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| Buzzard's Bay, MA |
This past weekend, I was leaving a funeral in Buzzard's Bay, MA for a beloved aunt on my wife's side of the family when I heard about the bombings in Boston. It was the first funeral I'd ever been to where hundreds of people showed up to pay their respects and say goodbye. There was a long line of people that wound its way around the funeral home and out the door into the parking lot.
I was very moved to see that this woman had touched so many lives. She had obviously made a difference in people's lives in her short time on this earth. It made me stop and think, "Have I touched as many lives? What is my contribution to this too short amount of time we all have? What small changes could I be making to make more of a difference?"
As we left Buzzard's Bay my wife, Heidi, reminded me that it was Patriot's Day. I had no idea what that was. I've lived in Boston, but I was working on Lion King at the time and going through the trauma of my divorce, so I didn't really participate in as many of the city's cultural events as I would have liked to.
She also said that it was the day of the Boston Marathon. I had just been thinking that one of things I would still like to do is run a marathon. In my imagination, I saw myself running the 26.2 miles looking around with joy and awe at the people around me going on their own journey. I could feel myself exerting my body, sweating, struggling, talking to myself, urging myself to finish, to just make it one more mile, one more mile. In my revery, I saw Heidi and my young son waiting for me at the finish line, smiling, happy, as I collapsed into their arms.
While imagining all of this, I hit the Twitter button on my phone. I wasn't looking for anything related to the marathon, just seeing what friends were up to. My imagined experience of running a marathon came crashing to a halt when one of my Twitter followers stated, "Oh no, I know some people running the marathon."
My heart jumped. I knew that something bad was happening. This was within 20 minutes of it actually happening. I was amazed at the speed news travels and I quickly searched the web and found out that bombs had gone off - right at the finish line.
The finish line - the goal - the hoped for future - nirvana - bliss - the end of struggle and the beginning of stories told about the race that happened...and suddenly all of that was twisted into a nightmare of human body parts and metal and death and destruction. I was saddened and angry by this news and wondered how best to respond.
How DO we continue to strive to make a difference when every other day the news is filled with these stories of shootings and bombings and revenge and death?
This was now the question on my mind as we drove on, away from Massachusetts and friends and family and back to New York, back to work, back to the students I teach every day at SUNY New Paltz and SUNY Dutchess Community College.
What do we DO?
As I stood before my first class, feeling defeated, feeling like they don't really care about the skills I am teaching them, feeling like they might give up in the face of all this violence, I had a revelation.
What do we do in the face of death and destruction?
We do what all artists have done and continue to do and will continue to do until our sun shrinks to a cold, white dwarf and we are no longer here. We CREATE.
We make something from nothing. We take our lives and experiences and skills and education and we create something new, something that never existed before and we share it with world and say, "Hey, take a look at this, what do you think?"
Sometimes, the world responds back with praise and money and fame and glory and sometimes just your best friend in the whole wide world sees the work and says, "Eh, try again." But the WORK of CREATION continues and will continue and that work, that drive to make beautiful and worthy and challenging things and films and plays and stories and myriad other forms, is light years away from the drive of the person who cobbled together some pressure cookers and ball bearings and blew up a small child and a family and other people who were there to celebrate the gloriousness of human beings and what they can accomplish when they put their minds and hearts and souls into something.
Those two bombs have hurt and killed and maimed. Their intention was to destroy and cause fear. But they cannot stop us from creating beauty out of chaos, they cannot maim our ability to love and reach out and create alone or together works that celebrate what it means to be a human being among human beings. They cannot stop art from happening and overwhelming the world with joy and beauty and light.
I urge all of you, in response to this tragic event, to create something beautiful, something worthy, something challenging, something funny as an oppositional response to this destructive event. Share your creations with me, with others, with the world or just hold it in the palm of your hand and know you have stepped on the other side of the line away from hate and fear and destruction.
My thoughts are with my Boston brothers and sisters today. May they find answers and closure and love and begin the journey of healing as soon as possible.
