What Toni Morrison would have us remember.
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives”. –Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture, 1993
In 1993, the year she won the Nobel Prize in Literature, Toni Morrison was interviewed in The Paris Review, where she reflected on the creative process, the role of the artist in times of adversity, and the necessity of continuing to create even in the face of personal and societal difficulties.
Here is an excerpt:
“I am staring out of the window in an extremely dark mood, feeling helpless. Then a friend, a fellow artist, calls… he asks, ‘How are you?’ and instead of ‘Oh, fine… and you?’, I blurt out the truth: ‘Not well. Not only am I depressed, I can’t seem to work, to write; it’s as though I am paralyzed, unable to write anything… I’ve never felt this way before…’ I am about to explain with further detail when he interrupts, shouting: ‘No! No, no, no! This is precisely the time when artists go to work… not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job.’ I felt foolish the rest of the morning, especially when I recalled the artists who had done their work in gulags, prison cells, hospital beds; who did their work while hounded, exiled, reviled, pilloried. And those who were executed… this is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
It’s Day 18, and I’m just starting to emerge from my post-election haze. Just starting to more fully hear this call.
Are you?
(And if you’re not, if you’re still hiding in bed in your pajamas, I utterly appreciate that and wish you supertanker-sized boatloads of self-care. There’s time. It’s only Day 18. We have four years.)