Pen to Paper: Coping through Art

This is about writing in the sense that writing is an art, and being an artist of whatever sort can help carry you through difficult times.

The link is to a beautiful, bittersweet National Public Radio piece about a Smithsonian art exhibition titled The Art of Gaman.

“Gaman means to bear the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity,” says Delphine Hirasuna. She is a third-generation Japanese-American and was imprisoned with her family in one of the rude internment camps during the fearful days after Pearl Harbor. The exhibition is of art created in the camps by American citizens who were deprived of their livelihoods and their liberties because they looked like the enemy. (N.B.: Neither German-Americans nor Italian-Americans suffered similarly.)

The story and the exhibition remind us that art can, in some ways, triumph over the darkness. It can keep us sane and even something resembling happy when happiness is but a distant memory. And out of the darkness can come beauty.