Week 9 ~ Make Your Own Manifesto

What is a Manifesto?

A manifesto is a statement of ideals and a call to arms. It lets us evaluate the difference between our principles and our current actions. It helps us to more clearly see our commitments and make the changes we want in our lives. It tells us what and who we value, and sometimes why. It is a guiding hand we give ourselves.

When I was a child one of my aunts said to me: “Stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.”

At the time it meant little to me since my parents were pretty much deciding all that stuff for me anyway, but the older I got the more sense it made. The first “manifesto” I came across, pretty typical for my generation I think, was Desiderata.

I didn’t know that “desiderata” is Latin for “desired things”. I believed it when the folded photocopy I found tucked into a library book as a bookmark said it’d originally been found in Old Saint Paul’s Church in Baltimore in 1692. The language seemed religious enough for that, but the sentiment was exactly right for the stage of life I was going through ~ early teenage rebellion ~ which, ironically, had me bucking my parents’ restrictive religion.

I now know this kind of individuation is perfectly normal for teenagers. The desire to know yourself deeply and work towards the world you want to live in is very much part of growing up.

I carried Desiderata with me for a long  time. It hung on my wall as a reminder of what I wanted in the world. But when I started journaling around age 25 it seemed more meaningful for me to consider what I knew, and not take anyone else’s word about what was important about life and how to live it.

Over the years I’ve taken part in several group projects where artists wrote their own manifesto and shared them. It’s an interesting experience to sit down and think deeply about what you REALLY believe, how you REALLY want to live in the world, what REALLY matters. It’s also interesting to see what others consider essential and see how much you optimal world views overlap (or don’t).

Given recent political events, I think it’s useful to have a manifesto as your own bright light leading you forward. Imagine the best possible you, the best possible world, document it, however utopian and unrealistic it might be, and re-align yourself by reading it from time to time.

For years I’ve been drawn to this very brief ideal: “Work like you are living in the early days of a better nation.” I heard it in a folk song when I was young enough to take it to heart, and old enough to know what it meant. When I find outside events overwhelming me, I use it to remind myself that I have a role to play, however small, in making the world a better place. We could do worse than to have something grand and impossible to aim for.

5 Easy Steps to a Manifesto

1. Get inspired by reading what others have written. I’ve put some manifestos on the handouts below. I recommend you print them out and highlight lines or sentences that strike a chord with you. Start with those, and then google more if you wish. Here's a few to search for that I didn't include: The Communist Manifesto by Karla Marx, the “I Have a Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King. I've also included links at the end of this article to manifestos that I've found particularly useful.

2. Make notes. Manifestos have three basic components: beliefs, goals and wisdom. Divide a sheet of paper into three columns, and title them: "I believe", "I want to" and "I know". Write down key points from manifestos you've read. or any other goal-worthy ideals that come to you.

3. Write a rough draft. Don’t feel like you need to get it sounding perfect right off the bat. Mull it over, move bits around. Don’t feel like writing full sentences? Don’t ~ write a list instead. Include collaged images if you want. Write on squares of paper and build it in pieces (see more info below).

4. Live with it. I like to hang it where I can see it and mull it over from time to time. Tape a copy to your mirror, or the inside cover of your journal. Edit, amend, add, subtract ~ make it sound more “true” as you go.

5. Live it. You dug deep to get to your real self and your real ideals. Use them as a guide for your actions and thoughts in your everyday. See if you can bring the world closer to your vision by being a visionary.

Make Your Own Manifesto

Once you've got all your text in one place, there are various formats you can put it in to make it presentable. You can write out the lines, one after another, separated by a symbol, as I've done here in my somewhat grand sounding "Towards an Experience of ART in the Here & Now", which I created for an artists' manifesto exchange a few years ago:

Or you can write out your text in small blocks and arrange the blocks on a sheet like a jigsaw puzzle till it all fits together neatly. Or you can simply write a bullet point list. It's YOUR manifesto, so it should reflect a form that resonates with YOU. There are no wrong ways to do it.

At the class on Wednesday, someone asked a question that I feel I didn't answer sufficiently. The question was: If these are messages written for ourselves, why do so many manifestos use the word "YOU" instead of "I"? Having thought about it for a few days, I think it's because when we're writing the manifesto, we're writing AS the person we'd like to become TO the person we are now ~ we're essentially sending a message from our Higher Self to our Current Self to remind us where we're heading ... almost like a message from the future. And how cool is that?

Links to more manifestos:

Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

5 Manifestos for the Creative Life, an excellent article on Brain Pickings

Frank Sonnenberg's 24 Ways to Simplify Your Life

The Self-Reflection Manifesto by Celes (she has a whole section devoted to manifestos)

And here are your usual handouts, including a page of block frames to write your manifesto items in:

That should keep you busy for awhile! See you at the next class, Dec 7th, in two weeks ... 

- Penelope