Liam Neeson in a familiar scene from one of his movies: the Taken star’s real-life story of near revenge outraged many for its racist undertones early last month. Photo Copyright © 2019.
“Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it.” Goethe
“I thought of Emmett Till and I just couldn’t go back.” Rosa Parks
THERE’S LITTLE more paralyzing to an artist than doubt. I’ve had visual artists complain to me about the coldness of indifference, writers who speak of feeling or being scorned by the public. These sentiments are the result of external agents. Even if doubt doesn’t start from within, it can set up house inside us as if it always owned the building.
Yet artists deal with doubt all the time. Some of us make a brave face of it, pretend what bothers us (negative reviews, diminishing powers, lack of interest) doesn’t. None of us entirely overcomes it.
Bad news for artists, this is worse for whole societies. Doubt seems to be everywhere, infecting everyone and everything, again.
The cult of doubt certainly has had some help: from politicians, who feel they can say anything and will be (should be?) unquestioningly believed; from technologies—devices and the media they propagate—that, ironically, make fact-checking incidental to the ability to prove a person’s viewpoint "right."
Doubt is a powerful and insidious weapon. It can turn friend against friend, sister against sister, nation against nation. It can turn faithless beliefs into monstrous realities. It can turn against its instigators.
Winning a no confidence vote won’t diminish it for British Prime Minister Theresa May. Saying anything to your base won’t assuage it for American President Donald Trump. Having a majority of the seats in your Parliament won’t dispel it here at home for Prime Minister Mia Mottley. Nor will Irish actor Liam Neeson’s further contextualizing of the murderous thoughts he once had against black men, in a moment of personal crisis, defuse a cancel culture campaign—as if anyone could ever, really, cancel culture.
Even so, despite my faith or beliefs, sometimes I’m scared for this world, fearful of what we might do to ourselves—what we can do and already have done. What’s one lone Tank Man in the face of a Chinese army? Is it that easy to silence a freedom fighter’s voice while a segment of her people is being persecuted by her country’s military? Can a thousand Frenchmen and Frenchwomen in yellow vests be wrong (their tricolor solidarity aside)?
At these times, art is of less comfort to me, and I risk forgetting that out of its disturbances come beauty, balance, order, curiosity, more quest(ion)ing…all among the many qualities of life that keep us in check, keep us as a species sane.
Maybe this is where artists and our faith in them do come back into play. As vulnerable as they are to the cult of doubt, artists may have advantages the noblest of journalists, activists and world leaders can’t access.
Among these? The ability to be an engineer. I mean this literally and metaphorically. When faced with a problem to solve, be she musician, dancer, chef, or craftsperson, the artist’s answer is to find what works.
That might require other skills the artist may not obviously have or thinks she has. The solution to this challenge is to be whatever she needs to be—to be whoever she needs to be, either all or any of us. To forge whatever she can from her present talents and imagination and determination. To figure out what she ought to be and how to be it.
Another advantage—or freedom—artists have: to just do. There’s no waiting on an editorial board, no committee to consult or cabinet to convene. Ideally, that is; yet that’s what he is working toward. There’s no waiting for permission to do what’s necessary, no hesitation when gripped by the Truth. Only what needs to be done and the will to do it, though it may take him years to develop the skill to pull it off.
But for this to truly happen, time and again, there would have to be bravery.
Ah. That.
Bravery seems hard to identify in our time. It used to be we could all be braver than we had been. Once upon a time but also in our time. Ask anyone these days, no one’s brave: not the single mother, the entry-level bureaucrat or the hardworking college student. Not even the firebrand artist. Presumably. Apparently.
The perception could come from a couple places. We could be looking for some large gesture, large enough to alter the multiverse. Or we've identified a movement so very modest that its significance lies in that fact alone. All this confusion, when we've already seen—big or small, acknowledge them or don’t—that acts of heroism or courage often suit and fit the moments that give rise to them.
These acts express voice and vision in ways that can inspire us to hope. Whatever our doubts and fears.
