My Response

Dear “A,”

Thank you for the comment. If I didn’t think there was some legitimacy to it, I would not be responding– this sentiment has been a fear of mine since I arrived in Spartanburg. At the time, I was unsure what to expect—I had no experience living in a smaller city, much less a Southern one, and I did not fully grasp the “community” element to the program. Throughout the year, the three other AIRS and I have discussed this issue of “community” at length. In fact, it is one of the first “arguments” I remember having as a group, early in our stay here– we wanted to get to the bottom of what it means to be an artist within a community.

This was not a simple question to answer, and there continues to be a range of opinions on what is the best way to apply our “skills” to the needs of a community. Nicholas, among us, is the first to defend the idea that an artist simply making art within a community is, by itself, enough to constitute community involvement. At first, I did not understand this point of view, but I have grown to respect it. As I learned from my little “Reasons to Live” experiment, people value art in their lives a great deal, and if there is an interested audience, the “show,” the sharing of your own art, is enough. And yet, in those arguments, I never agreed with Nicholas, but said from the beginning that an artist has a responsibility to physically insert themselves into the community. Believing that this is true is one thing, but teasing out exactly how to accomplish it while defining what it means in the process is a different task entirely, and a much more difficult one. Being an “artist” comes with no conventional career path and, being so individualized, offers few applicable models to follow. The skill sets are so vaguely definable—I find myself continually questioning just what it is that I actually have to give.

Defining the concept of “artist in community” is difficult enough on its own, in one’s comfort zone, but it becomes infinitely more difficult when you introduce the element of a foreign community. When I came down here, I had no conception of “the South.” The idea that there would be a certain level of “foreignness” had crossed my mind, but I did not give it much real thought. I had taken a road trip the summer before and had seen much of the country, and while every corner was different, it all seemed comfortable in a way that traveling in other countries had not been. We speak a common language. We watch the same things and shop at the same stores. But when I came down here, I found that the first thing that people wanted me to know was that the South is different from “the North.” They let me know this by their reactions when I told them where I had come from. They said things about “culture shock” and made audible noises that signaled some amorphous heaviness. I hadn’t known that I had come from “the North.” This was something that people here told me. And sometimes, they told me this politely, with charm, and sometimes they didn’t tell me this at all, but rather showed me through their reaction to my otherness.

The blog became an outlet for me, a way of addressing these divisions, of interpreting the things I was discovering for the first time. The tone may have sometimes been harsh, but I resolved in the beginning (and have reiterated this resolve repeatedly throughout the course of the year) that I was going to be true to my feelings, no matter how fleeting. When I was angry, or sad or confused, I expressed it. You may not have appreciated the sentiment, but I ask you to respect it. You have quite possibly grown up in the South and you doubtless have a largely accurate conception of the North (maybe through travel or popular culture). But you must understand that I had no idea what I was getting into. I am a Jewish liberal “Northerner” in the Christian conservative South. If I had nothing to say about that, about the transition from one to the other, and about being myself in the latter environment, I would likely be unworthy of the public forum I have been offered. This question of “being myself,” something I had never really had to question before, became all too real and pointed through extensive interaction with the people surrounding Hub-Bub. On the one hand, we were brought here to make art, to explore ourselves, we were given blogs to detail our experience here. On the other, by doing just that in the only way that I knew how, I seemed to be alienating people. I realize that, for better or for worse, and without value judgment, there is much value in an indirect communication style here. There is a time and a place for what I have been calling “honesty;” it is not everyone’s privilege, it should be reserved for certain people in certain situations and even then it should be dressed up, cooed at, and padded. As evidenced in the tea, the South values sweetness, even when it is false or unhealthy. This was never a quality I could purport to have per se. I take my tea straight up. There was no way around this catch-22— being in an environment with different values only strengthened my own identity, then I was put in a position to share this identity, on the blog and in person, and I could not shirk away from it, even if I thought I should.

