Normal History Vol. 14: The Art Of David Lester

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

In our lecture How Art & Music Can Change The World, David and I reveal the behind-the-scenes workings of our creative partnership to show that being in a band with intentions other than fame, money and power is infinitely more interesting than participating within the status quo. With that in mind, I want to reveal the unorthodox process for creating this series of illustrations paired with captions. Usually an illustration is of a written concept or story. The text arrives, and the artist does a drawing to provide visual fortification. In this series, in true Mecca Normal fashion, we are working backward. David gives me the illustration, and I write the caption. This one arrived with a title The Importance Of Speaking Out, but me being me, I don’t feel compelled to explore that exact idea, and within our partnership, a literal response to stimuli the other generates is not required. The drawing reminds me of its forerunner, a similar image with text about Mordecai Vanunu from David’s Inspired Agitators Poster Series. Vanunu went to jail for exposing the Israeli government’s secret nuclear-weapons program. I like the poster very much and have put it on various Mecca Normal websites, including one that a guy I was dating looked at. He was a policy analyst for the federal government of Canada, a Jewish guy in his late 50s I met during my online-dating adventures. He wanted me to remove the Vanunu poster from our websites, and I think he wanted me to remove Dave from my life. He said Vanunu was an insane person, which brought up an interesting point in a later discussion with Dave. He explained that his mandate for the poster series wasn’t to present portraits of perfect activists, but to generate more awareness around individuals who had stood up to speak out against injustice, to risk persecution, to speak the truth as they knew it. In my short-lived romance with the policy analyst, his irritation with the poster opened avenues of conversation that would have otherwise remained closed. We were sitting on elegant lawn chairs on the back porch of his huge house on an island populated by film stars and overly wealthy recluses when he revealed that he was a Zionist. In a heated defense of his beliefs, he told me that he would happily see all Palestinians dead—or some such statement that felt like that’s what he’d just said. I took an extra large chunk of cheese from the hors d’oeuvre plate, recognizing that once off the island I would never see this guy and his fancy cheeses again. Dave’s poster served a purpose that wasn’t what he’d anticipated or intended, but that often results when ideas are put into the public sphere. Information arrives and debate ensues. After this encounter, I researched Israel and found consumer boycotts in place for a number of companies that I wouldn’t have otherwise known were strong supporters of Israeli policy: Starbucks, Home Depot, Motorola and Nestlé. More information is available on the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid website. My point is that while Dave didn’t essentially know what impact his poster would have, he created it and made it public—and it continues to instigate thought in ways that these things do, when people speak out against injustice. At demonstrations, in words and images, songs and films, and within poetry. As images of popular protest and social injustice collide around the world this week, David’s drawing honors the courageous voice of Nada Agha Soltani—silenced in Iran. To end my caption for The Importance Of Speaking Out on a positive note (and a reference to Patti Smith, currently on tour in Europe and beyond) … A tweet out of Iran this week: People have the power.