Last year, just before I moved back to the Best Coast, I took it upon myself to go to see the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. before Hurricane Irene swept through the eastern seaboard. I can't say it was a big deal to anyone but me, but at the same time, I felt like I was doing something truly important as an artist.
It was Thursday, August 18th, and throughout the week I'd been listening to the news about the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. I'd been feeling very... feeling a stirring in that deep and feral part of my soul I will call Qme. Pme (the coin flip-side of Qme) is going to work, getting stuff done, all the practical things. Qme is bubbling, MLK! The memorial is done. Oh my gosh, I only saw, emails about this years ago, I might have made a donation. Hmm did I make a donation? Still, I made it in to the office.
I had heard on the news that the Memorial would soon be closed to the public, in order to prepare for the official dedication on August 21, 2011.
The feeling in my Qme was like a video game character on pause just at the beginning of a fight, stirring, clear and present as mist on a cool day before a good rain. I will never forget what happened next. I was sitting at my desk trying to concentrate on work. 7:30... 8:30... 8:59... and then, at pretty much precisely 9:00, a bell went off inside of me, like an alarm. GO! Just like that I vibrated with the force of the call inside of me. GO NOW!
I told my boss, “I'm having a personal emergency” He heard the words, but not necessarily the words. What I said, “I'm having a personal emergence, see?” I was being clever and punnish, and not a little deceptive - forgive me. I said I would be back as soon as I was able. I got in my car, drove to DC, walked around the memorial, took pictures, felt swept up in history and the future, simultaneously. I remember wearing some blue flats that matched perfectly with my t-shirt, which ended up being quite uncomfortable after all the walking. I also remember chastising myself for complaining about walking a few city blocks and the National Mall to see MLK, when he organized marches from Alabama facing water hoses, barricades, mace, etc., so I wouldn't have to clear the sidewalk when others walked by, simply because I was black.
Afterwards I came back to the office and everything was fine. My life was not changed, and yet it was. I got up that morning, knowing I was going to do that strange and marvelous thing, and preparing for it on a level that was wide awake inside of me.
I agree with the people who complain about the face of the MLK figure looking cold and stern, and I see how artists should get mad because the commission for the memorial was outsourced to China. I also understand how arrogant the misquote on the main statue comes across. According to the men and women who lived and worked with Martin Luther King Jr., he was nothing like that, no matter what history has to say about him now. I am currently, as I sit here writing, debating about whether I am happy about the memorial at all. Qme is incensed that, for as long as it stands, one of the tenets of my personal history is so callously misrepresented. What, we should be happy that we have a memorial for a man that does not describe the man, but the perception of him by someone with either no cultural understanding or reference, or worse, an agenda to make MLK look like a megalomaniacal social gangster. Pme is glad that the memorial is there at all, because it, like so many other persons, places, or things, is a door opener.
As an artist I had to (and have to) own and hold that idea of the pragmatic me, the hegemonic me, the Pme, the me that gets the work done is NOT the only current running within me. Pme may be perfectly capable of handling business (and for the most part she does her thang with great aplomb), but there are times when Qme will make very clear statements.
On August 18, 2011, Qme stood her ground within me and said, “We have to do this”, and Pme responded, “you know what, we have to do this”. That decision is one of the biggest decisions I have ever made, and as I begin to write about the local artists here in San Diego, I know that what I did was listen to my inner artist, quietly screaming at me to get out there and be all sides of me.
An artist's gotta do what an artist's gotta do.
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