To be like water

Tea with Colleen (04)

Apr 01, 2021

Did you know Bruce Lee wrote poetry?

The 70’s artist and actor combined western and eastern philosophy principles within his martial arts practice and life. Lee’s famous saying, “empty your mind, be formless and shapeless like water,” was summarized by his daughter Shannon Lee, “as what it means to be powerful, while at the same time being gentle.” This philosophy influenced the slogan for the Hong Kong protests, Be Water, and throughout the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement last year.

Jeff Chang, who is currently writing a book on Lee said, “Bruce is key to Asian Americans but also to folks of all kinds of different types of backgrounds because [Bruce] bridges people. And we look at what's going on in the US and all the division that’s being sewn and the violence, and if you understand martial arts it's not about going around and beating up fools it's about understanding yourself and being confident in yourself and being able to protect the folks that you deeply love. You do everything you can to avoid [fighting].”

Maybe you knew this. I knew of Bruce Lee as a Kung Fu actor but didn’t know what he represented rippled much wider than that.

Before last summer’s BLM resurgence you probably wouldn’t find me listening to a conversation on Bruce Lee’s legacy between his daughter, a filmmaker, a writer, and an artist.

My perspective shifted this summer when my boyfriend and I checked into a summer rental that had two wifi networks named Blackbird and Strawberry Fields. The next morning I put on the Beatle’s song Blackbird as I opened my emails. I hadn’t listened to it since my college roommate Emily took a Beatles class and raved about the course- if you went to the University of Iowa you know- which prompted me to listen to them walking to class. Blackbird isn’t the type of song you listen to and expect each time around to notice something new about it. The lyrics are simple and repetitive, as is the melody with Paul McCartney’s clear voice and metronome beat that feels like his shoe tapping against the floor. But that morning it brought forth a memory, a curiosity, and a perspective shift, all in its 2 minutes and 18 seconds (repeated for probably an hour). I was reminded of my sister Claire, who used to babysit for a family and always sang this song to put the kids to sleep. Its repetition, a soothing lullaby.

There is power in its repetition - as if McCartney is gently making a point in the song’s hypnotic rhythm. He wrote Blackbird (with help from John Lennon), is the song’s solo vocalist, and said it symbolized the civil rights movement.“Bird” stands for “girl” in the UK. McCartney explained the Little Rock Nine, notably the famous photograph of Elizabeth Eckford walking up to school in her iconic dress and sunglasses, inspired the song.

“You were only waiting for this moment to arise. Blackbird fly, blackbird fly, into the light of the dark black night.”

There is hope mixed with a dark reality in the words he used- arise, fly, light and sunken eyes, dark black night, and broken. McCartney sang the complexity, the yin and yang, of the movement. The German-American poet, Bukowski, said, “An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”

I reflected on the current sense of collective distress which was at an all-time high. Blackbird reminded me we’d been here before.

I realized what I learned most from the movement, didn’t come from my usual news outlets or mediums. It came from an online poetry class I started on June 1. The teacher, Holly, has taught the class for 10 years, and this month’s course amplified poets of color and minority communities. The class read the works of Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, and queer poets for 21 days, like June Jordan, Ada Limon, Joy Harjo, and Danez Smith, respectively. The poems- their stories, pain, life philosophy, and even joy and power- opened me to an awareness I didn’t receive from the news or large social media accounts that seemed to perpetuate anger and fear. Art in its creation is slower than what cycles online. The intention behind these messages is more thoughtful, from the heart, and feel more true.

In a way, I’m late to the game. Art as cultural resistance and protest, through visual art, poetry, music, design, etc. is not a new concept. Art has taken its stand throughout history countless times; suffrage movements, civil rights movements, the LGBT and AIDs movement, including global movements like the Islamic Revolution.

With the rise of violence against the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, artists jumped in and started conversations. In November, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya's illustrations hung as panels in Brooklyn subway stations of city residents with statements, “I Did Not Make You Sick” or “I am Not Your Scapegoat.” Recent protesters against Asian hate crimes carried posters with the same illustrations after the recent shootings and violence. TIME featured Phingbodhipakkiya’s work on its March 29th cover.

In speaking about the uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes in a recent SNL update, comedian Bowen Yang said, “I’m just a comedian. I don’t have all the answers. But I’m not just looking for them online. I’m looking around me."

Marilyn Delaure, professor at USFCA, was quoted in conversation about art and cultural resistance on the pink “pussy hats” worn during the Women’s March, stating “that the pussy hat did five, very significant things that made it such a powerful protest statement within fashion (and art).” One being “they enabled sewers and knitters unable to march in DC to participate and support the protest via their craft.”

The creation and embodiment of art as resistance is not the only answer. We need policy and data to reform our structures, especially in regards to systemic imbalances. But art is able to weave a unique story, bridging connections between people, which is becoming recognized in the resources and voices accessible now more than ever. Like watching Amanda Gorman steal the show at the inauguration, or my friend Alex’s mentee, Jibeh, 18 but wise as hell, standing up in spoken word poetry about growing up as a Gambian immigrant at a virtual poetry slam for the Lower East Side Girls Club.

Art emphasizes humanity, recognizing the gray. It doesn’t seek to divide. It lives in the understanding that life involves suffering and inevitably lives alongside joy. It doesn’t strip away an underrepresented people's or community's power- it brings it back- through voices of all ages and backgrounds. It asks us to look at our own judgments and then asks us to look out with softer expressions, ones that acknowledge the complexity of life and our history, differences, and pain. Art asks us to be like water, powerful yet flexible, gentle. It's not centered around guilt, shame, and powerlessness. Art as resistance fuels change yet not always in a linear way.

Here are two impactful poems I found through Holly Wren Spaulding’s course last June. And, Happy National Poetry Month!

Miracle Fish

By Ada Limón

I used to pretend to believe in God. Mainly, I liked so much to talk to someone in the dark. Think of how far a voice must have to travel to go beyond the universe. How powerful that voice must be to get there. Once in a small chapel in Chimayo, New Mexico, I knelt in the dirt because I thought that’s what you were supposed to do. That was before I learned to harness that upward motion inside me, before I nested my head in the blood of my body. There was a sign and it said, This earth is blessed. Do not play in it. But I swear I will play on this blessed earth until I die. I relied on a Miracle Fish, once, in New York City, to tell me my fortune. That was before I knew it was my body’s water that moved it, that the massive ocean inside me was what made the fish swim.

From Bright Dead Things. Milkweed Editions, 2015.

the meeting after the savior gone

4/4/68

By Lucille Clifton

what we decided is

you save your own self.

everybody so quiet

not so much sorry as

resigned.

we was going to try and save you but

now i guess you got to save yourselves

(even if you don’t know