My heart is broken and I need some healing!
As January 20th approaches, I’m afraid that the world is coming to an end. It feels like I’m waiting for doomsday to happen, while trying to pretend in front of my boys that life is the best thing ever and every day is the “bestest day ever” as my son, Sydney (5 years), likes to say.
November 7th seems to have put me in a black hole. I have been avoiding friends and people in general. Even at my son’s school I have not been able to talk to people much and I’ve avoided running into people. If I see someone I know, I say a quick “hi” and usually I quickly turn my attention back to my boys. They are a great distraction!
If I talk to anyone, I have to make a concentrated effort to say something positive and if I can’t, I talk about the weather. Thankfully we have that now to talk about which also is a great distraction. If I don’t focus on the positive, I’m afraid that I will crack and start to cry and fall apart.
I’ve been searching for inspiration online. Articles about why the wig-man might be a good president fail to inspire me or lift me up. The petitions I’m signing daily seem pointless (though I keep on signing). Calling the White House or my representatives is depressing because people either hang up on me, or the tell me to call someone else, or they connect me to a black hole.
I have avoided social media because it’s full of bad news. Some people are outraged, some post articles that are not legitimate, and a lot of people share more and more petitions.
My email inbox has been getting little attention as well. I get emails about great deals on something that I don’t need. Emails to sign more petitions. Harassing emails from the Democratic Party to fill out survey after survey and “Why don’t I respond. Do I not care about the election?”
And as I’m trying to avoid everything, this past week finally inspiration found me when a friend of mine, Leonora Gershman Pitts, posted in her timeline in response to Meryl Streep’s Golden Globe speech. Leonora is is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She works as an actress and filmmaker, serves as a City Commissioner for the City of LA, and is the co-founder of the Los Angeles Women’s Film Collective. She is married, has two kids and two dogs and she lives in LA. Her post is very well articulated and call to action to artists. I needed this! I needed her post to finally be inspired to do something! To not sit at home and dwell on what is happening but to get up and inspire others around me with my art.
I want to talk about Meryl, about bubbles, about cities, and about makers.
The reaction from Conservative Twitter and our own President-Elect after Meryl Streep’s speech at the Golden Globes was swift and predictable. After she called on us to access and nurture our collective empathy, to protect and challenge our free press, and to continue to create create create, the Right called the rest of us “elitists”, said that actors should stick to acting, that we West and East Coasters live in a bubble.
First, let’s quickly recognize and then release the irony of this relatively small group of Americans decrying the idea that actors/performers/entertainers should hold political opinions and say them out loud; this is the same group of people who worship Reagan, wanted to change the Constitution to allow Schwarzenegger to run for president, and just put a reality show blowhard idiot in the White House.
Secondly, don’t come at me with this idea that Trump wasn’t mocking the disabled reporter, which seems to be a common right-wing response on Twitter. Own that you voted for the guy who made fun of someone’s disability. Own it. You know full and well he was, there is no other excuse. Also, if you think asking people to choose empathy over bullying is political, examine your life and make some changes, I beg you, for the betterment of our fragile world.
On to the generalization that Hollywood, or the coasts, or cities, or any diverse area is stuck in a liberal “bubble”. I live in the second largest city in the United States. Before I lived here, I lived in the largest city in the United States. Before that, I lived in a small city in a vast but tiny-populated state. So, I have a little experience with white, rural America, and a little experience with diverse, urban America.
Here in Los Angeles, my family and I are surrounded by immigrants, transplants, and homegrown Angelinos of every imaginable ethnicity, class, race, and religion. My kid goes to public school, so we have seen first hand how a group of racially, ethnically, socio-economically, academically, and behaviorally diverse little people can come together and immediately form a little society. My white kid is a minority at her school. This isn’t a bubble. It couldn’t possibly be – we are all so very very different from one another.
