THE ART IN WAR

There's something about the arts; something about creating worlds and people, shepherding visions into the atmosphere out of nothing, but God's words to your spirit. Nobody knows the words and you can't even explain them. It's a secret between you and the Lord. In its execution is the understanding.

Have you seen your local artist today? The singer on the nine train or the drummer standing in line for the band audition? How about the dancer stretching her legs while she sits over coffee watching the writer have run on sentences with himself in the out-of-the-way corner? The designer; the painter, a mad scientist of colors and chemicals. you might have missed them because sometimes they lead solitary existences where the hard work done to present their best work to you is done in secret places only they can inhabit.

Have you hugged you local artist today? The one who makes you smile when the show is over and you bask in the spectacle of lights and effects and talent. Talent that can be admired, but never duplicated because it's unique to that artist or that group of souls born to do what they do; to make you think, to make you feel, to relieve you, to push you, to connect with you.

Could you be these artists? The kind that stare rejection in the face and laugh with it like an old friend or cry about it in dark rooms until they can get the strength to climb between the ropes and take the ring for their next shot? The kind that only hear what they lack, what is missing, what might not exist? Do you sit on the fence with their duality that tells them that their truth won't make them the rent money or pay for health insurance or afford them the American dream? Do you hear their arguments with themselves to tell their truth or sell-out for the possibility of a dollar and fifteen minutes of whatever fame offers?

There's something in the soul of the artist, not the star, the artist that cannot let go of the truth. Even if it kills them. The authenticity of words and deeds that propel them to seek connection over popularity, even when that authenticity comes with a price of lonliness, uncertain futures or difficult presents. The artists is a warrior and daily these brave souls die on shields of passion that salute truth and connection and perseverance. Sun Tzu's, Art of War, is just half the story. The other half is the art in war. The artist is in a war against corporate structure, public indifference, lack of tast, and still the artist fights to tell their truth, through their verses, through their dances, in their canvases, within their spotlights to let the world know we are different and the same.

In an America that places less cultural value on the truth in art than on the earning potential of populrity, the truth, which is the birth name of "artist" is poetic, is stylish, is strategic, is magnificent and carries the weapon of art in a pop war that rages in intensity with each passing day.