Hope is Resistance

The Artist-Creator’s Office (Dispatch No. 7)

I posted this on my socials yesterday, but this morning I felt that it needed to be less fleeting than an expiring story, so I’m sharing this here:

“today has really brought to the forefront the urgent need for hope and hope-workers/hope-custodians/ hope-conjurers.

hope is resistance.

we’re living in an age where our imaginations have been arrested by workers of despair, such that imagining liberation has been made to seem delusional. i reject this agenda. i have hope. i am hope embodied and i will continue to serve this spirit that invited me here to collaborate with its hope-FULL-ness.

invite anyone reading this to join me in the work of hoping. your desires are gasping for air within you; marry them to hope and see how they collaborate

you can call it delulu or manifesting or whatever, but sneak in hope past the policing structures in your mind that threaten its existence. sneak it in!”

But, what does this have to do with the artist? Toni Cade Bambara taught us that “the role of the artist is make the revolution irresistible.” Yet, so many artists (and artists-in-hiding) are afraid to believe in their visions for liberation. They are already in resistance to the revolution within themselves. Thus, they remain in the space of creating only things which will not rock the oppressor’s boat, for the sake of keeping themselves safe.

Your imagination is the one zone that cannot be arrested unless you yield to the actors that long to crush it. Your imagination can be a site of freedom, regardless of every other circumstance you’re facing. Children teach us this. And in this season, the children of Gaza and Palestine have been our most exemplary teachers in maintaining the liberation of our imagination. In the midst of generations-long oppression, these children continue to imagine a world of freedom, a world of peace, and a world where they and their families can live without the oppression of Israel.

When I say I am hope embodied, I am reclaiming the narrative of my existence. I’ve never asked my parents why they chose to bring me into this world. And society loudly accosts me with its ideas of who and what I should be, both as a person and an artist-creator. With these ideas, despair sets in as my hope and my desires are put on the back-burner to satisfy these endless expectations. But, no more.

Sometimes, connecting hope to courage, to bring something desired into being, is a difficult exercise. External and internal distractions and terrors push us further and further away from the point of actualization. This is why I believe that we can always start with the baby step of allowing hope to bloom within our hearts and minds. Your heart is your space to hold whatever you want to hold there; you have space for hope here, if only to play with it, if only to flirt with it.

When the work of hoping and holding hope within us is honed, then we gain further audacity to begin embodying our hope in our realities. Resistance doesn’t have to look like fireworks. It could look like your hope for being less driven by capitalism allowing you to show up to work with only your current capacity. It could look like your hope for gender equity allowing you to dress how you like when you like and show up, trembling, but at home in your skin.

Questions to Ponder

What am I afraid of? (What does that mean I’m hoping for?)

If my ideals are 100% of my hopes, how can I bring 1% of them into my life right now? Where can I leave my heart a crumb of hope realized?

What are the loudest voices in opposition to my hope? What are they saying? What am I saying back? How can I debunk these voices and their theories?

Do I even know what I desire? (This is a first step towards hope.)