"Bombs, guns, votes change the world. Artists change the heart."
Do you remember Captain Planet? The kids TV show from the 1990s?
The artist Scott Erickson told a magnificent story about Captain Planet and the 5 rings of the “Planeteers”—it’s ok if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I promise this very short story has a solidly clear and revealing ending.
The story goes…each ring in the show represented an important element of the world. There was an Earth ring, and then one for Fire, Wind, Water, and, finally, the Heart.
It was the Heart ring that ensured people cared about saving the planet and themselves.
It became clear to Erickson that when all his friends were going on to do important work like become teachers and doctors, he was the one in the group asking people to feel—don’t forget to feel! …that was his job.
Erickson says,
“Guns, money and bombs will change the world, yes, but really to change things in the world you need to know the conversation of the human heart—and to be an artist is to become familiar with the conversations of the human heart.”
All I know is that political allegiances and world events are building cold, protective barriers around hearts all around me.
Here’s where I veer into the political preachy realm to expand on the point, where I take you into my son’s Grade 2 class, where a Muslim child and a Jewish child, both 7 years old, decide it’s appropriate to view one another as the “other”, making way for a steely coldness to forge between them, when, at one time, they were friends.
We all know this is happening everywhere, and in the smallest, quietest spaces too.
The heart is facing great onslaughts from the vivid, alarming, and overly abundant information environment we all live in. An environment run, I might add, by leaders who are raging egomaniacs!
And so art….Take me into a different soundscape please? Maybe a novel or show told from multiple and strange points-of-view, like that of a murdered black boy and the daughter of the police officer who killed him (a book my older son recently read at school)— anything really that allows me to know and accept that the world is full of contradictions, paradox and false alternatives.
One of my favourite spiritual teachers:
Humans often end up doing evil by thinking they can and must eliminate all evil, instead of holding it, suffering it themselves, and learning from it. - Richard Rohr
I don’t know any other place where this is done than in storytelling, where the conversation of the heart unspools, and we’re given permission to participate. Storytelling in song, on the page, in images, in confessional communities like AA and group therapy.
In closing: the heart needs stories.
I am speaking from an emotional place today, an angry one even. Yes, I’ve been angry. I think I’m still angry. You can ask my friend Lindsay from Atlanta, Georgia what I sounded like the day after the election, when more than 1 disappointment came raging in.
If I were a “good person”, I’d learn from this anger and write a saucy poem about it…I’ll try, but really, I just wrote these paragraphs and I expect it’s helping the anger find a through line, and with Scott Erickson’s succinct and true words. Artists change the heart, and that will change the world.
Thanks readers :)
Before I jet back into the writing cave (and holiday mom cave), I have a short burst of news to share!
Three authors I’ve interviewed in this very Dormer Window newsletter space, have recently published wonderful books. One, in fact, was shortlisted for a national prize!
Nick Mafi, Calatrava Art - A new perspective on a world-renowned architect. Art represents for Calatrava the purest path for conveying emotion
Rajinderpal Pal, However Far Away - A story exploring family secrets and the nature of loss and loyalty
Deepa Rajagopalan, Peacocks of Instagram - A short story collection nominated for Canada’s Giller Prize and named an Apple Best Book of 2024
Check them out!
