This March, the question of expression has been central in my mind. Expression is how we wield truth, how we connect to one another, how we create. Expression is akin to walking on the sunny side of the street.
What drives one to express? Why is expression important? Who is given the right to express? Who is not?
On March 10th, 2025, Columbia University posted the following statement: We are deeply committed to freedom of speech as a fundamental value that we must uphold as a community—citizens and non-citizens alike. Vigorous and open debate, consistent with our rules, is central to achieving our academic mission. We must welcome the widest possible range of ideas, perspectives, and life experiences from all members of our community whether American or International.
Whose expression, whose pain, whose grief is valued and uplifted? Mahmoud Khalil’s is certainly not. Despite being a Columbia student who attended class in the University’s buildings, who resided in the University’s halls, who walked across the campus’s green grass just like any other student, Mahmoud (let alone his eight month pregnant wife) were mentioned nowhere in Columbia’s above letter, which, ironically, begins with Dear Campus Community…
Columbia only references shadows of Mahmoud Khalil so as to not have the light shone on themselves. They don’t mention their grief at his disappearance because they do not feel it. Instead, they focus on restoring funding and advancing its capital. Mahmoud’s expression of grief and anger at the obliteration of his people was not only not protected, it was not even acknowledged by the very same University that housed him when he was kidnapped by ICE in the middle of the night.
Why is expression the current focal point of American politics? What are the impacts of the stifling of this kind of expression? What greater American disease is it symptomatic of? What does it do to a people, to a generation, if they are constantly told that their story is less valuable, that it is false, and that it would do them more good to remain silent in the first place?
What happens to a people that is prevented from dreaming, from hoping, from engaging?
Despite its costs, its inconvenience, or in some cases– its danger, expression remains critical. Expression is what allows thoughts and feelings to crystallize into action, and thus into power. Expression is what drives love, art, ingenuity, resistance and connection.
This month I read Perfect Victims byMohammed El-Kurd– “an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation”. In the below passage, El-Kurd explains why we must go beyond witnessing, and into expression even when it feels futile:
I hear the phrase we must honor our martyrs, but what does it mean to truly honor them? Witnessing, whatever that may mean, is not enough, at least not on its own. Nor is it enough to honor them with discursive lullabies and empty, pseudo-radical slogans. I am repeatedly reminded of the late Bassel al-Araj’s words, “If you want to be an intellectual, you have to be engaged–” though I am inclined to argue that the Arabic word for “engaged”, mushtabik, carries a much more militant connotation– “If you don’t want to be engaged, if you don’t want to confront oppression, your role as an intellectual is pointless.”
The rallying cry that We are all Palestinians must abandon the metaphor and manifest materially. Meaning all of us– Palestinians or otherwise– must embody the Palestinian condition, the condition of resistance and refusal, in the lives we lead and the company we keep. Meaning we reject our complicity in this bloodshed and our inertia when confronted with all of that blood. Meaning Gaza can not stand alone in sacrifice.
But the task is difficult. Can we defeat Zionism and end its monstrous reign? It is even more difficult to define: fragmentation means that different things are asked of us in different locales. We face disparate challenges and circumstances. Can we reverse the effects of fragmentation? Collective struggle seems impossible in a hyper-capitalist, hyper-surveilled world. Unscrupulous logic tells us political discipline is an ineffective weapon, that our efforts are in vain. And personal sacrifices (quitting a job, self-immolation, the thousands of things in between) might feel futile, because they crush the doer while barely denting the status quo.
But this is not about their status quo. It is about ours. It is about our relationship with ourselves and our communities. The few moments of reflection before drifting to sleep, the brief encounter with the mirror in the morning, when we ask ourselves: What are the pretenses that absolve us from participating in history?
Here we are, on different planets, in different realities. Statements that include “should” or “must” run the risk of being disparaging and short-sighted. Yet I cannot help but think that this consequential moment calls on us to to raise the ceiling of what is permissible, that it demands that we renew our commitment to the truth, to spitting the truth, unflinchingly, unabashedly, cleverly, no matter in what conference room, no matter in whose face. Such bravery is asked of us now, not when gardens grow over our martyr’s graves, not when the debris is swept up and sculpted into memorials, and not when the bloodied press vests of our fallen journalists rest eternally in shadow boxes. Those of us with platforms, with some level of protection, with some social capital or actual capital, must dare to shift culture and not only talk about the necessity of shifting culture. Because Gaza cannot fight the empire on its own. Or, to use an embittered proverb my grandmother used to mutter at the evening news, “They asked the Pharaoh, ‘Who made you a pharaoh?’ He replied, ‘No one stopped me.’”
Motif Mix: Expression
Below are works that chronicle expression and its importance– in art, in resistance, in community. Expression encapsulates truth, understanding, and passion.
I Paint What I Want to See | Book by Philip Guston, 2022
The below quote is from a collection of lectures by Philip Guston, a figurative painter who was born in Montreal and raised in Los Angeles.
“If I speak of having a subject to paint, I mean there is a forgotten place of beings and things, which I need to remember. I want to see this place. I paint what I want to see.”
