Art Can Change the World

Madrid 2019 - Hello everybody. This is my first post on Steem. I wrote 90% of the piece in 2011 and was inspired by the life of Nipsey Hussle to dust it off and revise it based on the intervening years and life experience.
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For years I had the honor of teaching my workshop the PERMISSION PLAYGROUND™ around the world. It was an honor to stand in front of those beautiful faces revealing to me their hearts and souls, then humbling me by telling me I had changed their lives. It is an honor because they chose to trust me with their artist and it is a responsibility I did not take lightly.
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I have thought a lot about my time there on the playground. I have thought a lot about how they also changed my life. For the longest time I could not imagine life without this profound exchange. I looked forward to the passion and commitment waiting for me when I stepped into that room. What could be greater than being trusted by another with what is so precious to them? What could be more fulfilling I wondered than lifting another up into their greatness, helping them to achieve their purpose.
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I have been on a long sabbatical from teaching knowing that my strength lies in more global work. The stories I tell in my films have a far wider reach than the intimacy of the classroom, although I see a lot of my work reflected in the success of my students in film and television. That is a joy.
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The brilliant filmmaker Sydney Lumet died this week [2011]. One of the quotes I kept seeing was how he felt art didn’t change the world. Well, I disagree. Especially with the explosion of social media and the ability to immediately bring value to someone across the world with content, with art.
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Art is universal when it comes from a place of truth in the artist. Art communicates a world that often is nonverbal but visceral, etheric, known… somewhere deep within us… and it can remind us by this connection that we are all a part of this journey of life. All a part of one another. Sometimes we need reminding, like a shattered vase… we are individual pieces yet we are still part of one.
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I felt one with Caravaggio when I thought about how long it must have taken him to paint in that church in order to express the vision he carried inside him.

How many years did Michelangelo labor to see the man emerge from the stone? What is it you feel when Beyonce sings?
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Why must we make art? Madeleine L’Engle, one of my heroes, writes of it in this way in her wonderful work A Circle of Quiet:

“a self is not something static…a self is always becoming.”

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The becoming. The constant searching and striving and weighing out of ideas that takes place within the artist’s soul must make its way into expression, communication, reaching out, sharing. Art is an experience and experiences change the world. Nipsey Hussle knew this. He knew his art was universal. He knew that through art he could transform his life, his friends, his neighborhood, make an impact on the world outside Crenshaw simply by telling his truth.
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The artists above are just a few who have changed my world. Art transforms lives. Art can change the world. Who has inspired you? Who has changed your world? Let me know.

Original post 2011
Revised 7. April 2019