Just because our experiences are diverse and co-existing humans has led us to be more collectively progressive in our views doesn’t mean we live in a bubble. It means, as they say, that the arc of human thought and action bends toward progress. Always has. The more we work to get through each day together in a large city, the more we realize that we are all in this together, that we need to exist and protect and align with one another: that’s progressivism in a nutshell. We co-exist in this city, sharing our experiences, our ideas, our troubles, our triumphs. We come together when we know someone is in need, we create micro-communities within our communities, we know each other’s names. That’s not a bubble.
A bubble is being surrounded by people who look and think exactly like you. That’s a bubble. If you lack the intellectual curiosity to suss out the difference between fake news and real news – and then just automatically doubt the reporting of the real news, you’re in a bubble. If you have convinced yourself that a man who uses the kind of bullying, hurtful language that our president-elect uses, is worthy of our higher office: bubble. Bubble. Bubble. If you think his cowardly and cruel heart is somehow honorable, bubble. Awful bubble.
To Hollywood, specifically, being an “elitist” bubble, I invite any of you to please come visit a set. Nearly every single person on that set belongs to a union. Nearly every single person, save maybe the very biggest stars (who have earned their money and acclaim are shouldn’t be excluded from the conversation just because they happened to succeed) are working- and middle-class. Electricians, grips, sound designers, hair and makeup artists, PAs, most actors, costume designers, editors, line producers, location managers, camera ops, DPs, casting directors, set dressers and designers — most of us are just independent contractors working from job to job. Union workers, just like a mason or a police officer or a plumber.
Lastly, to the point that Meryl should shut up, that actors / entertainers / performers / makers / creators / artists shouldn’t speak about politics or current affairs – this might be the point that pisses me off the most. The entire reason art exists, in every single form, is to illuminate, explore, dissect, and attempt to explain the human experience. Since the dawn of man, since people could speak, artists – STORYTELLERS – have helped us understand ourselves. When a movie makes you cry or a TV show makes you laugh or a painting has taken your breath away or a piece of writing has made you blink in disbelief at its beauty or a song has given you goosies from head to toe – even if it is escapist art – it is because some part of you recognizes yourself within the art. Maybe not even you, personally, but yourself as a member of the human race.
Actors, creators, artists, we are all just storytellers. It’s our one job. Art is inherently political, and it always, always, always has been. So to the people on the right who want us to shut up, nice try. We’ve never been able to shut up – it’s precisely why we, even the shyest among us, became artists in the first place. So, as we say in California: yeah, no. We aren’t shutting up. We’re turning up, now more than ever. Make your own shit if you don’t like it. Dare ya.
Artists: let’s get to work. It’s annoying them. That means it’s working.
If you feel like I felt the past few months, I hope you will find inspiration to create art. Don’t wait for others to invite you to create. Start on your own. And if you are inspired to create something, let us know what it is. We would love to hear it.
As for me, neighbors, inspired by my edible forest front yard, came over today. I gave them a tour of our garden and told them how we are harvesting and storing water with Hügels and ditches, with drought tolerant plants and native flowers. I showed them what vegetables and herbs we have planted and how we are protecting our plants from the scorching sun with arches and plants that will grow in during spring. They are inspired to have a garden like ours and I offered to help.
This will be the year for me where I can put my knowledge and pass it on and who knows, maybe these next four years I will work toward transforming our neighborhood into a sustainable community.
more articles to inspire
April 3, 2020 Spotlight Series: Kristin Towers-Rowles – Award-Winning Director, Triple-Threat Actress, and Granddaughter of Screen Legend ‘Kathryn Grayson’- March 24, 2020 ‘Hollywood Fringe Festival’ Postpones Until October 2020
- March 16, 2020 Homeschool @ Last
- September 17, 2019 Lights Change: A Conversation with Writer Jacqueline Wright
- May 24, 2019 Voices from the Fringe: Lucy Gillespie, Writer of ‘Son of a Bitch’
- January 3, 2019 Steven Sabel's Twist on the Trade: Get Resolved
- December 28, 2018 PODCAST: An Interview with Playwright Steven Vlasak of 'Nights at the Algonquin Round Table'