Yes, there was clearly a dissatisfaction with elements of Spartanburg. But it pains me that you have interpreted this dissatisfaction as an “obvious distaste for the entire city and the South.” What I hope you realize is that while I have used my blog as a receptacle for this dissatisfaction, I have used my time here to improve the things I was dissatisfied with (or have at least tried to), and as such I have met and worked with dozens of like-minded Spartanburg natives to that end. My dissatisfaction with Spartanburg’s sluggish downtown turned into a five-day interactive performance in storefront windows, where we met hundreds of people who shared with us their stories and their lives. It was exhausting, but by the end I felt as though I really connected with the community, and they with us. Strangers visited us every day in droves, thanked us, gave us tokens of their appreciation and we responded in kind. Rachel and I wrote extensively on our blogs about how much we genuinely liked everyone– how close we felt to all of them. It was a surprise after all of the “difference” we were hit with when we moved here. A dissatisfaction with Spartanburg’s isolated campuses and lagging “College Town” persona prompted me to create and head a College Street Team with students from all local schools participating. Together, we are planning events, and are now publishing a monthly calendar distributed on college campuses that highlight what Spartanburg has to offer by way of the arts. These efforts have also led to me serving on the Spartanburg Creative Energy kiosk committee, and you will see the fruits of this effort by way of community boards/information kiosks in key spots in Spartanburg as early as September. I worked on this tirelessly the past couple of months, for free, alongside the growing demands for my final show. My point is not to toot my own horn here (though that is what I have been pushed to do), but rather to express that out of dissatisfaction comes progress. I lament that all you have seen is the negative end of that equation, but I have not, until now, felt the need to advertise the positive one. I recognize that these projects may not be important to you, but I assure you that they grew out of lack in Spartanburg recognized by members of the community and not imposed from without by me.

I tried to write all of this in an email to you. In fact, I spent most of my morning doing just that, with the invitation to talk to me about what you would have liked us to do differently. I have many times expressed confusion as to our role here, on the blog and in person, and have invited suggestions. In my email to you, I sent this entreaty once again. We are leaving, of course, but it would be valuable to the next group.

Moments after I pushed the Send button, I received an email back from the “mail delivery subsystem.” The email address you provided does not exist. All at once, I went from apologetic and sad to frustrated and angry. It seemed an apt metaphor for my entire existence here. The message you wrote me suggests that we have met before, that we have spoken to one another. You likely asked me what I thought of “The South,” as people here so often do, and I likely told you, quite honestly, that it has been hard living here. I do not know who you are, and so I cannot address what your real life response had been, but this most recent “exchange” is yet another example of where I tried to be direct, to start a conversation for the sake of understanding, and my efforts were misdirected in a very literal way. Whoever you are, you have met me face to face, and yet you use this anonymous venue to offer a sting with no opportunity for discussion. If I seem upset on this blog sometimes, this is a perfect example of why. You know where I live, you know how to reach me. If you don’t know that I am willing to listen then you have given me less of a chance than the one you feel I have denied you. Why have you waited this long to express discontent? When I expressed dissatisfaction to you, I was reaching out to you, I felt I was inviting you to participate in what could have been a potentially valuable dialogue. But no, let’s just giggle about “culture shock” and “The Beacon.” Everything is wonderful as long as Taco Dog makes corndogs and we all make sure not to run near Cammie Clagett Courts. Keep your disapproval inside; express it only in ways that render it meaningless, in ways that divorce it from an actual voice.

If part of our community service is to make people feel warm and fuzzy about living here than you are right, I have most likely failed. But I never thought of it that way. I reasoned that if this program were about patting Spartanburg on the back then they would’ve brought in regional artists. The only reason I can think of for inviting a diverse group of artists to come here from all over is to provide a different perspective. I am truly sorry you didn’t like that perspective, I really am. I have agonized over your comment since I received it. I wanted nothing more than to please Spartanburg, and most of all, I wanted to please the people who brought us here, if only to show my gratitude for this opportunity. By failing you I have failed them, and I feel that very profoundly. It makes me worry that the choices for the next group were made definitively based on our failures (I believe that all of them are either Southerners, or have spent significant time in the South) and that hurts me. But I hope that you can see the ways that I have invested myself in Spartanburg through specific projects; if so, you might find that my voice becomes so scathing because of the ways I often see necessary progress thwarted. If I hadn’t cared, the tone would have been milder.

