A Creative People Can Wield It

Image / Iryna Denysova


“Hope is always accompanied by the imagination, the will to see what our physical environment seems to deem impossible. Only the creative mind can make use of hope. Only a creative people can wield it.”
- Jericho Brown


"Somebody introduced me as a “cultural worker,” and I feel like that, and I’m sort of like, but why am I doing all that? And then I realized that it was in the title — that what I do, I do for culture; that I create culture; that I live in and benefit from culture, and that art and that culture make my life worth living and that it pushes me on to see more art, to make more things; that I’m a person who believes in living as one would want to see a life; that I really do believe in making the poems that I want to be in the world, in teaching the classes that I would want to see if I were a student, in dancing the way I like to see people dance. Do you know what I mean?

And I think, for me, knowing that I can do that is what I have. And I’m hoping that for more people, that can be what you have in this moment; that instead of looking at the things that mean to hurt us, that we can look at each other; that we can hold up in the opposite direction some poetry; that we can hold up in the opposite direction some song; that we can hold up in the opposite direction some belief we have in some community project, some play, something that we are doing, some child that we love; and that I think if we can concentrate on the best of one another, on the best of the best of us, if we can really make the world we want to live in — even if it’s only in our own heads or in our own homes or in our own cars on the way to work  — then we’ll be doing the beginning of something new."

- Jericho Brown, in conversation with Krista Tippett



Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
http://www.danawyss.com/