When is art not excessive?
Musings on the Met Gala 2024 amidst injustice
What’s good everyone,
As some of you may have heard, this past Monday was the Met Gala in New York. Known as fashion’s biggest night out, celebrities showed up and showed out in glamorous decadence, such as Cardi B pictured above. However, the juxtaposition of the Gala’s extravagance with the suffering happening in the US and in Gaza has led to outrage on social media this week, such as below.
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I understand why people protest $75k for a ticket to a fancy fundraiser while Palestinians are being bombed day and night. Maybe the Met should have cancelled this year’s proceedings, or at least made it cheaper, or been (more) outspoken about the genocide. But I don’t think it’s as simple as decrying a $22k block of ice used as a purse, for let us keep in mind that if you make just $34k in US dollars, you’re in the world’s 1%. Inequalities that are that staggering can make a lot of America’s artistic output seem frivolous.
Speaking from experience, the digital recording gear in quality American studios easily costs $34k. A new grand piano can easily cost $34k (if not $100k plus). The amount of materials going into a visual art exhibit can easily cost $34k. All to say, the way we artists adorn humanity with music, theater, fashion, and literature are squarely embedded in the gross imbalances of power in the world. And that’s for music that is expressly political and for music that is not. Do we really need to spend thousands of dollars to make a song that says they don’t care about us? There is no simple way to exit the matrix.
I am wrestling with these questions about art and excess, about my role in it as a creator of music, about our role as audiences to it. I recognize that American music is popular around the world in large part because US cultural exports are bound up with our political, military, and economic dominance. The forces that make possible my ability to tour are the same forces at work that make possible the Met Gala.
With this in mind, I’m not as interested in critique right now as much as I am in the Spirit’s invitation to repentance. Where are my artistic practices excessive, and according to whom? Is my engagement with art only evaluated by similarly classed people in the North Atlantic? Or do I listen with wider arcs of accountability?
To that end, I hope that my enslaved ancestors in the States and my Maroon ancestors in Jamaica who resisted British enslavement appreciate my music; it’d be tight if it even drew them closer to God. I hope that my music can be held accountable to the old Sudanese ladies I met in internal displacement camps in Uganda, who stared through my soul. I pray that my music is held accountable to the Indian girl who I met in New Delhi who lived amongst trash and “counted rags” (sorted recycling) for a living. I hope that Palestinian children and Black boys without dads would hear hope and consolation in my sound.
My role model visual artist Makoto Fujimura is helpful here. He argues that all art in a sense is gratuitous, but that it (a) reflects God’s gratuitous give of life in the first place, and (b) can be used by God to move towards the eternal New Creation by redeeming what is broken.
In sum, I think any offense over the Met Gala should lead us to reflect on what is excessive about all of art we engage. As we start there, I hope we can hear God’s calls to repentance within ourselves and only then invite others into that. Deeper humility and faith await as we hold our practices around art accountable to those experiencing injustice.
abundantly,
Julian
What’s Next
May 11 Julian Davis Reid’s Circle of Trust at Andy’s (Chicago)
May 12 Notes of Rest at First United Methodist Church Oak Park (Chicago)
May 18 Isaiah Collier and the Chosen Few at Dorian’s (Chicago)
June 8 Julian Davis Reid’s Circle of Trust at Constellation (Chicago)
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Other Happenings in the Contemplative World
I’m one of the faculty teachers for the Academy of Spiritual Formation hybrid model, an 18-month spiritual formation journey held here in Mundelein, IL. My module will be on Spirituality and Creativity. I invite you to sign up today.