This week I watched racist US governors bus immigrants and drop them in other states as a political stunt. I am filled with boiling anger as I watch the elite bully the weakest members of our society. This morning I watched a video of Puerto Rico being washed away by a hurricane, the entire island without power. The next video that came up on my scroll was footage of Taiwan being shaken and broken by record breaking earthquakes -scroll- A young woman killed by the religious elite for not wearing a head covering -scroll- A friend celebrating her child’s birthday without their precious boy because someone who had no business driving did it anyway.
I think of the many great artist, thinkers, and philosophers that have come before me who have tried to move humanity forward past these things. I think of the ancient teachings of the Bible that commanded that immigrants be welcomed and treated as equals. I think of Martin Luther King and the words that he spoke against the same evil and debase power of his time, that eventually killed him. I mourn and cry out about how little social progress has been made since. My mother-heart breaks for my friend, and I feel this shakiness in my words. These words I feel twitching in my fingertips as they click clack on the keyboard, and this ache in my heart that there doesn’t seem to be a format expansive enough to encapsulate what I really want to say.
And that is what technology and innovation and science and art and physics and music and poetry and all the other things are really about. We keep trying to find a way that is worthy of communicating our humanity, but no matter how big the expansive-ness of our technology, there will never be a medium that is adequate.
The great poet, Maya Angelou once said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” The thing about creativity is that it isn’t about encapsulating our humanity, it’s about expressing it. No matter how inadequate our talent or the format, creativity is about finding the way, however insufficient, to express the story of our humanity. If we don’t find a way, Maya Angelou tells us that “The unsaid words (will) push roughly against the thoughts that we had no craft to verbalise, and crowd the room to uneasiness.”
This is why I show up here with shaky fingers each week, knowing that I can never really say the things I’m trying to say. This is why you can not give up on the creative expression that lives inside of you. When we are censoring our own creative expression, or those of others, we begin to decimate our humanity. Just like the napalm that was dropped out of planes during the Vietnam War to burn off the jungle, censorship kills our humanity.
The dark ages where a time in history were there was little innovation, art, or music. It was a time of western history where humanity was highly censored by the church. Whatever art that was made had to be church sanctioned. This sort of censorship created a dark age. The way forward for humanity isn’t cultural decimation. It will not be found in erasing or hiding history, banning books, or keeping our own creativity hidden away.
Every thought and piece of work isn’t made for public consumption. I promise you there is no world where my stream of consciousness journals need a public appearance. However, expression is part of the healing and the moving forward. When I talk about starting a Renaissance it starts with embracing the inadequacy of our talents and available formats, and choosing to show up anyway. Brian Eno said it like this,
“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit…all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure….the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
To all the scientist and technology gurus, we need you to create the next format that will expand, however inadequately, our means of expression. We need to fight for the right of marginalised communities to tell their stories. We need the philosophers, writers, gardeners, chef, and teachers. Whatever is the creative expression that lives in you, we need it. Because the things that we create today that are “weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty” will surely become the signature of our generation. We will always need new and better ways of expressing ourselves, and they will never be enough. Censorship is not the way forward. Expression will lead us to Renaissance.