Finding my own way (or why I find it impossible to toe any political party line)
By Old Grumpy Guy on August 5, 2009 at 12:15 AM in Current Affairs
I have been attending a video editing course with the Arts faculty at Ohio State University and was asked to write an “artist’s statement”, spelling out why I was an artist.
I wrote: “I am an artist because I have no choice in the matter. It is something that is hard-wired in me. I have an obsessive compulsive need to create something out of nothing; to find new ways of looking at things and to wrest some beauty or order out of ugliness and chaos.
“Like an autistic child, I need to create my own world as a refuge from the imperfections of the world around me and to express myself in my own way.”
And then came a bit of self-analysis that reflects on my political persuasions (or lack of them):
“I have never been able to subscribe to other people’s ideologies or repeat other people’s mantras, because I have had to find my own way and my own truth. It has always had to come from inside me, not from other people’s minds.
“At church as a child I was totally unable – physically incapable, and still am to this day – to sing hymns because the words and the music and the feelings are not necessarily my own.”
For the same reason, I am unable to toe any political party line unless it chimes with my own perceptions and analysis – or to put it another way, unless it “feels right”.
With regard to the current state of America, I am still feeling my way. After opposing Obama’s election (favoring Hilary Clinton first and then John McCain) there are some things about the work of the Obama administration that feel right. Some of the things they are trying to reform, like health care, desperately need reform in my view. But whether the Obama administration is doing it the right way is another matter. For me, the jury is still out on that. But I hope he succeeds.
I personally think that America can achieve anything it sets out to achieve, provided it reflects the majority values and the will of the people. But I think that, like myself, America is still finding its own way amid rapidly increasing change.
by Ronald Scott
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