The bitter cold is an odd force to enter a dream. Leaving the comfort of a warm dwelling and entering the freezing temperatures of winter always jolts the human body, wakes it up. This is because extreme senses are supposed to be for the waking life. Anyhow this dream was special for Louise because it was bone-chilling. The next morning Louise went to meet her friend for coffee and a cigarette and she felt compelled to tell her friend all about this dream she had, perhaps because it was an interesting thing to talk about or perhaps it was that this dream had come from a deep place (inside?) and she wanted to share it with someone. Louise delved right in: “ I was walking around Mackinac Island and it was super fucking cold, right. Already this is already weird because Mackinac Island is mainly for tourists and shuts down during the winter. And so I’m walking around, freezing, and I see other people walking around too but none of them are looking at me. I keep walking and then the town starts to look like Chicago. I approach this gigantic Barnes and Nobles and I see this man wearing an old grey suit with a white scarf standing outside. And this man is Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. I’ve never really seen the man before but somehow I just knew it was him. We start walking and I ask him if he’s doing alright and he turns and says to me ‘Let me explain something about the nature of your world.’ Creation comes out of imperfection. It manifests out of striving and frustration. Language came forth from this desire to transcend isolation and have some some sort of connection with one another. First it was easy, it was just survival. “Water.” People came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting is when humans use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that they experiencing. What is “doubt”? Or, what is “anger” or “love”? When someone say’s “love” – the sound comes out of their mouth and it hits the other person’s ear, travels through this complex maze in their brain, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what the person is saying. And they say yes they understand, but how does the person know? Because words are inert. They’re just symbols, they’re dead. And so much of people’s experience is intangible. So much of what people perceive cannot be expressed, it’s unspeakable. And yet when people communicate with one another and they feel that they have connected – and they think they’re understood, there is a feeling of almost spiritual communion. That feeling may be transient, but it’s what humans live for. So we continued walking until I realized that my hands had turned blue from the cold and that Sable didn’t have that problem because he’s dead. After I woke up all I could think about was how this was the most interesting ‘conversation’ I’ve had in a long time.” Her friend nodded while staying silent for moment. Then she spoke: “Yeah, it’s like we invented these words so we can communicate and then we spend so much time using words to pretend and lie and manipulate, or worse we eat our words and say nothing. In the end we just want to be understood and yet we continue to sabotage ourselves.”
On the personal level people generally have difficult time going deep. There is a vulnerability that goes with sharing true thoughts and feelings. It can be uncomfortable for both the person sharing and the people they share with. And Americans sure like their comfort zones. Defend and protect the comfort zone at all costs! Growing up in America, people have to learn at a young age how to say things. Children learn how to be politically correct before they even know what political correctness is. Americans have made digestibility into a science. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie spoke on the effect of America’s primacy of comfort in her “Freedom to Write Lecture” saying that “this addiction to comfort . . . often leads to a kind of silencing in public discourse, a dangerous silencing. The fear of causing offense, the fear of ruffling the careful layers of comfort, becomes a fetish. Things are left unsaid, questions unasked. Human beings generally censor [themselves] all the time. [They] hold back because there are already preset narratives of which [they] are loyal” (Adichie 14:10). Adichie highlights the danger of this underlying American ideal. When people are so fearful of disrupting the comfort of others then the problems are not really being addressed. The issues that face America today are deep and are rooted in history. And yet, according to Adichie, people are excessively and irrationally devoted to their fears. And now it’s come to the fact that it takes a sensitive watcher and a brave storyteller to help guide the people (of America) towards truth.
Pearl S. Buck wrote that “a truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.” And so the artist does then fulfill a most important role in society. It is because they are so sensitive and their concern for justice that they help a nation see it’s shortcomings. Sonya Clark, a contemporary American black female artist (not necessarily in that order), is one of those artists who help America delve into the deepness it so suppresses against. For Clark’s work entitled Unraveling she created gallery performances in which she invites visitors to work with her to unravel, thread by thread, a confederate flag made of sturdy, thick cotton (Figure 1). Together they dismantle about half an inch in an hour, creating piles of red, white and blue thread. The artists speaks out about her concept behind using this dark historical symbol saying: “Racial injustice is something that every American contends with, either consciously or unconsciously, and it’s so deeply embedded in the fabric of our nation. The word ‘racism’ is sort of like a trigger word; it can shut people’s ears off, shut people down, bring people’s defense mechanisms up. So I’m less interested in that, and more interested in picking apart and undoing and understanding the fabric of our nation and trying to really understand the roots of racial injustice” (Clark 1). Clark uses this metaphor to connect the past with the present. It took time to create the flag and it’s going to take time and many hands to undo it as well. Clark mentions the word “racism” and it’s power in public discourse. It creates strong reactions from people which generally entails a truth as Adichie might say. Clark is a storyteller, just as Adichie is, they just have different mediums. Clark tells her stories through objects and Adiche through the written word. The power of this piece is in it’s deep context. It’s a thought out performance that touches many layers. The racial injustice of the past and then how at the time there was a discussion over the Confederate flag and how it still hung outside the South Carolina statehouse. Furthermore this artist goes deep with just this action, but perhaps the power of her action came from the gallery, or in her recognition. Clark’s goal in her piece is truth, to undo and understand “the fabric of our nation” and the “roots of racial injustice” (Clark 1). However as Adichie puts it: “in public conversations about America’s problems, especially problems to do with race, poverty, and income inequality, the goal is not truth. The goal is comfort. Comfort for all, ostensibly, but in realty comfort for the more powerful” (Adichie 14:50). And so public discourse is painfully lacking the deep truths arrived at by artists like Clark.
Living in America can feel an awful lot like living on the surface of what the world has to offer.