I recently read the book “My Name is Asher Lev” by Chaim Potok. In it a young orthodox Jew wrestles with his identity as an artist and Hasidic acolyte. I was struck by the similarity of his struggle with mine as a Christian poet. Apparently, faith and art are everywhere a tenuous match. But in our contemporary culture, even identity as an artist is often unjustified.
But I have been inculcated by that phrase: do something useful, something you can make money at (read: support a family) or accomplish a greater good by. This message is reinforced everywhere including the news where we read reports on job trends (artist or poet never make the top ten in fact the contrary is true), and again in schools the arts are electives if at all available; they are pushed to the periphery. So, it is no surprise I have landed in the useful career of Database Administrator, may be to make amends for the utter uselessness of poetry.
The extent of this guilt and disenfranchisement, I fully divulge in an article recently posted on our friend’s site, Macedonia Films: How I’m Damned & What I’m Doing About It – Part I. Check it out and while you’re there tool around a bit to find out what other exciting things the minds at Macedonia are devising.