{"id":911,"date":"2015-10-27T18:53:35","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T18:53:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=911"},"modified":"2015-10-27T19:06:41","modified_gmt":"2015-10-27T19:06:41","slug":"in-a-time-of-destruction-create","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=911","title":{"rendered":"In a Time of Destruction, Create (Openness)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ogiku<\/a>

Ogiku in Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum<\/p><\/div>\n

“In a time of destruction, create something,” says writer Maxine Hong Kingston.<\/p>\n

Create something – even drawing a scathing cartoon would be better than not creating. Create a fantastic apple tart from the season’s riches, or a Catalan dish of seafood, chocolate and dried peppers. \u00a0 Create Legos in a Duchamp-like urinal and post it on Instagram, like Chinese artist Ai Weiwei did this week. \u00a0For its autumn courtyard, the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston cultivated unique Japanese-style single-stem chrysanthemums called ogiku<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Make language strange and write a poem. As author Cate Marvin said, “Poetry is the one genre that refuses commodification.”<\/p>\n

Don’t create boycotts. Creating boycotts is destroying.\u00a0\u00a0 It closes the door on a range of voices, visions and human connections. Above all, don’t create cultural boycotts that have a stench of censorship, and label a gangly group of creative artists as somehow, same enemy. \u00a0Today, 434 British academics signed a petition vowing to boycott Israeli universities. \u00a0It undermines the very idea of the university as a creative platform, unpredetermined, like a poem, where unexpected elements mix and are left to collide in ways which reveal new relationships and possibilities. It targets the very people that a cosmopolitan community wants to hear: those with supple minds and hearts.<\/p>\n

There’s a tremendous yearning to calm vengefulness, bath again in sanity, restore possibilities. But do it creatively, not with zealotry.<\/p>\n

All zealots begins to look the same. As Bradley Burston, an Israeli journalist, wrote in a despairing column about his country, the new battle is not between Arabs and Jews, but extremists and humans.<\/p>\n

“Maybe it’s time I realized that the tribes of the Holy Land are not simply the mortal enemies we call Jews and Arabs. Maybe all the deafening, implacable, violence-espousing extremists, both disgusting sides of them, are actually in one tribe, together. \u00a0And, yes, that first tribe is winning,” writes Burston. [\u2026]<\/p>\n

“If that second tribe is paralyzed, demoralized, delegitimized by the current reality, small wonder. But sometimes, under great pressures, things which you’re sure are lost forever, can reappear. Like love itself.”<\/p>\n

So, what are you going create?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“In a time of destruction, create something,” says writer Maxine Hong Kingston. Create something – even drawing a scathing cartoon would be better than not creating. Create a fantastic apple tart from the season’s riches, or a Catalan dish of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[27,338,334,335,333,341,336,337,332,339,340],"class_list":["post-911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-israel","tag-ai-weiwei","tag-bds","tag-bradley-burston","tag-british-academics-boycott","tag-cate-marvin","tag-haaretz","tag-isabella-stewart-gardner-museum","tag-israeli-palestinian-conflict","tag-lego","tag-maxine-hong-kingston"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4D5qU-eH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":914,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions\/914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}