George Floyd’s Legacy Has Reached a New Level
Artistry, I suspect, will forever remain the closest mankind can come to producing a genuine window to the soul. It’s almost as if artistic expression exists as a thin, partially distinct layer which envelops every aspect of our lives. Wherever we stand, and whatever we do, art is there to bolster our worldview. Think about it – it’s a part of everything. When a nation is freshly born, it needs one thing as much as any other to retain its coherency: a flag with a brilliant design. When companies begin to realize their designs of global conquest, their most recognizable aesthetic, their logo, is honored and protected at all cost. When revolution spreads in the street, block by block, and by heart and mind, what spreads inevitably in its wake is street art. Graffiti. Imagine what this portends for the legacy of George Floyd? It’s Not All About Him Perhaps it’s a paradox, but it rings true. Even as Floyd’s face is sprayed across swaths of dim, bare concrete in alleyways and enormous walls of stolid red brick in quiet, empty parking lots, it’s a fact that I know to be true. George was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back. The knee pressing life out of a redundantly restrained man accused of a petty white-collar impropriety for eight minutes consecutively? It was a flash-point. Millions of people in Minneapolis, in America, and in homes where love still flares bright enough to abate the shadows of hate, of brazen injustice, and of apathetic corruption. That’s who is protesting every day they can, months after the murder took place. And why wouldn’t this sentiment spread like wildfire across the continents? How long can we reasonably expect to exist before another identical abuse of power occurs? It seems like new footage …