Edge of Doubt- At Principle Gallery
I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.
~Ursula K. Le Guin, A Left-Handed Commencement Address, delivered at Mills College, May 1983
I’ve read the commencement address that author Ursula Le Guin delivered to the 1983 graduating class of Mills College, a historic women’s college in Oakland, CA, several times and find something new and wonderful with every read. It is definitely not your typical commencement address. It is a radical rejection of the patriarchy and the definition of success that it imposes on society, and particularly on women. Powerful stuff.
I especially like the last section shown above, but the whole of it speaks clearly in a language I best understand, one that is written from a place of both exile and defiance. Of dealing with failure and darkness, learning how to find one’s own place in such an environment. Brutally honest without a single word of puffery.
Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you’re weak where you thought yourself strong. You’ll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself — as I know you already have — in dark places, alone, and afraid.
What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign.
I don’t exactly know why I am sharing this today. Maybe it becomes obvious when I look around and see the glorification of the ultra-wealthy while so many others see themselves losing ground both financially and, more importantly, in terms of personal freedoms.
As someone who exists in that darkness Le Guin describes, I think her words should be read again and again.
Maybe that explains the compulsion to share this today.
I don’t know.
Maybe it came from the song I wanted to share for this week’s Sunday Morning Music. I recently came across a cover of Lose Yourself, the megahit from Eminem, that really caught my attention. It was performed by Aussie country(?) star Kasey Chambers. I enjoy hearing cross-genre covers of many songs, finding that they often yield surprises that sometimes aren’t readily apparent in the original. This performance does not disappoint. It falls in line with Le Guin’s address, of finding your own definition of success in your darkness. It is a surprisingly powerful version of the song.
The same but much different in many ways. Just the way I like it.