Poets, and Painters, and Dancers. . .

I haven't really come up with a good way to preface this piece, so I decided it didn't need prefacing!  Just jumping right on in.  

I am part of a group, which we have imperfectly called the White Accountability Group, that is, among other things, committed to action white people can/must take to end the injustice of racism.  A couple of weeks ago, we came together over a weekend for a facilitated exploration of what our way forward is going to be.   Several times throughout the weekend, because race/racial injustice is a tangled and complex issue, one of us would not be able to find the words to express what we were thinking or feeling.  We came to the conclusion that for some thoughts, maybe there just aren’t the words, or perhaps not words in the English language, or perhaps thoughts that just can't be expressed using conventional conversation.

Another conclusion we came to – or really just  a reminder of what we already knew – was that core to all our work needs to be the practice of making authentic connections with other people, with other white people and with people of color.  To transcend our divisions – many of which we as human beings have dsyfunctionally constructed – by taking the risk to connect from our true, most authentic, human selves. 

The next weekend , totally unrelated, or so I thought, I attended my first Jozi House of Poetry – a monthly poetry session held at POPArt in Maboneng . The audience was beautifully diverse – in all manner of ways.  I knew a few folks, but none well (except my family which I had dragged along).  For over an hour we were transported by the three featured poets who more performed than read their poetry. 

As I sat with these virtual strangers, and the poets took us on soaring flights through the human condition, I noticed we would together shake our heads, smile, laugh, sigh in collective recognition of the world the poets painted for us.  I found the last poet dazzling.  She had no mercy for us her audience as she stroked and thrashed us with her words.   Several times I sucked in my breath, only exhaling when I realized I had stopped breathing.  At the conclusion of one particularly tumultuous ride, still coming down, we the audience could only muster a weak clap.  Our poet, so wise, said “you don’t have to clap, just breathe.”  We that represented the racial spectrum, spanned decades, men and women, straight and gay had been so taken, so moved that we had collectively forgotten to breathe.      

And it was here where my two weekends came together.  Through poetry, words exquisitely strung together liberated from rules and constraints, these artists expressed that which is not expressable in everyday language.  And these poets spoke about that which is human and universal, about what we all feel and know, and thus profoundly connected us across our differences.  

As I sat there, amongst all these people whose breath had been taken away by these poet magicians, I had one of those all too rare aha moments.   I know I come to it late, I know many, many others have come to this before, but I finally understood the role that art – poetry, dance, paintings, music  - plays, must play, in helping us to explore and understand and express those things which keep us separate and estranged from one another, and from our own humanity.  Spoken language, when not used with the care of a poet, will betray us by its inadequacy to cover this difficult terrain.  We must turn to art, paintings, dance, music, sculpture to help us understand how we find ourselves here, so estranged and hurt.  We must turn to art to help us complete our difficult conversations.  And we must turn to art to allow us blessedly to dwell in our connectedness.

Thank you poets, and painters, and dancers for helping us, we humans who have so damaged ourselves by our false divisions, grow whole again.   

Colored prayers, Imithandazo enembibala, Gekleurde gebede

We came upon this, clothes flapping in the breeze, laundry hung out to dry on a line zig zagging down a pretty alleyway in the middle of downtown Stellenbosch.   We stood and debated, was this real, some family’s clothes hung on a line here in town, in the tourist district, high up by the second floor?   They were real clothes.  Ordinary, very usable, real clothes.  Real clothes pins.    But it made no sense.  The lines were barely in reach of windows, and the lines were fixed, no pulleys to crank the clothes out and in.   And really, why would laundry be hanging in a commercial district?  We came to the conclusion it must be art.    

It incensed my kids. Especially Quince.  Why would someone waste perfectly good clothes like this when a person could be wearing them.  “Look at that cute little flowered skirt.   I would wear that!”  And how stupid to have all those clothes pretend drying on the line up there when there are so many people down here who need clothes.   I get why it made no sense to her.  I get why she hated it.  I get why it made her angry. 

But I loved it.   I loved  the movement, and the colors and the patterns.   The patterns on individual clothes and the patterns of them all together.   The shapes they made hanging there.  How the breeze caught the clothes and transformed them into new shapes.   A dress puffing up with air, suddenly becoming a twirling bell.  I loved how the blue sky and white buildings played their part.

Above all, though, I loved that this artist invited us to seek beauty in the ordinary.  To be present for the beauty in the moment.  To open ourselves to the richness that is everyday.

P.S.  I also get why the woman who washes and hangs some other family’s laundry for a living, and then goes home and does the same for her own family, likely by hand, might find this the most ridiculous idea of art ever.   We know life is not black and white, but grey. . .  and very, very colorful. 

Colored prayers, Imithandazo enembibala, Gekleurde gebede

The artist, Jacques Coetzer,  says, “A drive through the country side is often meditative, with mountains, field and sky drifting past.   Occasionally a flash of colour will sign domestic life, washing hung outside on a fence outside a homestead or labourers’ cottages.  Merrily blown about, strings of brightly hued clothing connect people and landscape, and so the very ordinary and intimate becomes public. Clotheslines, like prayer flags, can be imagined to send out personal mediations on the wind.”