An Act of Vital Rebellion.

Copyright: © Onetto, Funes, Murgo (DOPRARA-INAPL)

How many of us have looked at a piece of art and loved it without knowing why? Or stayed up until entirely-too-late o'clock to finish 'just one more chapter'? Or held still while listening to a piece of music, or moved your body caught in dance?

Humans are creative at our heart. We always have been. Studying Ecology, Anthropology/Archeology, and Creative Writing all at the same time convinced me of that. It is what defines us as a species.

We can see it in the cave paintings in Lascaux and in Chauvet which date back at least 30,000 years. When you stand in front of those paintings and view them by torch light the animals seem to move, the extinct megafauna almost running and breathing again. The Sulawesi cave art in Indonesia is even older, dating back over 60,000 years.

The first musical instrument ever created (that we know of) is a flute carved from a vulture bone found in a cave in Europe that dates to 40,000 years ago - right when modern humans arrived in that landscape.

That means that one of the things we carried with us into an entirely new and alien world was a musical instrument. And one of the first things we did when we got there was create art.

Storytelling doesn't leave a fingerprint in the archeological record. But it might have changed the landscape of our brains. It's possible we shifted our actual sleep patterns as a species, staying up later to sit by the fire and tell stories. (This one is so wild I'll provide an in text citation, check out the podcast The Podcast Will Kill You's episode on sleep)

It reminds me of my own family. Of the nights were we sat up late on the porch with my mother's guitar and my father's drums. Of art shows I went to as a little girl, playing beneath dusty tables that smelled like dry clay and oil paint while my mother hung work on the walls. Of my aunts and uncles who would say 'sit down I have a story - don't forget this.'

Some of those stories traveled with us across an ocean, a legacy from a place we were forced to leave. Colonization tries very intentionally to separate people from their art, music and story just as it tries to sever their connection to the land.

Echoes of this twine through generations. It was carried by the brave men and women kidnapped from their homes in Africa to be brought to the Americas as slaves who braided seeds into their hair so they would survive. (Citation here as well - Leah Penniman, Farming While Black). It was carried by the First Nations Americans who brought their stories and language with them when their land was stolen and they were forced to walk across a continent. It was carried by the Irish, who protected itinerant storytellers called Seanchai. The Seanchai travelled the country, teaching Irish mythology and history at a time when it was illegal to do so.

So why does this matter now? We live in a world where the people in power do not value art. And I wonder how intentional that is. How much of their choice not to fund public art programs is based on a desire to limit creativity. How many of their book bans are inspired by a need to limit our capacity for human empathy. How much of their desire to curate what music we hear on national television comes from a choice to direct the narrative.

I think all of it is rooted in their desire to control.

Art is an act of rebellion. And if it falls to us to keep it alive we are just one more link in a human chain that stretches back thousands of years.

So I have this message to those in power. I see you. I know what you are doing and my family raised me fight back and survive.

I created this page and my social media to do two things. To share my own writing and my journey to publication. And to create a safe, inclusive space to lift up every one out there who is doing the vital, creative work to keep storytelling, art, music and culture alive.

So. If you are an artist create art. If you are a musician play music. If you are a writer, please write. Even if none of it feels vital - it is. Even if none of it feels radical - it is.

You are reaching out and holding the hands of your ancestors, all the way back to the first humans who put paint on a cave wall, carved a flute from bone, and sat up late telling stories by a fire.

And we need you now more than ever.