Loss

Sometimes you find a place that embodies all that inspires you.  Somewhere you draw from and remember and fantasize about.  Today I lost a little bit of that place.

It's hard to say goodbye to a concept, a moment, a culture, a feeling.  It's especially hard when you know that place is just as and even much more important to thousands of other people.  That just because one small group of different people don't want this place and have the authority to change it, that is the course that is taken.  No consideration for heritage, sense of identity, the character of the community around it.  It is truly a tragedy.

I am writing about this because it goes along with all my posts so far; about discovering one's artistic heart, learning to express oneself creatively and finding that source inside from where your art derives.  I think these things are very strongly rooted in places. Places you find where you can let that side of you flourish, where it is encouraged and celebrated. It could be a school or a classroom, a studio, a park, a house, an entire city or a bum hollow on your couch.  But wherever it is, it will hold a place in your heart forever.  It is the place where you feel your creativity. You feel it, conceiving itself in your brain waves and flowing through your nerves into all your appendages. You feel it coming from your skin and through your breath.

This is a place shared by countless artists, in all forms (visual, musical, theatrical, conceptual, spiritual, et al) where creativity not only thrives, but it is the driving force behind the entire community. How many places on earth can there be like this? The whole Western world that I know is build on mathematical infrastructure. A world of left-brained learners with practical, academic jobs at the top of the list, and organic, free-flowing creation on a distant, even overlooked lower rung.

Schools are dropping extracurricular projects and cutting arts classes, drama and music. Municipal governments are continually cutting funding for cultural programs, museums and galleries. Every year there seems to be less and less allowance for culture and creativity.  I find it so challenging to discover my artistic potential, even having had all these things at my disposal.  As I watch them slowly disappear, I watch potential for artistic greatness and beauty disappear also.  Where are my children's children's children going to find their creative home?