Steve

Steve

Steve's Book:
It is better to light one candle
than to curse the darkness.

I remember once, when we were little kids, landing in New York for a brief home leave before going on to live in Thailand. My brothers and I had been told that we could drink water directly from the faucet in this strange, exciting land, and we got away from the parents and went tearing down the airport walkway to the men's room where we drank until our stomachs felt like they would burst.

It's easy to take commonplace things for granted if we've never had to do without them, especially concepts that are abstract in nature, like "freedom".

For some time I had wanted to sculpt the concept of "freedom," and after several years of thinking, I came to feel that the most effective way was to sculpt its absence.

Steve Biko was an artist, in his own way, as all of us are. He created ideas and dreams, and tried to share them, nonviolently, to help others. For this he was jailed and persecuted in the old Biblical sense. He lost his freedom and his life because he dreamed and shared.

I can think of few things more important, or more necessary, than the simple freedom of expression--the freedom to share and absorb ideas and feelings--of spirituality, society, invention, the experience of life.

Without this freedom to think and to dream, and to share those dreams, we are lost. With it, all things are possible.