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Following their previous two letters detailing their departure from art making, e. Franklin returns with an announcement: They’re getting back in. Franklin describes how the hiatus fundamentally transformed their creative practice, and brought their focus to repair, healing, and justice. In November 2019, the letter was published as part of the “Getting Out” series on MNArtists.org.
Greetings from the Future, sweet eric, or the Past, by Now.
It’s November 2019. I’m writing you from a bourgeois hotel in Brooklyn. Weird, right? If you’re wondering how I can afford all that- you guessed it: I can’t. Someone else is paying, because I’m getting back in. Well, got back in. Like IN, IN. All the way IN. Deeper than I or you have ever gone IN before. And ya know what, eric? I’m gonna keep going. In this letter, I want to share about how your journey helped me get to where I am today, and where we might go tomorrow. As you’ve written so thoughtfully in your two previous letters and articulated in countless conversations, you’ve gone through some stuff. Some stuff might be from childhood, socialization, schooling, systematic, or some ancestors’ unresolved issues. In this letter, I write specifically to the eric’s who put in the work to heal from fall 2016 to fall 2019.
Straight up: I love you, erics. Yes homo; because you’re an excellent human and an even better queer. Thank you for caring for me. Thank you for taking the time to notice that we were not well. Thank you for taking risks and being vulnerable. Thank you for being honest. Thank you for loving me and giving us time and attention to heal and reflect. Thank you for ignoring and resisting the social scripts that said the choices you made weren’t valid or advisable. I believe you have done incredibly courageous work all in an effort to be your best self. Maybe me. Or perhaps some other series of erics yet to come. I have so much appreciation for you and your commitment to an intentionally pleasurable, thoughtful, and sustainable existence.
I understand why you had to get out. I know the pain you have endured and I appreciate the time you have taken to sort out the meaning you are making in this finite reality. There is such an abundance of experiences to be had, and yet so much of what constitutes “life” in this society/time/reality encourages us towards patterns that keep us trapped, sick, anxious, poor, upset, uninformed, and full of doubt for ourselves and each other. Stepping outside of the life you had built was the only way to make space for something new to emerge.
eric: whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, hold up! so you’re doing art again?
eric: hahaha. no, hi? how’s the weather?
eric: you hate small talk.
eric: the simple answer is yes.
eric: do I want to complex one?
eric: no.
eric: now you definitely have to tell me!
eric: ok. Well, first off, I don’t believe in the construct of “Art.” I think creativity is an innate quality of being human. The neatly divided silos that Art is comprised of is a colonial project situated in our “Imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” My orientation towards creativity is not a job. It’s who I am. Culture is a way of being, and I was born into it. As a descendent of formerly enslaved Africans much has been done to interrupt and erase the stories, beliefs, and ways of my ancestors, and despite this generational assault I was raised by and amongst griots, healers, chiefs, chefs, and unsung geniuses. It’s true that I also rely on my creativity to survive in a capitalist society. This is a slippery slope that I’m trying to navigate this with intention, grace, and humility.
eric. That’s a lot.
eric. Well, you did ask for the complex response.
Eric, as you already wrote in your 2018 letter what’s feeding us and giving me life are projects centered on: cooperative economics – economic justice, solidarity economies, collectives. Community development—innovating in and “owning” our neighborhoods. Reclaiming cultures—knowing ourselves first, honoring ancestors. Building urban-rural pathways—not just in Minnesota, but across this blue marble full of real and imagined boundaries. Popular education to develop critical consciousness—because learning can be healing and fun. community-level reparations—the resources exist they just need to be redistributed equitably. black joy—we and our ancestors deserve and need dozens of decades worth of kisses, kindness, giggles, and tenderness. QTBIPOC – I’m especially curious to spend time in collaboration and community with folks who live at multiple intersections.
