What happened this morning at Charlie Hebdo is horrifying, dehumanizing, depressing beyond belief. What happened when I brought it up in my Creative Writing classroom this morning broke my heart. Almost to a person, my sparkling, insightful, thoroughly engaged kids felt that while no one DESERVES what happened, artists need to be respectful, and these people should have been aware of the consequences. Startled, I tried to explain the essential nature of art-as-mirror, as self-importance and certainty-deflator, as civilized provocation tool, as the best medium weve ever come up with, as a species, for translating experience into language everyone can read and argue over and laugh with and object to and learn from, and then respond to in kind. But it turns out that not just the sanctity of freedom of speech (because who cares) but the fundamental NEED for it--like that of privacy--is becoming a relic, now, something we can no longer afford and to which we no longer aspire.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 21:35:12 +0000