Unexpected Gifts
Christmas 1981. I was nine years old. The only things I wanted for Christmas were the Adam and the Ants album Prince Charming, and a Star Wars AT-AT walker from The Empire Strikes Back, which I’d seen in the summer of 1980 at Nashville’s Belle Meade Theatre. The toy had thus far proved prohibitively expensive.
I have never been one to hunt out hidden gifts or try to ferret out what someone has given me. I like the surprise too much, and I inherited my love of gift-giving from my mother.
But I really wanted that record. Gifts from my parents waited wrapped under the tree for what felt like weeks. It was tempting. And there was one gift that looked very much like an LP — 12” square and flat. My dad swore it was a basketball.
My curiosity won out and, for the first and only time in my life, I snuck a peek at a gift. I very carefully tore a piece of wrapping from the back and took a look. Joy! It was Adam Ant! I replaced the LP and went on my merry way.
Santa did not bring an AT-AT that year, although I did get a pretty dope Hoth play set and a Tauntaun. When it came time to open presents from the parents, I took the wrapped LP from under the tree. My mom and dad were smiling. Considering how sleepy they were, the smiles seemed awfully big.
I tore open the gift, ready to feign surprise at my coveted record only to find … a Queen record.
It’s safe to say this year hasn’t brought any of the gifts we’d anticipated. I don’t need to belabor that any more than you need to know the details of the Super Friends pajamas I wore on that Christmas morning.
This year, I lost my job. So did tens of millions of Americans. It’s something I don’t make light of for anyone. However, there were unexpected gifts in that loss for me.
Outer Voice wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t lost my job. Creating Outer Voice has not only reconnected me with the arts, it has reconnected me with scores of artist friends and created new connections with artists around the country.
When my daughter needed to spend her first semester of high school in distance learning, I was able to stay at home with her. We had breakfast and lunch together every day this fall. That’s something that hasn’t happened since she was a toddler.
Freelance work came. Acting and music opportunities arose. I began once again to do work that felt meaningful.
The racial reckoning that came this year continues to shake us all — in grief, rage and small victories and big heartaches. We have a long way to go as individuals and a nation to work through it and reach true justice. This year I was awakened to the extremes of my own privilege and blindness. Outer Voice’s editorial mission rapidly changed to encompass more than just how artists find their voices, but how they hope their work can affect change in the world, and how Outer Voice can help by amplifying BIPOC voices, advocating for socially conscious art and actively working for new arts organization structures and funding models.
Ok, enough with the personal stuff. This isn’t a recipe blog. What is the connection here between my childhood moment, this batshit year and your practice as an artist?
I expected an Adam Ant record. I got a Queen record. I received the unexpected gift of Freddie Mercury. I was nine years old. That was life-altering in ways my parents couldn’t have predicted. I count that record, along with my cousin Andrea’s gift the following Christmas of The Clash’s Combat Rock, as key to my becoming a musician.
I still got the Adam Ant record that year, and I loved it. But that Queen record, swapped under the tree to give me a little shock, proved massively influential.
This is what you do as an artist. You give the unexpected gift. It’s your job to absorb, synthesize and reflect the truth through your own lens. It’s your job to say the thing that has always been on the tip of someone’s tongue. To express what someone has needed to say but didn’t have the tools to. It’s your job to bear witness. It’s your job to tell the truth, and to do it in a way that surprises, challenges and gives pause.
Perhaps the person who receives this gift may think they know what they’re getting, but they can never anticipate the full picture. They may at first be frustrated by it, or angered. They may be baffled or amused. But, if there is a spark of truth within the thing, that spark will catch.
When we give the unexpected gift, we are also opening ourselves up to criticism and perceived failure, which means that we must have courage and we must learn to discern between helpful and unhelpful criticism. That can only come from experience, which means we get the distinct pleasure of giving a lot of gifts.
Giving the gift hones you just as you hone it.
Don’t underestimate the value of the unexpected gift that is your art. From Guernica to the Guerrilla Girls, from Spike Lee’s 4 Little Girls to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, art changes people and societies. Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ntozake Shange, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nick Ut — they did it.
The unexpected gift doesn’t have to change the world. It just has to speak the truth at the right time to the right person. It can bring solace, fight loneliness or save a life. Even if it simply brings joy, it’s worth the work.
Finally, there are two things that imbue art with the power of the unexpected — empathy and reflection. To take in the truth and reflect it, to bear witness responsibly, to craft work that adds value and catalyzes change, we have to feel deeply, listen compassionately, and truly dwell with ourselves, those around us and the larger world.
Weigh within yourself the things that make you angry, afraid, amused or bored. Weigh your reactions. Judge less and listen more. Have fewer opinions and ask more questions.
The unexpected gift is also a gift to you. The work carries within it the reward. The act of creating gives life in return, and the energy you receive is in direct relationship to the energy you give.