The seeds you were dreaming about have sprouted. These ideas have grown from thoughts to conversations, to grants, to events, to actions that are shaping change. I’m taking good care of what you began. Each day I write notes, record funny little thoughts, draw, read, recruit collaborators, and turn these concepts in my mind. It’s so energizing and I’m curious to explore what it’s like to bring these values and practices to everything I do. I’m ready to take my creative practice to the next level of achievement, scale, depth, and meaning. I want to explore new challenges in new fields, in new mediums, in new places. I want to create wildly, without limits.
eric: So then why you doing puppet shit?
eric: It’s complicated.
eric: PUPPETS?!
eric: Hahaha. Yea.
eric: Ok. I’ll let puppets slide for now. What are you gonna say to the people who are like, “I knew that BLAH BLAH BLAH,” in regards to your return to creative practice?
eric: Honestly?
eric: Please.
eric: I’m annoyed by people who think the public facing me is all there is to see. I’m like an iceberg.
eric: Frigid?
eric: Haha. No.
eric: What do you mean?
eric: Some folks like to identify as “an open book,” which is sweet, but I’m not that. I’m much more introverted than people understand. It’s not that I’m hiding the “real me,” it’s that I don’t define myself by the work I do or how I show up in community, so it’s frustrating when people see a sliver of my life and act as if they know more about me than I do.
eric. That does seem frustrating. Do the puppets help you relieve stress?
eric. This interview is over.
Do you remember when we were living in Chicago? Or rather what we said as we were leaving? I’ve been thinking quite a bit about that, and I feel impressed by the commitment we made. That thought was so powerful it became a driving force in our life for the next 7 years. Even though it was born of a crisis setting that goal was probably the first time we challenged ourself in a big way to live the life we wanted to create. I’ve been considering what it would be like to make a new kind of commitment. This is just a draft. I’m happy to discuss, but I just wanted to share it with you and get some thoughts. It’s mostly a list of things I want to do better or more regularly or remind us of.
I’m doing my best to take good care of myself, but it’s difficult. Sometimes I wonder if I was born in the wrong time. I feel like I’m supposed to exist in a time that is just, free, abundant, kind, loving, informed, critical, wise, connected, supportive, open, and curious. At times, I struggle to locate myself in the reality I find myself today. We’ve been told so many stories about who we are and what’s important, but sadly many are simply not true. In my next chapter it is my intention to confront these deceptions.
Eric, you’ve done so much to lay the foundation for what’s next. It’s my work to synthesize your efforts over the next few years. There is such power in creativity, but if it’s not serving a greater purpose then it is likely just another distraction from what really matters. This is why it feels so essential to orient my work towards repair/healing/justice. I can no longer stand on indigneous land and pretend the world we live in is the one that should be. I can no longer remain complicit in violence and silence that patriarchal norms perpetuate. I see the beauty of blackness and the brilliance of Africans across time and space.
The more I’ve come to understand about what I need to be my best self (this is different than one’s most productive self) the more I realize that I’m accountable for creating these conditions for myself and in collaboration with others. This is the only existence we know of and once we’re dead we’re gone from this place. I know that’s a disconcerting thought. I certainly have my own issues to work out with death, but my fear of not existing someday does not blind me to the fact that I’m situated in an unfair world that has systematically exploited, disempowered, and murdered my queer and african-descended ancestors (and so many more).
My work cannot change those facts, but it can honor and revere those ancestors by learning and telling their stories. My work can create alternative ways of being and new visions for the future. My work can create anti-oppressive spaces for us to be together. So much is possible and I thank you for choosing choices that brought us to this moment, eric. I’m so excited to move forward and see us explore new places, projects, and adventures. I look forward to seeing what we do next. Until then I’ll be travelling onward towards that future reality at a relatively comfortable 67,000 mph.
Love,
Eric of the Present, soon to be Past
Following the first letter that announced their hiatus from art making, e. Franklin shares this communication from two years later: questioning the many possible pathways to liberation, how to live ethically in late capitalism, and why they associated art with freedom in the first place. In October 2019, the letter was published as part of the “Getting Out” series on MNArtists.org.
