Current Events
I've felt somewhat distant for a few weeks now, somewhat in shock for the events of 2016. I'm probably not the first to get a feeling that it doesn't cease, and that next year will bring similar cringing news.
I try to keep world politics as a side note, but when the emotions of an increasingly agitated world bubble into every day life, processing any kind a grief through words would leave me sour-mouthed.
How can I get excited about aspects of my life, and yet be indifferent to a world of fear and suffering?
Thankfully, I'm not indifferent, these things do matter to me, and matter to my art. My heart has become too heavy to talk about what's really on my mind, at least in daily interaction. I feel my emotions are easier spoken to through my art; in my goal to capturing a true sense of humanity's identity with our surroundings.
We are nothing without the people, and the places, and the environment around us. Without the support, we would quickly wither, we are not self-dependent beings.
I use the influences of the world around me to make art, but I feel dismal being a passive observer. I grew up overseas and see how, in a way, all the nations and states of the world have one identity. As I live in a more secluded place like in the continental United States, I have lost sight of that, and so have lost a bit of inspiration to my art.
The genocides of the new millennia will be infamous, yet they go unnoticed today?
Global Unity
I have witnessed my view of the world shrink smaller; in the day to day it is easy to be preoccupied. The sense of connection I remembered when I lived overseas, re-curdled on a study abroad trip, is something of a grandeur, but a very real feeling. It is a sense of security that people across the world acknowledge and have concerns for each-other. But domestic views are different. In Tennessee I no longer feel I live in a globalized society, and perhaps I don't.
It was announced that the word of the year is Xenophobia, and it is fitting for the time we live in. There is an upheaval for people of the world to unite, but nationalist sentiment is not gone. There still lives a fear for the other.
While I am distraught to hear about war in Syria, murdering in the Philippines, climate degradation, anti-religious sentiments across the western world, anti-intellectualism in small towns, economic distress in Venezuela, and terrorism across borders, others might find humour in it, or respond to it in a dismissive way.
These problems are very big and won't go away, but what upsets me is when people deliberately ignore them, as if the lives of human beings in jeopardy are in some fantasy far away place like in the movies. There is not a lot we can do individually to stop war, but what we all can do to help is to acknowledge it.
Willful ignorance causes atrocities to go unnoticed. By knowing and talking about issues, you can help fight against the wrong-doings, not leaving them to the ashes of forgotten memory.
Solution to lack of Empathy: Reading
So what I would suggest, and this is what has help put my heart to rest better, is for people to be willing to read about eachother. Books, across time and space, can feel intimate. Reading from other perspectives, from other times and cultures, revitalizes the sense of progress we can see in mankind. It can remind a person of the long journey that many of us have made to be where we are today. it can also lead to new shared understandings in writing, ideas and art .
Read news from other places, it may reveal new perspectives on a conflict, or reveal shared ideas. It is our job to educate ourselves of the entire anthology of our existence, and to respond to it. It is the only way we will be able to see eye to eye, and be able to focus on the progress of science, faith, art, and capital across the world.
In the ending days of 2016 I have been reading, and determining what the best way is that I can focus on art-making, while keeping other daily or global concerns aside. It is a difficult task to hold the weight of the world on my shoulders, so I am learning to better cope.
This year has been an instructive one, but I am ready to take the website by the rains and deliver something more of impact. I want to thank all friends and family for their support and patience, and that we continue into the next year with a new sense of optimism for all lives on our measly planet earth.