Echoes from the Underbelly: Unveiling Humanity through Art
Sarah Green, EdD Student
University of Calgary
With ubiquitous fluency, the arts tell the world’s stories. Possessing the power to equalize and level the playing field, the arts transcend the conventional landscapes of knowing, understanding, and being. With unparalleled capacity to defy barriers, the arts need not be confined to the walls of a gallery, the sounds of a symphony, or the structure of a stage.
The arts metabolize feelings.
Grief.
Joy.
Sadness.
Disgust.
Anger.
Surprise.
Contempt.
The spectrum of figurative emotions becomes tangible; multidimensional.
Becomes accessible.
Take your broken heart, make it into art.
This is not an unknown refrain. While Carrie Fisher may have been the first to offer these words, she was certainly not the last. It’s true that the sentiment has been critiqued for being trite, but it has endured time and time again.
My broken heartedness stems primarily from the unnoticed underbelly of the world. The people we don’t see. The voices we don’t hear. The stories that perpetually linger beneath the surface. The hearts that don’t beat in the same rhythm as the collective.
Take your broken heart, make it into art.
With this refrain, I’m challenged to think of a relatively recent trip to Portland, Oregon, through a new lens. Last summer, I spent five days in the City of Roses. It just so happened that I arrived on the day of the Starlight Parade — a two-mile march along Portland’s east side city streets. In addition to promising “twinkle and shine,” the festival website assures parade attendees will see “representation from Portland’s diverse community groups” (Portland Rose Festival Foundation, 2023). While the Starlight Parade indeed illuminated the charming city streets, the diversity I witnessed as I walked the path was not the focus of the main parade route; rather, it was embedded within the subtext situated on particular spectator blocks along the way. The rounding of one city corner shifted the onlooker dynamic immediately and what I saw was devastating. People in dire straits; suffering, unwell, and utterly ignored. The parade route in this particular stretch was a living juxtaposition: joy and light on the main street severely countered by the darkness of half-lives living in the shadows.
I’ve heard that two things can be true at once. In this moment, when time was a blur, I wasn’t so sure.
All five senses were engaged, and my intuitive, sixth sense enraged. Walking through a contradiction, albeit briefly, was akin to taking the red eye to the twilight zone. There and back again.
I’m back. But the underbelly is still there.
I’m here. But I want to be there.
I am changed.
Take your broken heart, make it into art.
While my physical journey through the underbelly of the parade route was fleeting, the impact was long-lasting. The conversations I long to have are with those beneath the surface; the spectators who weren’t represented in the parade’s narrative. What is their story? How might they define their sense of self, if they have one at all?
The story I share is not new, nor is it exclusive to the city of Portland. The story I share is a rampant telling of the tale as old as time. We are soon to be swallowed up and consumed by the underbelly of the world. Perhaps it’s time we get to know it, get comfortable with it; and dare I say, live alongside it.
Take your broken heart, make it into art.
All too often, we are afraid of what we don’t know and, thus, subconsciously perpetuate the cycle of what has always been; what is comfortable.
The arts embrace discomfort.
All too often, the effort we put into including all voices inevitably leads to select voices remaining unheard. Our well-intentioned, collective efforts to include, embrace, and demarginalize can often lead to implicit exclusion and ostracization.
The arts are a vessel to give voice to the voiceless.
The arts are the collective barometer of the pulse of the world, and I fear that our pulse is vibrating at such a frequency that imminent implosion is no longer a far-fetched reality. In the tapestry of our existence, each thread holds significance. From joy to sorrow, every emotion finds its place. Yet, amidst this mosaic, some threads remain obscured, concealed within the folds of societal neglect, or overshadowed by the cacophony of more conspicuous narratives.
The underbelly of humanity, with its silent screams and muted pleas, yearns to be acknowledged; to be woven into the fabric of our collective consciousness. In the act of bearing witness to the unseen, we affirm our shared humanity. We were built to break, we are built to be broken, and we will build to endure.
Take our broken hearts, make them into art.
References
Portland Rose Festival Foundation. (n.d.). Starlight Parade. https://www.rosefestival.org/events/parades
