COURAGE AND CREATIVITY

Tonight is the third night of La Natividad, our co-production with our wonderful partners In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater, Inc. www.hobt.org.  I wrote to a friend a couple days ago that one of the things that make this performance unlike other tellings of the Christmas story is that it hits the minor key as well as the major one.  When you think of Christmas carols, aren’t most of them in major keys?  I love those.  But the ones that are in minor keys—What Child is This, Coventry Carol—are more moving to me, because they hit on the pain, the sorrow and even the terror of the Christmas narrative.  Especially on this weekend, with yet another massacre by gun in our minds, we need to have a place that tragedy can be told and hope still prevail.

La Natividad doesn’t shy away from the “minor” in its narrative.  It shows the pain of being demanded upon by the emperor, the sorrow of rejection and forced pilgrimage, and even the terror of Herod’s wrath, who cannot abide the idea of a holy child of peace.  It threatens his reign. And because it is set in the Phillips neighborhood of south Minneapolis, and many of the actors are immigrants who face sorrow, fear and even terror in their own lives, and yet are able to live with hope and courage.

I’ve been thinking about courage a lot lately, and its connection with creativity.  Artists who really move me usually hit me in a place that is not usual, and often not safe.  And maybe in a place that I don’t want to explore.  I think of Van Gogh, painting from the depths of his life, both the beauty and the agony.  I think of Victor Jara of Chile, who wrote of the everyday struggles of people and their hope. 

My advent devotion book has this little piece by Eduardo Galeano that I return to over and over, written about the reign of the military, the reign of guns in Uruguay.  I lifted it directly from this website: http://legacy.oise.utoronto.ca/research/edu20/moments/1976perez.html

Forbidden birds

“The Uruguayan political prisoners may not talk without permission, or whistle, smile, sing, walk fast, or greet other prisoners; nor may they make or receive drawings of pregnant women, couples, butterflies, stars or birds. One Sunday, Didasko Pérez, schoolteacher, tortured and jailed for "having ideological ideas," is visited by his daughter Milady, aged five. She brings him a drawing of birds. The guards destroy it at the entrance of the jail.

On the following Sunday, Milady brings him a drawing of trees. Trees are not forbidden, and the drawings get through. Didasko praises her work and asks about the colored circles scattered in the treetops, many small circles half-hidden among the branches: "Are they oranges? What fruit is it?" The child puts her fingers to her mouth: "Ssssshhh." And she whispers in his ear: "Silly. Don't you see they're eyes? They're the eyes of the birds that I've smuggled in for you."                        

Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire III, The Century of the Wind, 1988

En español: PÁJAROS PROHIBIDOS

“Los presos de la dictadura uruguaya no pueden dibujar ni recibir dibujos de mujeres embarazadas, parejas, mariposas, estrellas ni pájaros. Didaskó Pérez, maestro de escuela, torturado y preso por tener ideas ideológicas, recibe un domingo de 1976 la visita de su hija Milady, de cinco años. La hija le trae un dibujo de pájaros. Los censores se lo rompen a la entrada de la cárcel.

Al domingo siguiente, Milady le trae un dibujo de árboles. Los árboles no están prohibidos, y el dibujo pasa. Didaskó le elogia la obra y le pregunta por los circulitos de colores que aparecen en las copas de los árboles, muchos pequeños círculos entre las ramas: ¿son naranjas? ¿Que frutas son? y la niña lo hace callar, Ssshhhh, y en secreto le explica:

- Bobo. ¿No ves que son ojos? Los ojos de los pájaros que te traje a escondidas."

A lot of the commentators on news stories last night talked about: “how to talk with your children about a terrible tragedy.”  I think we adults may underestimate how much children already are dealing with, and often in more creative ways.  I remember my first trip to El Salvador during our war there, and how children who had to deal with their villages being bombed by helicopters, and family members and neighbors killed in front of their eyes.  I still have a colorful drawing from one of those children, which showed the helicopters, an execution in his little village.  It would never pass an art critic’s standard for technique, but as to both beauty and courage, it was unbelievable. One of the local organizers—the town was too poor to have counselors or psychologists—shared with us that when the children were able to draw their experience, it often was more healing than just telling it.  Out of the experience of creating something, they tapped into a well of healing inside of them, a well that flowed with courage, hope and love.

There is another quote I really like, from Scott Adams:

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.

Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

I hope we can make a lot of mistakes this day and this year ending, the next one coming: mistakes of courage, mistakes of welcoming and having dialogue with those different from us, mistakes of trying out radical ideas of justice and peace. I hope.

 

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be courage.

Patrick