I think therefore I am. (Rene Descartes, 1637)

I think therefore I am not. (Maurice Blanchot, 1955)

I feel therefore I can be free. (Audre Lorde, 1973)

I might be therefore I paint.

The scientists tell us that there is no such thing as cold, only the absence of heat. They dismiss the possibility that there is no such thing as darkness, only the absence of light. At least the philosophers can debate whether or not evil exists, though I am inclined to lump it with cold and darkness. That is, evil does not exist, only the absence of caring.

In “Poetry is not a Luxury” Audre Lorde challenges the legacy we’ve inherited from the Enlightenment. Lorde refers to her audience as black and female, stating that “we were not meant to survive” and yet there she was adding power and gravity to the lives of her intended readers. (FWIW, a similar line, “we were never meant to survive” appears in her poem, “A Litany for Survival.”) I am neither black nor female but I am listening with intent: Lorde is speaking to me. Her powerful insights provide a transformative passport into the world of her audience, the world of their being. 

Edwidge Danticat planted a similar seed in her essay “Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work” where she argues—following Ralph Waldo Emerson and Dany Laferriére—that we adopt the times, places, and cultures of the authors we read. By extension, they adopt ours when they read our works. “Somewhere, if not now, then maybe years in the future, we may also save someone's life (or mind) because they have given us a passport, making us honorary citizens of their culture.” She continues, “I too sometimes wonder if in the intimate, both solitary and solidary, union between writers and readers a border can really exist,” and “The nomad or immigrant who learns something rightly must always ponder travel and movement.”

I read Descartes and my white, male, identity would be grounded, if I allowed it. I choose otherwise. I lean in to Blanchot and invite doubt, as much for Cartesian thinking as for the singular, stable, sanctity of being that grounds so many readers, writers, and artists. I am French when I read Blanchot, and I embrace the opportunity. I read Lorde and feel doubt, uncertainty, and opportunity as freeing and liberating no matter how I self-identify. Was I too, therefore, not meant to survive? This odd, empowering, and curiosity-breeding passport provides access through spatial, temporal, and identity-quivering planes of being and existence. I love it, and I carry it everywhere.

The uncertainties planted, nurtured and cultivated through this process of reading and writing are enlivening. Their value cannot be under-estimated. Their opposite, certainty, is curiosity-crushing and without curiosity certainty turns to orthodoxy while empathy and caring wither. There is no certainty in my being. There is no certainty in my knowing. There is no certainty in writing and even less so in painting. Painting is an abyss. I might be therefore I paint.

The certainties of others expel me, impeding me from the self-declared terms of my survival on my terms. I feel the light and warmth of others because I can, because I choose to. I might be. I might not be. Either way, I care, I paint.