an American Jew, to live in a country where we cannot call a massacre a massacre.
i did not campaign for Obama. i was too busy. i tried to keep my cool through the whole election. i think deep down, i was afraid he would lose and i didn't want to invest too much. and then when he won, i lost it- could not stop sobbing. and i thanked the couple of friends i was with who had done a lot of work for the campaign. i truly felt grateful to them and to so many others who proved my cynicism wrong.
and the other week i saw an inspiring photography show by Catherine Opie that left me swimming in thoughts about identity, art, architecture, place, queerness (self portrait nursing pictured above)... i left the museum eager to talk about the exhibit. my friend's friend spoke immediately, writing off the entirety of the show as "banal" (though he complemented the "composition" of only one photograph) in a self-confident and absolutely dismissive way that only well-schooled white men can speak. i simply tried to let it slide off and not ruin my own art-induced high. but later i thought, who am i? i would never have let someone get away with such a comment without an argument in the past!
when i was an adolescent i argued with everyone- sometimes i came out thrilled at changing someone's mind or at least holding my own in debate, sometimes i was stubborn, loud, and self-righteous and simply got myself in trouble (as was the case with too many teachers in middle and high school.) when i was an adolescent i marched in protests- some of them were uplifting and sustaining gatherings, some felt like unfocused, unproductive, left-wing masturbation. (to be honest!) i went to meetings of social action groups but quickly became disillusioned by all the talk and concern with self-image that can go with young activists.
yes, i am cynical now. but i am trying to be a grown-up living in the complicated real world. it is a world where biracial former-community-organizers can become president. but it is also a world where Sean Bell and Oscar Grant no longer live. i get so caught up in my own inane shit-- it is cold out and i have too many jobs and i should be grateful for all my jobs but i am tired and being a musician is so hard and i'm so busy...!
i know i could never be complacent. i am far too emotional. i want to live in the real-world but i also want space for some of my younger-self's idealism. as the inauguration approaches i want to grasp onto some of the Obama "hope" rhetoric. i want to read this beautiful book called Martin's Big Words (illustration pictured above) to my 4th and 5th graders in the Bronx on the day that we get a president who looks like he could be related to my students. i want to help them believe that they too can make significant change happen. because lord knows, we need it. i want to enjoy my snowy weekend inside for what it is; use this time to gather up some of my former fire!
