The Flowers Will Return
Artists are flowers in the garden of community.
We all play a role. We are all beautiful. Artists display our beauty outwardly.
Art is an expression of the beauty of our entire community and culture.
Think of a garden without flowers...
Artists play an essential role in the ecosystem of culture. Their stems reach down into the soil; they pull up inspiration, nutrients, toxins—all that may exist in the soil. Those elements make their way to what blooms. The flower tells the story of the soil—of the culture. Artists sing the song of the community.
If we lose connection with our artists, our community loses connection with itself.
For the past few decades, art has taken a back seat to productivity, efficiency, and measurable results. Many of us are feeling the consequences of this today.
Look around at nature—it is operating in balance with itself. Now look around at today’s culture—I think many people in modern culture would agree, things are out of balance. The way we’ve been living is not working.
The dysregulation we see in culture reflects the dysregulation we carry in our nervous system—individually and collectively.
One of the most powerful ways to regulate a nervous system is to co-regulate. We help each other feel okay. It's how we're wired from birth. Trying to operate outside our wiring creates distortion between and within us.
Another powerful tool for nervous system regulation is art. I personally have experienced much healing from the art of music—but it is a certain quality of music that heals... music is made of vibrations, and when those vibrations flow from a body that is receiving healing, they heal others. That's the type of music that heals. And that type of music, sadly, is becoming rare. Music cannot heal the musician if the musician is making their music in order to survive, rather than to express. Unfortunately, today’s system is set up in a way that puts artists on a path of survival from step one.
We need a better system—for artists and culture.
We need to see flowers again. We need to be reminded of our intrinsic beauty again.
This is not done through algorithms and formulas. It cannot be planned out perfectly on a spreadsheet.
The flowers will return when we come back to where we are, come back to who we are, come back together again.
We need to be in real spaces with real people. We need to experience real art from real humans. We need to sing real songs about real things in real life, together.
There is a lot of old cement and outdated structure taking up residence in our garden today. Much of it has lost its usefulness, and we can feel that. It is time to clear it out, to take a breath, to start new, to tend to the soil of our communities and of ourselves. To allow ourselves to be tended to, and watered. To be with what is, and to allow what comes to come from a posture of being, not forcing.
A shift like this takes courage that, realistically, few of us have—but courage has a way of coming when things get bad enough... things are bad enough. Courage is coming.
This is an invitation—a plea—to take courage. Courage to slow down. To look up. To breathe, and to be present with what is—not just with what is out in the world, which is a lot, but with what is inside, which is more.
We all need to find our way back—to ourselves, and to each other. To the garden. “The way back” is not a solitary journey. It is cooperative. It is together.