Freakflag Question of the Week
Ursula K. Le Guin challenged us before. Are we going to pick up the gauntlet now?
Ursula K. Le Guin in her speech in acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters:
Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
What is your response to Ursula K. Le Guin’s challenge?
Well, first, to read and re-read all her work, for the art and poetry of her words, for the joy and wisdom of it, that the wave of my mind might dance with the pattern of her own artless awareness. Those and others' words I can use to challenge myself to understand what I think and why.
As well: to collect some of those pithy phrases she packs so full of query and thought! They ring in my own head like a gong, but are often useful when trying to explain myself to others... they articulate so much, so clearly, so simply!
Some favs of mine, regarding what might define the society she'd prefer: 'a world where one gets to decide what happens to one's body', 'a society where the only laws are those that forbid rape and usury'...
As best I can, I resist and speak out against the binary, either/or of false certainties declared as 'truth' by all those saysos meant to divide us with fear into 'us' vs 'them', and so profit easily and enormously, without resistance, as we fight amongst each other...
I attempt to learn of and understand the 'other', and so how I might shape the 'art' of my words to change or influence this 'other', and perhaps discover a larger reality that will change me as well. Can we and they become known to be one another? Replace fear with understanding and static certainties with the will to change?
UKL suggests to me that one's 'art' can be simply to attend to one's world, listen to the stories told, to understand one's truth enough so that one might tell it well.