A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

I am in the presence of masterfilled writing. This woman is exceptional with every line of text. Her subject matter, harrowing! Yet, it is easy to push through every one. Doing the Break The Silence workbooks and listening while preparing them, I reached a threshhold. That was a good thing, as the book has gone longer than the project. But the workbooks subject matter of sexual abuse recognizers and the story,I made up my mind very easily. Sexual abuse must end. Simple. It must end and as an Artist, I shall do my part to the best of my ability. I cannot help it. I have an overwhelming opening in my heart that feels like it has spilled over and I just have to yield to the feeling of needing to do something right now and tomorrow and on to forever. Yanagihara writes to tear at the heart. She writes to tell us all that those who experience the plight of men and one in particular forced into sexual relationships he never asked for, that trying to fix them is not possible. The only solution is the most important one, to do no harm. She masterfully re-assures us of the fun and the love and arguments and pettiness and lives of her characters and then BAM something occurs that leads us down dark and murky paths and then we go down them again and again and then when we think we cannot go down another one, we do. I have been wanting to do a papercut video for the longest time. I have stills from of all things, The Candyman. I paused the scenes with the black cutouts until I was satisfied that I had enough to admire the technique. I think about the work of William Kentridge too. I just have to do something about sexual violence and children. Yanagihara pushed me with every single statement she wrote. She is the argument as to why the violence that we experience is so horrific. hurt people hurt people is a good enough bumper sticker. But we all say it and go along our merry way. How can we just turn and walk away? I had a conversation with a fellow Artist and good friend, and I was really passionate. I was asking her, where are all of the powerful female artists on our island? What were they saying? What were they doing? I could not recall anyone doing difficult themes. Or work that made me feel my heart beat fast. I get that from artists from our nearest islands! But not from us! I will change that! I am determined to make hard topics with my soft materials make a difference so great that I never have to ask that question.