Painting what you want to see– this is how new realities are forged, how insights new and old are melded together to sing a previously unsung melody. No one else in the entire world experiences what you experience the way that you experience it. Expression takes us to this “forgotten place”, allowing us to remember this essential truth.
Human Requirements and Division of Labour Under the Rule of Private Property | Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts by Marx, 1844
You already know I had to include this evergreen quote in here.
“The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save— the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour— your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life— the greater is the store of your estranged being.”
The less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life. When we don’t express, when we choose perceived safety instead, or we choose capital, what we really choose is loneliness. Isolation. A life without depth and strong connection. Estranged being!
Faye Webster: Tiny Desk Concert, 2025
I’ve watched this at least 5x since it came out. To me, this tiny desk is a perfect encapsulation of the magic that can happen when someone approaches a creative project with their own world of experiences. I don’t know enough music vocabulary to accurately describe what makes this video so special. But I think it's something to do with the contrast of the soft, dreamy lyrics and the commanding presence of the orchestra. Soft but strong.
Hip-Hop Architecture | Book by Sekou Cooke, 2021
The below excerpt is from a chapter in this book titled As I Manifest: Contemporary Speculations on Hip-Hop Architectural Education and Practice.
“After the specified “steeping period” (which happens off camera), the next scene shows the building covered in graffiti and street art of all kinds. A new life and energy are added to the space rendered without human occupation. In this opening section of his film Szot suggest how buildings covered in street art can actually become more valuable to owners ‘despite the efforts of architects’”.
UC Berkeley’s Masters in Urban Planning program offers a course titled “Shaping the Public Sphere”. While I did not go so far as to read the syllabus for this course, when I read this title, I first thought about street art and graffiti. Architects create a base upon which people live, work, eat, connect… but it is the use of these spaces, or its deliberate change by people through graffiti and street art, that transform these buildings from concrete to a living, breathing, changing space. Graffiti reminds you of the role of people in our surroundings. That real people create what is around you. That art and expression is not limited to galleries and museums, but it is present in the efforts of those who forge all that is around us– street art, but also parks, furniture, fashion… all of it.
Edges of a South Brooklyn Sky, Mosaic by Sally Gil, 2017
Recently I rode the N train to the last stop (Coney Island) with friends and was moved to tears by all the amazing mosaics that adorn the walls of the stations towards the end of the line. Below is a quote from the MTA’s description of one of these mosaics.
“There are seven mosaics on each of the station’s platforms, each containing a roving skyline and depicting familiar structures and things, such as Italian rainbow cookies, a quail egg, a Mexican Concha cookie, railroad tracks, and even the station house at the Avenue U subway entrance. Local architectural structures are placed close to the center line of all 14 mosaics, because, as Gil says, "the horizon line is where the business of living happens." The objects, representing the rich social texture of the multiethnic Gravesend community, float amidst the day and night skies. This is where, as Gil says, "the internal life lives, all the complex and mystifying contemplations that move us." The day and night skies are reversed in form and concept across the platforms, helping to situate daily commuters in time and space, as they leave from and arrive back to the station.”
In her mosaic, Sally Gil captured a slice of the spirit of the Gravesend community. Expression and the creation of a body of work such as Sally’s can forge pride and joy for an entire community– not just for oneself.
Interview with the Paris Review, James Baldwin, 1979
Is it a Mehnaz newsletter if there’s not a Baldwin quote involved? I am especially thinking of the quote below because I’m currently writing this at a cafe in Harlem.
“I certainly can’t imagine art for art’s sake . . . that’s a European approach, which never made any sense to me. I think what you have to do, which is the difficult thing about a writer, is avoid slogans. You have to have the [guts] to protest the slogan, no matter how noble it may sound. It always hides something else; the writer should try to expose what it hides.”
Toni Morrison also famously said that struggling through the work is extremely important, more important than even publishing it. Expression is supposed to be difficult– in making art, but also in resistance and protest. Struggling through it is the meat of the work. This is what affirms our values and makes us more honest and capable people. The pursuit of “exposing” what is hidden is what distinguishes true, honest expression from “art for art’s sake” and cowardice.
Miscellaneous Mix
In Love With A Memory on Song Exploder
So good.
The summer 2014 death of immigration reform in Congress | Vox
Hmmmm.
About Isaiah Zagar - Philadelphia's Magic Gardens
I saw these beautiful mosaics in Philly.
The Cruel World According to Stephen Miller | The Nation
More on who is given the right to expression (even hateful expression). Teachers who wanted to encourage open debate and free speech gave him a platform regardless of whether he was arguing in good faith; mainstream and liberal media outlets continued to promote him in the name of provocation and ideological diversity.
Narmada Bachao Andolan- An overview of the 32 year long struggle
A 32 year long struggle. Because as Assata Shakur said, struggle is protracted.
Incredible things are happening here.
Thanks to my thought partners (my friends) as always for their insights. To daylight savings! To spring! To the shedding of layers as Marsha said… literally and figuratively.
How beautiful!