What do you reach for when you are emotionally exhausted? When a situation feels so bleak that improvement seems impossible?
When I was a boy, I would make something. Anything. In my teens, I wrote poetry (of course). Later in life, I slipped on my running shoes and took off, often through cities where every turn answered some curiosity.
I especially loved running past buildings in New York City and Washington, DC.
As a professional, I often created ways for people to see what was possible, what was needed, and what had been ignored or concealed.
What is normal?
Twenty‑five years ago, I was on the road performing my one‑man show. Called Normal, it examined who is considered normal and who gets to decide. I wrote eleven characters into a ninety‑minute production. In hindsight, Normal was remarkably prescient.
I also produced the show and chose theater spaces in what would be considered secondary markets across the southern United States. One two‑week run took place in a terrific alternative theater space in an industrial district of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
After a successful opening weekend, two planes flew into the World Trade Center, one struck the Pentagon, and another crashed into a Pennsylvania field. No one could process it at first. Then despair set in.
The theater management and I discussed whether the show should continue with such a tragedy weighing on the nation. We decided audiences needed the experience. And they did.
During that second week, the remarkable acoustics of the space allowed the softest moments to leave a mark. With air travel cancelled and traffic calmed, performing in that silence let the full range of voice carry the play’s message: “Life’s short. Live tall.”
Following the performances, audience members often remained seated, sobbing as the lights came up. They needed a place to feel something.
They needed a quiet place where a creative practitioner could help them imagine again.
Life’s short. Live tall.
This is what imagination can do. This is what creativity can do. This is how the arts become cathartic in the most exhausting climates.
When we live in silence without imagination, fear fills the vacuum. Dogma fills the vacuum. Authoritarianism fills the vacuum.
People do not suddenly become gullible. They lose the stamina to imagine alternatives.
That is why creative practice matters.
Not because everyone must become an artist, but because everyone is capable of what’s possible.
A version of this post was also published on Substack, Sep 3, 2026
Banner image: Detail from Despair (1938) by Mikulas Galanda. Oravská galéria, Slovakia, Web umenia, Rawpixel, CC0 1.0
