Bridging the divide:the arts serving veterans

In honor of Veteran's Day we want to use this month to highlight the arts serving veterans.

How do we recognize and experience ourselves as human beings? Of all the living beings on this little planet, we are unique. We ask questions about the meaning of existence. We explore and express those questions through imaginative creation. Art is how we tell stories about ourselves that words alone cannot communicate. Stories are how we make sense of what we cannot understand.

Military service veterans come from an elite group; a tribe that trains, lives, works and – sometimes - fights wars - shoulder to shoulder. Less than half of one percent of Americans serve in the armed forces. When their service is over and they return to an overwhelmingly civilian community, the transition can be confusing and lonely. Some return with life changing physical and psychological wounds that further isolate them as strangers in a strange land. Veterans don’t know how to explain to civilians what it’s like. Civilians don’t understand the vast divide of experience. Our American veteran sons and daughters, neighbors, friends, colleagues, and lovers stand on one side of the deep cavern, and we civilians stand on the other side.

Holding a ceramic cup, sculpted with symbols of war and loss, battles won and battles lost, heroism and grief, you can feel the cool glaze, the weight, and the ridges of fired clay. You may find yourself imagining what this little cup might hold. If you are quiet, and allow the tactile experience in your hand to affect you, let the symbols etched on the sides to work on your deeper thoughts, and you pay attention, you may remember something it reminds you of, something not directly related to the utilitarian use of a cup – a metaphor.

Sitting in a dark room, watching men and women acting out a story on a lighted stage, hearing their voices rise in anguish or fear or surprise, you may feel those emotions, or feel others rising in response. The vibrations of their voices on your body, and the awe of watching their bodies move in space, the twists and turns of the words they speak may make you gasp, cry, laugh or recognize a feeling you have felt too. Or maybe someone on stage is completely unlike you and you find yourself caring about them.

Your body moves in rhythm to music, you’re shocked at the violence in a painting or your heart soars as a dancer lifts their partner above their head. When we observe another person’s artistic expression, we are experiencing some part of their experience. We recognize ourselves. We grow our empathy for the unfamiliar experiences of others. Art takes unfathomable feelings and experiences out of our inner world and puts them in a form outside of us where we can observe them and share them.

Veterans step forward to willingly do societies dirtiest jobs. Some of them experience the best and worst of what humanity puts into the world. The memories of these things live in them as if in the present moment.

Thousands of years ago, warriors came home to communities that celebrated their return and watched their stories of glory, horror, and humor told by playwrights, performed by actors. These performances put the women, children, sick, and elderly inside the battles and the brotherhood. The warriors could observe their own stories outside of themselves, opening space within their minds for new relationships and a domestic life. In the twenty first century we are rediscovering the power of the publically shared and abstractly crafted true story.

Across our nation, veterans are making art of all kinds, and sharing their stories with us. The creation alone is a powerful medicine – taking the events of their service, using their hands, voices and bodies to create a lasting artifact can siphon off some of the overwhelming emotions. A work of art can hold tempests of pain and rage, oceans of love and loss. That’s healing and cathartic. But the witnessing of these creations, the hearing of these stories, brings us together as nothing else can. Hearing and seeing stories connect us and move us. Being heard and seen is what tells us we are valued, loved, and alive. Arts build bridges with which our veteran brothers and sisters can meet us and be welcomed home once more.

By Nancy Smith-Watson

Co-Founder and Director

Feast of Crispian

www.feastofcrispian.org