In the far reaches of our minds
We want to be free & why I keep coming back to one particular freedom
It’s the age-old question. Freedom, what is it?
America has promised many people, many forms of it. Freedom of expression, i.e., free speech. Freedom of assembly, i.e., freedom to protest. Freedom of religion. Freedom of movement.
In America, they are all conditional.
Freedom of expression is free as long as you are expressing the right things to the right people at the right time. I think about an era, not much talked about now, but a very real memory for millions of Americans. The era? The Red Scare, McCarthyism. Ostensibly, Freedom of speech was still a thing in the Constitution at the time.
That did not stop Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, one blowhard, particularly a upper-middle-class White man, from ruining the lives of countless playwrights and creatives over accusations of promoting communism in their creative work. They weren’t blacklisted from Hollywood, and making a sustainable livelihood for causing bodily harm, assaulting a fellow human, but for putting words on paper.
Conditional free speech that’s conditioned on the hunger for political power, control, and attention.
They say history doesn’t repeat, but damn, does it ever rhyme.
Targeted attacks on free speech, free expression are the canary in the coal mine.
Art is what allows us to see the different shades of meaning. The human, pulsing truth behind the numbers, the statistics, the propaganda.
Life without art is clinical, and for me, not worth living.
I keep coming back to my art, my writing, my poetry for that reason. I need words, placed sequentially, placed intentionally, mixed almost biochemically with my intentions, the visceral, embodied emotions that can crest and crash within me when I feel my humanity attacked, marginalized, dismissed.
Life without this type of raw writing turns me wooden, robotic, makes me automated—just another capitalist production, a cog to be manipulated accordingly.
Think about all of this on the days when lifting a pen, pencil, or opening a laptop seems beyond you. Those days are inevitable. Those days aim to split your essential self from your creative self with one thin red line.
Write anyway. Draw anyway. Create anyway.
Start automated. I’m serious, start out going through the motions. Let go, and let your body remember the joy of leaping, then flying, then soaring, when you tap into that truth, that pulsing heart of truth. The one, no algorithm, no AI, can fully capture—because it is so indelible, so unique to your lived experience.
How does your body remind you of the joy you find in your art?
Joy should be shared. Share that embodied experience below in the comments.
In Solidarity,
Olu
I so agree with you on this. I've lived through it all, one way and another.
I appreciate you being here Tom. What was your experience during this era? What did you witness?