Incandescent

There are 20 inches of double-coiled tungsten metal inside a light bulb. This rare mineral is resistant to corrosion and with the highest melting point of all elements, has the capacity to not only hold electricity but transmute it into light.

Art acts in a similar way, conducting the electrical impulses of our hearts and minds into something we can see. It also allows others to see us, and even if they may not be able to understand the thinking and feeling that produced said art, at the very least, it offers a chance to love without understanding. What a capacity that is, the unconditional; to be absolute in accepting one’s light.

This is what artists in the 1970s got right. They accepted and they amplified, and in the process of creating together they personified time; their names – and their work – becoming synonymous with the decade. But that got lost by the time I was born, for I only know its opposite: influencers and institutions that diminish, compress, and simplify the awesome complexity of our inner worlds. And how small I’ve lived because of it; just a flickering of resistance, with flashes of brilliance and burn out.

So I want to know – what are people creating these days? And how?

In 2022, we have become so far abstracted, lost and layers removed from our essence that the depth of our relationships are filtered rather than refined; we catch glimpses of our cursory selves and do a double-take. We have been reduced to faces (and sometimes only photos) ((and sometimes only avatars)) (and sometimes only names) ((and sometimes only usernames)) on screens living in a globalized commercial world. Technology has artificially connected us, making us more remote and perhaps now, in the wake of a long-tail pandemic, I am finally raging against this isolation.

I want to return to the room, where we can like people in person: see facial expressions, listen to stories, high-five, imbibe, and feel the highest frequencies flowing through us – joy, laughter, gratitude that lights us up on the inside. This wholeness seems like an innocence, but what’s the point of living a half-life? I suppose falling in love and creating a family is one way to achieve a fulfilling personhood, but what if we scale?

Perhaps an ordered set of musical notes – friends, communities, cities that need no reminding of their fundamental frequency. Because when they play together, they know it by heart and Denver in the 2020s is pulling all my strings.