The Art of Onward — Way Station Four: Authenticity
messages from the margins
Hello, Blue Roomies!
This month we take up our fourth value for creative world-building in our Art of Onward series for supporting subscribers: authenticity.
As I thought about what to bring you this week, I decided to share words from others who’ve walked this difficult road, words that have meant a lot to me personally.
Authenticity is no easy thing for many of us. It takes vulnerability to let one’s authentic self shine through. And also, those of us who live in straight white bodies can learn from the courageous authenticity of others who don’t share those identities, who write and speak from places society has opted to marginalize.
And then we can ask ourselves: how does my practice of authenticity invite others to be authentic too? Because authenticity is not true authenticity until all people are able to be their genuine selves. That is the world we are called to make real in our work, our play, and our relating.
Speaking of genuineness: the first piece is from Howard Thurman, African-American author, philosopher, and Christian mystic. This bit comes from his 1980 commencement address at Spelman College. As you read this short excerpt, listen for what bubbles up for you, but also keep in mind the audience to which he was originally speaking.
There is something in every one of you that waits, listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself and if you cannot hear it, you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching and if you hear it and then do not follow it, it was better that you had never been born…
You are the only you that has ever lived; your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all of existence and if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls…
There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself and sometimes there is so much traffic going on in your minds, so many different kinds of signals, so many vast impulses floating through your organism that go back thousands of generations, long before you were even a thought in the mind of creation, and you are buffeted by these, and in the midst of all of this you have got to find out what your name is. Who are you? How does the sound of the genuine come through to you…
The sound of the genuine is flowing through you. Don’t be deceived and thrown off by all the noises that are a part even of your dreams, your ambitions, so that you don’t hear the sound of the genuine in you, because that is the only true guide that you will ever have, and if you don’t have that you don’t have a thing.
You may be famous. You may be whatever the other ideals are which are a part of this generation, but you know you don’t have the foggiest notion of who you are, where you are going, what you want. Cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in yourself.
Your Turn
When you listen for the “sound of the genuine” in yourself, what do you hear?
How do the problems we face as a culture connect to this repression of the genuine in one another?
How can one person, one community, one movement, start to reverse this?
Feel free to leave a comment for other Blue Room readers, or send me a private message.
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The second piece is, for me, equally inspiring, but may stretch a number of you. I invite you to enter with a curious mind and an open heart. This clip from artist and activist ALOK has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, and speaks to authenticity from a trans and non-binary perspective. This bit is from the Man Enough podcast, which tries to interrogate and deconstruct rigid and oppressive ideas of gender. Here ALOK is responding to a question from one of the hosts, who admits his complicity in not doing more to help gender non-conforming people who are often so targeted in our society. He asks ALOK: “How can I be a better ally? How can I help them?”
[Update: gahhh, the Instagram reel worked when I was preparing the post but something went wrong when I hit publish! Here’s a YouTube video, queued up to the right place. Or if you go to this writeup, you can read ALOK’s answer.]
Your Turn
Where did you lean in to these words?
Which aspects of ALOK’s words were more challenging for you?
Where do you see us, individually and collectively, as ready to heal? And where are we not ready?
Feel free to leave a comment for other Blue Room readers, or send me a private message.
And a bonus link! Charlotte Clymer shares related ideas with her readers:
Steady on.
I recongiize authencitiy in myself when I experience emotions that I don't expect. I watched the broadcast from the Old North Church on 4/18/2025 and found myself if tears. I didn't expect tears. but it was an authentic experience. "Hardly a man is still alive who remembers that famous day and year...."
I can’t thank you enough for this post, and for introducing me to ALOK. As a white, straight, cis woman I am learning more and more every day how crucial it is to ask and pay attention to what marginalized communities actually need- rather than push our own agendas of what we think they need. The art of listening is one of the most important practices we can cultivate in these times.
Listening
Asking
Discerning
Acting
This is our calling today and every day.