Many of us need joy these days. I cannot enjoy joy absent hope though. Without a sense that holding space and a desire for a new reality is authentic, joy turns purely to release, or escape, for me. So they feel intertwined. A few perspectives have helped me to frame both joy and hope.
The first is a piece by John Cave, which he shared on the Late Show recently. In responding to a writer's question about having faith in people, "do you still believe in us?", I feel like he was responding to me when he wrote the following:
"You are right to be worried about your growing feelings of cynicism and you need to take action to protect yourself and those around you, especially your child. Cynicism is not a neutral position — and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils.
I know this because much of my early life was spent holding the world and the people in it in contempt. It was a position both seductive and indulgent. The truth is, I was young and had no idea what was coming down the line. I lacked the knowledge, the foresight, the self-awareness. I just didn’t know. It took a devastation to teach me the preciousness of life and the essential goodness of people. It took a devastation to reveal the precariousness of the world, of its very soul, to understand that it was crying out for help. It took a devastation to understand the idea of mortal value, and it took a devastation to find hope.
Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, Valerio, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes, keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so."
The second piece is by Andrea Pitzer. She shared in her blog Degenerate Art a post titled "Who invents the world?" In response to the confusion and mystification of who controls the world, in the face of both the current federal administration and the rise of tech billionaires outsized influence on our lives, the following:
"Simple direction is not the roadblock to improved human health....The biggest barriers for the majority of humans are access to healthcare, access to healthy food, the ability to afford it, community environments that foster activity, leisure time to be active, and workplaces and neighborhoods that don’t poison us or damage our health....Humans are the force that creates change in society, and it’s critical to recall the role played by people who lay cables, who come up with scientific innovations, or who evaluate grant applications...So embrace your own ideas, your own creations, and your own life. Don’t wait for people to tell you what to do, or submit to someone’s rules about living a good life.
Live inside your own life. Working within your own restrictions, medical or otherwise, try to be in the world as much as you can and not live your entire life second-hand, through screens or via others’ rules and expectations. Anyone or anything who tells you only they can save you is lying.
If there’s something missing in your community, think of an idea and go try it. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel—getting advice or inspiration and looking at pre-existing programs elsewhere can be a great idea. But you and I are capable of things no technology can do. The real work of changing society—for good or for ill—is always done by people. Don’t give up your power."
Both remind me of the shared story, apocryphal or generalized, of the sole protester who when challenged about his power to change the government with his single voice, replied "I am protesting so the government doesn't change me." That at our core there is a strength, a truth to who we are when once we know it, is unshakeable and permanent and all we can ever be in both good and bad times. And that one way to know that truth, beyond crisis and instruction and reflection, is through creativity. Through expression and community in expression.
One of the ways in which I have been enduring the past 7 months has been through a re-embracing of jazz music and jazz musicians. From the 1920's to the present, jazz musicians and their medium have endured some of the most heinous treatment in the form of racism, sexism, economic exploitation, cultural exploitation, segregation, violence, and more. The number and prominence of jazz musicians who left the US to live abroad in Europe to escape this treatment bears testament to this horrid reality. In the midst of this treatment, the most sublime expression of music flourished. In response to or in spite of this treatment, the music grew and enveloped the world and continues to inspire people across continents. It is a singular language spoken by millions, and it speaks to me.
I chose the picture above for this post for a variety of reasons. It is a famous picture from LIFE magazine of fans meeting then famous jazz big band leader and singer Billy Eckstine. It was famous because of the controversy it created among some audiences for showing a white woman embracing a black man in a fit of joy. Eckstine is probably one of the most important jazz big and leaders you never heard of. No less than the likes of Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Sarah Vaughn, and THE Duke Ellington played in his band, but so much of his bands output was not recorded as it happened during WWII.
And he was revered! He was handsome, had a great voice, and led a very musically progressive band that played more than swing numbers for dance halls. He is one of two people Quincy Jones cited as having the most style of anyone he ever met, the other being Frank Sinatra. Eckstine's band was very very popular and regularly sold out performances across the country...until this photo was published. A major downturn in his band's popularity occurred after this picture was printed, and his career was as impacted by the changing tastes in music as it was by the overt racism of the country.
This picture shows pure joy though. Fans meeting their favorite superstar jazz performer, charmed and excited. Eckstine glad to meet adoring fans (I'm sure always happy to put a smile on the faces of his women fans), all based on joyous music that was so popular at one time that it was literally the only popular music in the country.
Eckstine endured; his career continued and he took on different roles as a jazz performer and arranger, and the sentiment that helped bury his career thawed slowly over time. But that sentiment did not melt. Jazz has also endured, from the high's of the 50's to the low's of the 80's, to wherever it is now. Predominantly Black performers of jazz have endured, despite unforgiving industry circumstances and trends. This too is a testament to the power of human creativity and embracing expression.
I face so few of the challenges the revered performers in his band faced in life, and my own privilege can at times blind me to the kind of truths Andrea Pritzer wrote about. Eckstine and Jones and Davis and Vaughn and Ellington all embraced their creations and never gave up their power. A quote that was elevated upon his death last year from Quincy Jones really resonated for me, about the truth of creativity and expression:
"When you go after Ciroc vodka and Phat Farm and all that shit, God walks out of the room. I have never in my life made music for money or fame. Not even Thriller. No way. God walks out of the room when you’re thinking about money. You could spend a million dollars on a piano part and it won’t make you a million dollars back. That’s just not how it works."
I was searching for a few more quotes about expression and creativity to give shape to how I was feeling about joy and hope, and these resonated with me:
“Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle.This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future” -Albert Camus
“The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.” - Chuck Palahniuk
“I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.”
― Peter Ustinov
So here's to sharing more about what gives me joy in future posts, and how I retain my power to create change in my life and our world. I don't need to evaluate the world we occupy anymore, there are better more committed erstwhile writers and critics for that. For me, I just need to embrace and share joy and hope. And what has been giving me joy these days is a little known Beatles excerpt from one of their late recording sessions:
The Palace of the King of the Birds
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