Giving Thanks for Great Spirits

In general, our culture has very limited notions of what a hero is. We celebrate those who fight, who put themselves in harm’s way (and rightly so), but we too often stop there.

Even when we do broaden the scope of our appreciation, it rarely involves artists, but living a life of creativity is heroic in many, many ways—including, sometimes, harm’s way. So, in honor of Thanksgiving, let me say, “Thank you” to those among us who valiantly and consistently make the world a place worth fighting by the art they create.

Thank you, artists and entertainers, who tell the truth—the truth of the story, the moment, the experience, who refuse to look away when others cover their eyes, who express honest emotion and human experience, instead of overly contrived, sentimental, cheap escapism.

Thank you, unsung heroes, unknown artists, for laboring away in obscurity, the burden of your vision your only boss, creating because you have to, persevering against all odds in hopes one day you, too, will have an audience.

Thank you, writers and filmmakers, painters and musicians, actors and producers, who fight not to fall into the lazy shortcuts of clichés, who continually try to approach their work with a fresh perspective, with an integrity that insists on a new way of “seeing,” “hearing,” “touching,” “describing,” “expressing,” human experiences.

Thank you for all that you risk—for baring your heart and mind and soul, for disrobing in such a public manner, for making yourself an easy target for potshots from the defensive and the simple. Thank you for enduring the negativity and nay saying from the overly critical, the closed-hearted, the jealous, the haters.

Thank you for your fidelity to your vision, for being true to your art, to your truth, to your muse, to what you’re hearing and seeing and feeling, regardless of the masses who misunderstand, in spite of the criticism, and no matter the mean and hurtful things said and done by the fearful, the narrow-minded, the repressed.

Thank you for not going along with the crowd, for not giving into the beige, for not melting into the masses, for being strong enough to be different. You have been subjected to ridicule and even violence for being true to who you are and to your art. You have suffered for your art in ways no one but you knows, and the pain you’ve been subjected to gives your work the poignancy and power that we who eat your words and drink your paintings so need to truly sustain us.

Thank you for entertaining us, but more for challenging us—for making us think and feel and question. You instruct us in the ways of empathy and humility—the heights of humanity. You chip away at the fissures of the facade of our culture, you kick at the false foundation of our assumptions—all while making us laugh and cry and hurt and feel and think.

Thank you, brave women and men, who explore the dark side of existence, allowing us to vicariously experience the shadows in the safety of our reading chair or theater seat. You are unafraid to take long day’s journeys into nightmarish nights, expertly guiding us through the underworld. Thank you for shining your piercing light onto the things in our minds and on our streets that we try to pretend aren’t there.

I end with the words of Albert Einstein, one of the most talented artists to ever live, with love and gratitude. “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” Thank you, artists and outsiders, original thinkers and visionaries, for daily enduring this most of all.