This is nothing short of amazing. On Mirrors - Most creative people – especially those who have taken classes in this sort of thing – most of us have heard the same advice at some time or another. The advice is this: The artist’s job is meant to hold up a mirror to the world. To show people to themselves. (It comes from a line from Hamlet. You can Google it.) There is other advice about mirrors. More practical. Logistical. Mostly this advice is found in articles about small spaces, and on home decorating shows on cable. You hang mirrors to make a space seem bigger, and brighter. They reflect the light. They open things up. This is all true and good advice, and contained within it, I think, are also the reasons that so many of us who are creative struggle with depression and anxiety and why people mourn so deeply when an artist dies, especially one still absorbed in the business of creating. The thing is, these metaphorical mirrors – they’re heavy. You hold them up and after awhile, your arms get tired. But if your calling is to create, you can’t put the mirror down. You don’t want to, even though sometimes it’s all you can do to keep from dropping it. Here’s another thing: For all their marvelous, sparkling, light-reflecting qualities, it’s pretty damn dark behind the mirror. It’s hard to live with your face pressed up against that bleak stretch. You have to stare at the dull, grey back side of the glass if you want to be bright – if you want to be brilliant. Not many people see you looking at all this darkness, which is understandable. They’re seeing their reflection. They’re thinking bigger thoughts in that more open-looking space you’ve provided. That’s what you wanted. That’s your art. Sometimes other artists see you back there more easily. They’ve got mirrors, too. They know how it works. Once in awhile, one of us can’t do it anymore. The artist collapses. They drop the mirror on their way down. Things break. This breaking makes a loud noise – probably you heard it in your Facebook feed last night. That sparkling, expansive, brilliant reflection shatters. The light doesn’t go out, not really – there are still others out there, holding up their mirrors. But it’s dimmer. The dark corners of the world, where epidemics spread and cease-fires crumple and people starve? Those corners are more ominous. Art talks about those things, too – art isn’t always happy, but it discusses. It examines. It helps. You can’t change the things you can’t see. And so, with one less person to show it to us, the world is darker, and more frightening, and we mourn the loss of that artist, and their light. These are the moments when we realize that we need people to hold the mirrors. We see how hard it can be and, hopefully, we see how important it is. - Christine Faul Johnson
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 19:13:03 +0000
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