To my collaborators, colleagues, and friends; past, present, and future; near, far, and all over:
hi.
It’s September 2018 and I’m writing you from Minneapolis with so much love, well wishes, and fond memories of the beautiful things and times we co-created. I did not have the language or comprehensive understanding of my own experience to articulate my exit from the arts in 2016, but I do now and I’d like to share.
For the first few months of my sabbatical I was wrapped up in the idea that art being situated in late advanced capitalist society was at the core of my issues. After all, I was broke and the narratives I had been fed all my life were that if I worked hard everything else would work out and if there’s one thing I understood clearly about my career is that I worked very hard under exploitative conditions for many years, so addressing that seemed a logical place to start. Next, I moved towards minimizing my consumption to bring clarity and intention to my transactions. I felt I needed to simplify my life in the most radical of terms. I had been thinking a lot about food and farming and family history and received an unprompted message from a friend about joining her on the farm she’d be moving to in the spring of ’17. It felt like a sign, so I took the leap.
My plan was to reconnect with land over the season, make space to heal, learn some farming skills, explore a life of minimal participation in capitalism, and then go to New Zealand and skip the winter months. If I enjoyed agriculture there’d be plenty of opportunities and if I didn’t I had plenty other skills on which to fall back. Classic Lucy Scheme. I moved to the farm in April and before long a seemingly familiar set of patterns had emerged. I wasn’t seen. I was undervalued. Microaggressions were a plenty. My body was literally breaking as a direct result of the work. I also came to learn that It wasn’t just a farm it was a former plantation where the current occupiers who’d been there for over 50 years had done little do acknowledge that reality. It’s in this place that I began to really see how deeply ingrained the myth of whiteness was embedded in many liberal-minded European Americans. In this realization I knew that I needed to engage in a deeper praxis of my values that was in conversation with the many nodes of systematic oppression, and the farm wasn’t the place.
Alongside this journey leading to and from the farm I began to mine my memory and archives to return to the root of how I became an artist in the first place. Coming from a family of storytellers was an easy place to start, but how did a little queer black boy in Kansas end up falling in love with performance in the first place? I remember how naturally I took to improvisation in high school. I could say whatever I wanted as long as I had acuity to to place it within a legible framework. I remember making big choices and people noticing. I remember that being celebrated for my creativity and strangeness made me feel like I had value. That I had something to offer people that was unique. In the beginning art created a space where I felt free and useful.
Someplace in my early career I mistook my the advancement of my liberation for the viewers. In my creative practice the power of ideas had truly transformed me in many ways. A new idea could change how I moved through the world, what I would do with my time, what I cared about, ate, read, said, or did. I internalized this narrative and began to center my practice on transformative justice and black liberation. As my practice advanced I started getting a creeping feeling that I wasn’t reaching the people that I intended to. The monochromatic demographics of US theatre audiences are a well documented fact, but what was coming into sharper contrast was that as largely practiced, theatre is a colonial form situated squarely in white-centered modes and sensibilities.
Sure, one can challenge and change a form, but not its history. As a a queer person descended from the African Diaspora the majority of what I have learned about my people I’ve had to learn on my own. I spent so much time and energy creating experimental forms because I was searching for something true about myself. We are told we live in a diverse and equitable society, but that’s simply not true. From the land on which we stand to the blood in our veins to the idea that we each deserve what we have inherited. The indoctrination that happened in elementary school, happened in grad school, and will continue to happen until it is intentionally stopped.
I’m not writing to express that I feel like the art field is alone when I call out some of its sickness. My time on the farm led to a major awakening in my consciousness as did my time organizing at a Minneapolis non-profit over the last year. The problems and patterns I speak of exist personally, interpersonally, institutionally, and systematically. Just as I have been on a journey to name these oppressions as they exist in the world I have been in a deep and painful process of examining and undoing my complicity in patriarchal, white-supremacist, heteronormative, capitalist patterning. These ideas are not abstract concepts that are more of a problem for “those other people over there.” These patterns live in all of us and it is our responsibility to own them and unlearn them.
