Vanishing Point

We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It’s our basic human right.
– Aretha Franklin

Out of the blue(s) the word vanish appears to me. Although unnerving, I like the way it sounds – like it’s vaporizing in the split of a split-second. Poof – gone! I decide to delve into vanishings. But I keep losing my way, struggling to express with clarity or poetry (or a wishful blend of both) how to get a hold of what I have to say.  So I circle and swoop from above and angles down below searching for perspective. With limited geometry, I turn to creativity – take the intangible to grasp the ineffable. As truth and freedoms melt away, the endangered and vulnerable lose protection, and the planet faces peril – what remains? At what point does the vanishing point vanish?

With the recent death of the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, I realize, “Sometimes, what you are looking for is already there.” The first woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (1987), Rolling Stone named her the Greatest Singer of All Time. Franklin won 18 Grammys, sang for 3 Presidential Inaugurations, and at the funerals of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. We can still hear the echoes of her rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at Obama’s Inauguration. “Let freedom ring.” And most of all, who can forget “Respect”? At the age of 24, Franklin took Otis Redding’s 1965 original song, flipped the lyrics and spelled it out. In 1967 “Respect” surged to #1 and forever remains the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement and Feminism. The mantra for all human rights. R-e-s-p-e-c-t  Aretha. 

I think it is very important that films make people look at what they’ve forgotten.
– Spike Lee 

Let’s talk black and white, all the shades in between – and all the colors of the rainbow. Let’s talk history. Let’s talk true stories for the record. Visionary filmmaker Spike Lee, released Black KkKlansman last weekend on the one-year anniversary of racial violence in Charlottesville, VA. Based on the true story of Ron Stallworth (1970s), the first African-American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police Department, the film opens with a scene from Gone with the Wind. To the fluid tune of “Swanee River”, Scarlet O’Hara stumbles through a field of wounded soldiers before the camera pans to a Confederate flag fluttering in the breeze. An eerie intro for the film’s trajectory and Stallworth’s mission. Using white sounding vernacular on the phone, the black detective gains access to the Ku Klux Klan. After recruiting a seasoned Jewish colleague, Flip Zimmerman. Stallworth infiltrates the extremist hate group to take them down. Lee wraps up the film with footage from the Charlottesville tragedy spliced with the Prez’s incendiary soliloquy “on both sides”. Watch Lee expose the insidious fabric of a secret society – and how easily freedoms vanish?  Don’t miss this wake up call!

History is about who tells it.
– Daveed Diggs

Now let’s talk black and brown and white – blind spots and gentrification. Let’s talk green juice in the ghetto, a black and white Rubin’s vase (a visual puzzle in which the brain perceives one of two images but not at the same time) – and passions erupting in verse. Let’s talk two-point perspective merging into a single vanishing point. A ticking clock and whether two things can be true at the same time. Written and produced by hip-hop artists Daveed Diggs (Tony award winning actor in Hamilton) and Rafael Casal, Blindspotting made its debut at Sundance this year. Set in Oakland (birthplace of the Black Panthers), real-life friends Diggs and Casal play besties (one black and on parole, one white) who work for a moving company. Their rhyming skills amplify the tensions of race, economic disparity, and police inflicted violence. The film opens with a split-screen montage – a vibrant city inhabited by long time black culture opposite today’s Oakland being colonized by white hipsters and nouveau riche techies. Timely and daring, Blindspotting will clear your blind spots. And give you new respect for fierce poetry and realism.

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.
– Henri Cartier-Bresson

Now let’s talk potent art forms, sacred ceremonies, ephemeral body painting and permanent scarification, healing, protection and spiritual practices, initiation rites, death rituals and the afterworld. Let’s talk vanishing for the record. Photographers Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher present a stunning collection of images and film from 15 years of work in 48 African countries in the world premiere exhibition of African Twilight: Vanishing Rituals and Ceremonies at the Bowers Museum.

During their journeys to Africa, Beckwith and Fisher lived and worked with over 150 ethnic groups to share their powerful beliefs, rituals and cultural traditions with the world. With a breakdown of traditional societies, the encroachment of technology and Western influence, over 40% of what they recorded no longer exists except in their photographs and books. “We hope to leave our archive of the cultural heritage of Africa, 40 years in the making, and still ongoing, to future generations who care about who we are as human beings, where we have come from, and where we are heading.” Don’t miss the opportunity to visit these vanishings.

Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish.
– Jean de La Fontaine

The world may have lost the Queen of Soul but not her spirit. Aretha Franklin’s voice will never vanish nor will her contributions speaking out against injustice. To prevent the erasure of history, filmmaker Spike Lee continues to focus on flash points of racial discrimination. He will not stand for vanishings. Rapper/screenwriter/actors David Diggs and Rafael Casal invigorate the interracial conversation with the inclusion of strong women characters – with quick-cuts and their engaging street vibe. And in the twilight of vanishings in Africa, Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher present us with a record of cultural traditions and creativity we might never have seen.

Perhaps if you pull the threads of human endeavor into an abstract pattern, somewhere out there the lines converge. Through a prism of perspective, I can think of plenty of things I’d like to vanish – like a migraine, noxious fumes, toxic bigotry, misogyny and hate. But never love or a lover, a dark night of firefly light – the art of alchemy or the alchemy of art.

Perhaps the vanishing point only vanishes if we cease to fire up our souls. Let’s vanish impossibility. Respect!