"Revolution is made possible by making hope possible,
rather than despair convincing." -Hunter S Thompson
If you don't think it is possible to capture hope in art, then
I don't know what you are doing in art, no offense.
Take a look at the films and carnivals filmed in the middle
of Nazi Germany, the idealistic slogans in Czeckoslovakia
in 1968, even Andrej Tisma in Sarejevo before he switched to
militant insanity.
If there is one spark of hope in an oppressive culture, it is
the responsibility of the artists to find it, and hope it spreads,
and the more little sparks, the more likely there'll be a wildfire.
As far as that woman who stopped writing poetry to feed her
children- that doesn't make any sense to me. How does a poet
stop being a poet? Its impossible. Theres a trick to not losing
poetry, its called writing it down. Scratch it into wood.
I also find the idea that ones poems are from a finite resource a
bit religious and corny. Poetry is everywhere, it is a substance
that washes through you like air, all you lose is your inability to
breathe, see, or hear. It can't get used up; what an awful idea,
perpetuated by the people who have lost themselves and are too
tired to find it again. Poetry is not a luxury to a poet; to a poet,
its an unshakeable [though beautiful] disease.
-e.
Kathy Forer wrote:
> At 11:07 PM -0700 8/25/00, Eryk Salvaggio wrote:
> >But I also have heard, numerous times, of the art there, and
> >all of it deals with the need for the spirits of people to be elevated
> >out of the extreme poverty and structure.
>
> Is it possible to address this in art?
> Even given the need for heroic overcoming, can the artistic spirit
> triumph in such dire circumstances;
> If art exists there, it can't be so extremely hopelessly
> impoverished. Art too can't live without nourishment, it mostly fails
> in the face of insurmountable extremes. A story about the poet who
> had to stop so she could feed her children; when they had grown and
> she had some freedom she couldn't write either, her work had gone,
> either used up or lost.
