84. Follow the Line – Shantell Martin
I listen to my mind and body for guidance when the instability of this moment has stirred within me the need for silence.
With so much going on in the world, I have found myself overwhelmed with the daily onslaught of news. It has been predominantly frustrating, tragic and often horrific, especially as the fight against systemic racism and police brutality has become a worldwide movement.
In light of this, as an act of mindfulness and self-preservation, I made it a priority to stay informed but also to control what I ingest and how much. I listen to my mind and body for guidance when the instability of this moment has stirred within me the need for silence.
For many years, my work as an artist has focused on mastering a vocabulary that truthfully represents individual and collective identity. This new world we live in is not just asking us but also rightfully forcing us to reconcile with the past. It is asking us: What do we want this world we live in to BE in the future?
In my work I have asked questions to get to the core of who we are. I have used a pen and paper as my tools, distilling the process into a language of lines, lines that have now become synonymous with my own being.
– Shantell Martin
Prompt:
Turn off anything that may be distracting you from your Self. Now listen to the sound of your own body. Do you need silence? Maybe. Maybe not. You might need some music; if so, honor that. When you feel compelled, sit down with a pen and paper and meditate on what you would look like if you were a simple line. Let go of fear. Let go of anything outside of the moment. Begin drawing. Follow the line and let it lead the way.
Anonymous
Location: Berlin, Germany
About: What would I look like if I was a simple line: "Nicht so prickelnd. Aber auf dem Weg der Besserung." I am Fran Feuerherdt, an artsy-fartsy philosopher.
Age: 31
Anonymous
Location: Seaford, NY
About: I have been thinking about race lately mostly by though writing.
Age: 60
When I was in kindergarten, in 1965, my white, suburban teacher required that we color in the skin of every figure--even the white ones. I obeyed. After the “flesh” crayon got used up, I had to expand. Cinderella? Light blue, Snow White--canary...you get the idea. At home I started coloring in the people too. No one questioned this. If someone had asked me why I was making the white people different colors, I doubt I would have had an answer.
So much about kindergarten had been a mystery. In my house my family called me by my nickname, “Ginny.” In kindergarten I was “Virginia.” Writing in lowercase was “wrong” so I was VIRGINIA, not Virginia, with a bit of an identity crisis.
One weekend afternoon, when my Brooklyn Nana was out for a visit, her present was a new coloring book. As we played, she wanted to know why I was making Old McDonald’s face lime green and I told her that my kindergarten teacher said that everybody was a color.
This is how I first came to an understanding of race although it did not seem consequential at the time. Conceptualizing race in this way has not made living it easy. As an adult I made a conscious decision to raise my family in a “changing” neighborhood, and declared myself open to embracing different cultures, but I was not. I did not push back against the judgments and falsehoods of my sons’ teachers and coaches and babysitter enough. Even though I sought “diversity” so many Sikh and Caribbean and Pakistani (not Indian!) and African American and White and Chinese voices paralyzed me. At one particular first grade birthday party, like every other guest, I took off my shoes to reveal a hole in my sock. The hostess, embarrassed for me, offered me slippers which I declined. I don’t remember another minute of that child’s celebration.
When my sons were ten and eight we moved for a multitude of reasons. On their first “diversity day” at their new, majority Italian/Irish school, my older son wanted to bring in a picture from fourth grade so this class would learn what diversity really looked like. As young adults, they call anything they perceive as narrow-minded and parochial as “So Seaford.”
I let them down. I let myself down. And I still feel like there is a hole in my sock.