It’s this tension, this realization that was building in me in 2016 as our country again descended into a time where European Americans would intentionally and subconsciously uphold the myth of whiteness and fail to care about more than what serves them ultimately. In 2016, I took a hard look at what my values were I quickly realized that my career as an artist was not in alignment, and my body and mind could no longer stand the dissonance. In retrospect, I can see how I was in fact perpetuating and enabling white supremacy to function through tokenism, through turning a blind eye to casual cultural appropriation, and by creating work that was never intended to be seen by black viewers or anyone with a viewpoint outside of the white gaze.
It had been a painful time and difficult time because I had few tools or resources to help me navigate my journey and too few allies who supported me unconditionally. I don’t resent the people who have been less than supportive and/or skeptical about my choices, because I now understand the power these narratives have in our lives. I’m still in a process of trying to understand how to be my best and most full self in this complex world. I’m a creative. I’m an intellectual. I’m of the Fulani people and the Tsogo people. I am queer as fuck. I want to make impacts in the material realm. I want to advance my own liberation and that of those with whom I share community.
I’m not suggesting that we should all be social workers, but I suppose I’m pondering what the role of artist/creative would look like with a more intentional effort to directly impact the world rather than the tertiary routes we are assigned and happily accept. Or what of artist practice can be redeemed if we understand many of the trappings and structures to be flawed? I believe that creative people are incredibly powerful and I hope more and more will do the inner work required to advance collective liberation, but what I’ve come to realize is that I have no interest in being in proximity to art as it exists in the conventional sense. Here in Minneapolis I’m now working on creative projects centered on collective economics and ownership, community development, reclaiming root cultures especially in regards to displaced peoples, building urban-rural pathways for QTPOC, popular education to develop critical consciousness, community-level reparations, and black joy.
For some perhaps this will seem as an ending or closure. I totally respect and support that. Fade back as needed. Thank you for your service. For others, this is just the opening of the next chapter and an invitation to co-creating whatever is next. I’m sure that some of what I’m looking for is already unfolding beautifully in the world, and I would love to know about it. How are you leveraging the capital for more than just beautiful things? How are we moving beyond hard conversations and into difficult actions? Please share the resources and opportunities that you think I should know about.
Please feel free to respond, call, drop by, send a letter, share with a friend, or do something in the world that I’ll never know anything about. I’m situated here in Minneapolis for the
foreseeable future. Contact info below. I’ll be in LA for a conference in November and Kansas sometime this winter. Looking forward to more.
Peace,
Eric
In November 2016, e. Franklin sent a letter to their community, announcing their hiatus from art-making. In August 2019, the letter was published as part of the “Getting Out” series on MNArtists.org.
Dear Cruel (art) World,
It’s November 1, 2016 and I have something(s) to share. Recently, I’ve decided to take a break from art. What does that mean? …you may very well be asking. Well, I’ve been building a career and a life in the arts for over a decade now and more often than I care to admit I’ve found it difficult, stressful and even unrewarding at times. I have lost sight of why I started down this path and have no perspective to offer as to why I continue. l’ve let go of the idea that I would make a gainful living as an artist a while ago, and in return I somehow let myself believe I could expect to maintain some level of satisfaction or pride or joy or ease or something for that trade off. But no. Apparently that’s not a thing and in an effort to stave off total and complete burn out I’m going to take somewhat of an indefinite sabbatical.