Similarly, if it was part of our community service to spend a great deal of time interacting socially with the community, I also likely failed. But, I was surrounded from the get go with three people that I felt comfortable with, and I also began a romantic relationship the summer we arrived. I had four full-time friends pretty instantly, and they were always readily accessible. Add to this a jam-packed event schedule outlined for us by Hub-Bub, and add all that to the fact that we were trying to make art. I spent most evenings, seven days a week, hunched over my studio table.

The jury is still out as to whether it was a mistake not to invest more in Spartanburg in a social sense. It goes back to the question of what the artist’s responsibilities to the community are, and this question is further complicated when paired with a community’s individual priorities. Unfortunately, it does seem we would have looked more invested in “community” if we had wanted to get a beer at the Nu-Way more often, if we wanted to “hang out.” Admittedly, I did not participate in this for the aforementioned reasons. Rather, I threw myself into my work. The work I have produced this year is all about Spartanburg, and more specifically, the process of finding beauty in Spartanburg’s urban landscapes. It was about a very tangible relationship with the environment, and about presenting that relationship to the community so they might see the place they live in a different way. I mistakenly believed that this was the pinnacle of my contribution to this program, but as I said, this feeling loses its punch in relation to the individual priorities of the community. Regardless of the quality of the programming, Hub-Bub often has trouble creating steady interest and demand for what it supplies—it is why some of the best shows this year have had smaller attendance. In many ways, it seems the function of Hub-Bub is to encourage growth in Spartanburg, but also to anticipate the growing demand for cultural stimulus once that growth occurs, and in that respect, sometimes it feels like Hub-Bub is a necessary, but largely premature venture. I’m talking generally here, but it seems that Spartanburg as a whole has only a marginal interest in art, which is what I thought I was brought here to do. It is no wonder then that there is a miscommunication in terms of “connection with the community.” And along these lines, maybe I should have gone to the Nu-Way, maybe it would have made my “connection to the community” more visible, maybe it would have responded to the individual values and priorities of this community, which have a lot to do with general agreeableness. But I still maintain that it was an unreasonable request—mistake or no, social interaction was never our obligation nor our responsibility, as much as some would have us believe that it is so.

I have written too much for too long, as is my wont, and it was probably a silly thing to do. As Nicholas pointed out to me, you obviously weren’t trying to start a discussion with me—you just wanted to tell me you didn’t like me. But I had to respond, if only for myself. I don’t mind speaking for all of us when I say that we have done our best. I am so grateful for this experience—it has made me a fuller person and a more focused artist. I wanted to share that gratitude and the fruits of that discovery process with the community in the form of our exit show. You ask me what I expected. I expected the poets from the anthology that Rachel edited, meeting often with them for coffee and interviews. I expected people who came to some of Derya’s potlucks, or some of Nicholas’s figure drawing sessions. (It should be noted that members of Derya’s knitting group showed up!) I expected people we met in the box, or people that served with me on Wofford’s Women’s Month panel. I expected people from my college town group, or people from the Spartanburg Creative Energy committee. I expected people from SDS, where we hung a show, spoke to classrooms, and helped paint griffins. I expected people from all of the elementary, middle, high and college-level schools that we visited, judging contests and speaking with students. I expected the people we gave our time and efforts to. But I find now in your comment that perhaps they didn’t show up because we are “Northerners” or, more accurately, because we embodied some expression of this difference. I write this letter to ask you to share responsibility with me in a missed connection; it is a two-way street and I did what I thought was appropriate and good. I tried to answer the question I put forth in the beginning of this letter through my actions here. I still invite you to disagree with the way I have done it, but next time, leave your name.

Sincerely,
Arielle Angel