Yellow Arrow
Publishing Presents:
Highlandtown Art Walk Writer-in-Residence
The writer-in-residence for
April, May and June 2019 is Kerry Graham.
By Kerry Graham
The term raison d’être appears a handful of times in the novel my students and I are reading. Sometimes I have eight native languages spoken in a class, but French is rarely one of those. It took a few times of me repeating, “The literal transition is ‘reason for being.’ Think about it in terms of someone’s purpose. Why they’re here,” for each of my students to internalize what raison d’être means.
The concept of fulfilling purpose saturates First Friday Art Walks. People devoted to creation display the products of their passion, and a community gathers to appreciate sculptures, paintings, music, jewelry, murals, performances. During May’s First Friday Art Walk, I joined strangers, and ran into acquaintances and friends, as we stepped in and out of galleries, admiring an abundance of art.
Maybe it’s because, over the last month, I’ve discussed raison d’être several times a week. Or it might be because of my long-standing commitment to pursue my own raison d’être. I just know that, throughout the evening, I thought repeatedly about fulfilled purpose: both the artists’ whose work I enjoyed, as well as mine.
I am here—Highlandtown, Baltimore, America, life—as a storysharer. I write, read, travel, teach, listen, and hope because I believe in the power of exchanging stories. While I value storytelling as an art form, it is the reciprocation of stories told that I find truly impactful. When we honor one another’s stories, we learn from one another. Noting similarities and remaining curious about differences is how we tighten the tapestry of our communities. We make meaning through narratives; it is how we understand ourselves, and each other.
During the First Friday Art Walk earlier this month, storysharing unfolded again and again. While the skirts of mariachi dancers swirled behind me, the wife of someone I knew from college recognized me, and asked how I’ve been. I told her I teach at Patterson High School, and she said she works for Southeast CDC. We acknowledged the value of the work each of us does for this community, and I left wanting to know more: whose stories stay with her? Whose keep her determined to stick out the hard days? Whose help her make sense of herself?
Later, inside a rowhome-turned-theatre, I ate M&M’s and sipped on wine as mother and son intertwined stories of their childhoods. She talked about how her father would tell their family they were “going into town” whenever they drove to the house on Conkling. Her son recalled the brief time he and his mother had lived in the county, saying, “I remember telling her I couldn’t sleep there. The bugs kept me up at night.” I remembered similar moments from when I was growing up: visiting my mother’s childhood home in Northeast Baltimore, and being scared of the dark when my family moved to the edges of Gunpowder State Park.
Again and again, stories circulated among the art. While talking to the Mid-Western father of a new gallery owner, the sounds of the family dog’s clicking toenails behind our words. When asking the visual, written, musical artists I ran into about their work. And telling anyone who asked about my essays and vignettes. May’s First Friday Art Walk overflowed with storysharing. Though there were numerous pieces of art that stunned me to silence, or drew me near, it is the stories from that night that I remember. My raison d’être thrives off these memories, just as it yearns for future storysharing. The stories I do not yet know. The ones I still haven’t told.