Grim, right? I feel like I’ve been incredibly blessed to have worked with so many insanely talented artists, mentors, collaborators, teachers, students, producers, audiences, etc, and yet I’m struggling. I fully acknowledge all the opportunities I’ve been lucky to get and all the beauty, joy, and history I’ve been a part of creating and the sum of all that just doesn’t come close to outweighing the bad stuff. It’s true. I don’t share widely what difficulty I’ve had in this career because often people’s reaction is one of disbelief. You?! But you just did xyz! How could your life be anything but amazing if you win a grant or work on a cool show? Aren’t you being ungrateful? A lot of people dream of being in your position. That sorta thing. I get shamed and belittled for harboring any negative feelings or critiques about the work I do and the field I work in, because I have an alleged “dream job.” Maybe except my mom who’s like “you need to get a real job, eric.” No shame, all shade = my mama.
I’m tired of living/working in a culture that equates my value and perceived happiness to the work I do. I find myself resenting a career that I give so much to with few returns in the traditional sense, and for as much as I cherish interpersonal relationships, adventures, and one-of-a-kind experiences, etc–they do not pay rent, contribute to my IRA, or put food on the table. I don’t mean to make this decision all about capitalism and all of our continued complicity in it, but it is definitely a factor. I’ve had enough. I’ve been working in an occupation that consistently undervalues my labor, intellectual efforts, and creativity. I can’t do it anymore.
I’m not assuming the world is wrong and I’m the misunderstood artist. I fully acknowledge that my dissatisfaction might very well be a me problem. Maybe I’ve been approaching the idea of art all wrong. Maybe I’m too greedy and want too much from a career that is unlikely to provide it. I could just be an impatient and spoiled person with a bad attitude. Perhaps I was naive about the intersection of culture and capital. Maybe on a basic level this country and its people don’t actually care much about art and the artists that make it possible. Perhaps I’m just overdue for a break. Maybe I’m just stubborn or worse yet a pessimist. I’m not really sure what the problems are or how to make them better, but what’s clear is that this major aspect of my life is toxic.
As I considered what 2017 was looking like I began to realize that the options before me were unappealing for a variety of factors. The prime of which was my continued (or possibly deepened) unhappiness. This left me in a position to trudge along as I always have and hope for things to magically change OR create new options for myself. Except, I don’t really know what questions I want or need to ask of myself, the field, or the universe. I don’t know that I understand how to begin to articulate the problems I’m facing in a productive way. I’ve had a job outside of the arts all of 7 months, so I’m also lacking in, uh, first hand experience with these so called “new options.” That’s what 2017 is all about! I need time to reflect on these concepts. I need space outside of the life I’ve created in order to gain a bit of perspective on what kind of life I truly want.
This has been a really difficult decision to make, but it’s time. I’ve been dreaming on it for a few years and have finally decided to put it into action (yes, it’s true I’ve had a difficult time in this field and in my life before 2016). I don’t think this means I’ll never do art again, but maybe it does. I’m not saying I’ll never teach again, but that could be true for all I know. I’m not attempting to burn all the bridges I’ve been building of the past decade, but some will likely fall. For now, I’m going to focus on being a person who is defined by more than what my job is. It’s not that I won’t be an artist, but I certainly won’t be engaged professionally or informally in any projects, collaborations, classes, etc. For how long? I don’t know. This sabbatical could last for any amount of time. The only known factor is that it’s starting in January 2017.
I’m glad I mentioned that. Let’s chat about 2017! Do you wanna help me figure things out or confuse me more? Gimme a call. Gotta spare room? I’ll come visit. Got ideas for what I should do? Lay em on me! Money making opportunity that doesn’t involve art? Please send the deets. Connections abroad? Beers on me! Got ideas for non-art creative jobs? Please tell me what that means. I’ve been in brainstorm mode for the past few weeks and I must admit that I’m so excited for a totally different kind of adventure. I have no idea what’s going to unfold, but it’s really lovely to be thinking about myself for once instead of my career. My mind is as open as my calendar! Looking forward to the conversations and adventures to come!
Goodbye for now,
Eric
e. Franklin 