People speak of how oppression brings out the art in artists. How in the bleakest of times, humans create harder and more often. But the artists flame out fast. Imagine how much more art could exist if we supported creativity. How much gets doused out before it can find itself blazing? We'll never know how much has been lost to us. Oppression may give the privileged a reason to flourish, but it stifles everyone else.
I've reached a point where I have some free time, less stress about where I'm going to live, what I'm going to eat, how I'm going to cover the costs of medicine if my kids get sick. In this time period, I have begun to flourish. My story isn't yet flowing from me in more than snapshots of stream of consciousness, but it's starting, again. While I lived in fear of my next meal and my children's fate, there was no art left in me. I didn't write more than the bleakest of journal entries. I was living in the oppression of poverty.
Any oppression causes sadness and anger. The only people who get to release it are people who are not currently under the pressure of surviving it. If people want to show support of art and artists, I suggest we do more than glorify oppression. We need to give them environments to thrive.
The cynical, "Well, at least the art is going to be amazing" is just a way to absolve ourselves of the responsibility of truly supporting the arts.
What about school art and music programs? What about teaching computer aided draft and web design in elementary school? Why not writing workshops? Why do we, instead, allow our schools to be pared down to 'Riting, Reading, 'Rithmetic? No, this presidency will not give us great art. Great art will be stifled and stamped out before it can even begin.
Save me your cynical rhetoric.
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