An Artist's Responsibility

Two events urge me to write on this cold, gray, weepy Sunday: Congresswoman Gifford's assassination attempt and the birthday of a truly great writer and intuitive speaker, Dr. Martin Luther King. These two people, separated by an entire generation, took their creative gifts and their responsibilities into the arena of personal sacrifice. Their courage both inspires and intimidates me. How do I hold myself to be true to what seem like such impossible ideals? How do we as artists respond to their personal sacrifice?

What is the artist's responsibility in a time of crisis and turmoil? Do we have one, not only to ourselves, but to the larger community? These questions plague both artists and critics alike and there are as many answers, it seems, as there are people with opinions. Since I have a blog and write about artistic responsibility, among other aspects of the creative individual's life, I feel a need to address this issue.

All King and Giffords were doing, in reality, were practicing their first amendment rights; the same rights with which every artist and individual in this country are endowed. We have a responsibility to practice these rights. Everyone knows if you don't practice you'll never get good at anything, right? If the artists and teachers and public speakers are afraid to express themselves openly, then who will stand for the citizen on the street? Who will use their gifts of writing and rhetoric to rise to the occasion of justice and freedom and take the risks that prove responsibility, even if it costs us our lives? Surely this is too much to ask of our artists, a quiet and reclusive people. That image, even when true, can no long serve as an excuse for us to remain quiet around the injustices we observe or experience daily.

These are questions we at least must ask ourselves. I'm not sure anyone can decide the answer but the individual artist. I cannot make a proclamation for each and every creative individual. Nor can I say what form that responsibility will take. Some of us are natural street corner speakers. Some of us do our work with introspection inside our rooms or in the solitude of nature. But we all know the work is not finished until it is shared. At some point, we must all take a stand in public for the ideals we claim to believe in our writing; in the work we practice at home, alone.

As for me, well, I've been about this work for a long time now. I am accustomed as an "out"spoken lesbian poet and writer to speaking my mind in public. As an ex-cop, I am completely aware of how devastatingly messy the consequences of "speaking truth to power" can be. Dr. King and Congresswoman Giffords knew absolutely the risks they were taking every time they decided to speak directly to the people. And yet, they found the risk worth taking.

So do I. People have been killing or attempting to kill poets and politicians for as long as they have existed; a very long time indeed. Those who refuse to follow the rules (not law) of the status quo, who insist on shaking up the apathy of the well-heeled and well-fed few, will always be suspect and subject to disappearance, by way of bullet, bullying, or by the simple refusal to acknowledge. But hey, this is our job! And we have a right, perhaps even a responsibility, to do it to the best of our ability even in the face of adversity.

We are the poets, the writers, the artists of our generation. We cannot, nor should we ever, "hide our lights beneath a bushel" or let the people down. It is now, and always will be, our job to accept the risks and speak out. If this is not true for you, Artist, perhaps you should look into a different line of work. Consider it said.