| This is the 185th story of Our Life Logs |
I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the late 1950s. My parents were very alert people, writers who valued the fundamental rights of humans. The arts took the place of religion in our family, as striking as that may sound. My three older siblings and I were taught through dance, visual arts, the written word, theater, and music. While our family was dysfunctional in many, many ways, I will always be grateful to my parents who sparked a curiosity within me. From very early on, I saw the world through each lens they provided. That is, language, social justice, and the arts.
I feel it is most important to note that I was born a year before the Cuban Revolution. I was born the same year the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, and I was surrounded by the energy of the Women’s Movement. I came into the world the same year Michael Jackson and Madonna did—okay, maybe the pop singers aren’t so relevant—but this is all to say that I grew up when the world was going through extreme social changes. It was in the air I breathed. I remember tagging along with my teenage siblings as they went out, protesting the Vietnam War or marching during the Civil Rights Movement—I was only eight or nine at the time, with my tiny legs running along as I matched pace with my crew. Though my mother and father were quite distant in most parts of my life, it was my mother who helped me make my first petitions in grade school, as I wanted girls to be allowed to wear pants to school and to take shop class (and I am happy to add that both campaigns were a success).
I guess you could say that I was sharpened into an outspoken, independent girl with big dreams—a wonderful, dangerous trifecta.
By the time I was 16, my siblings had moved out (either in college or living with their own family), and my father lived away. I too left home at 16, as the support and wellbeing I needed was thrown off balance by living with my mother. I lived on my own in Princeton, NJ, where I was finishing high school, taking just a few clothes, my books, my records, my flute, and my survival instincts—all the necessities.
I stayed in New Jersey for about a year while my father kept a watchful, but far-off eye. At the time, I didn’t dwell on the fact that I was certainly on the “young side” of living alone, because I had music as my anchor. The flute was my life. On happy days, I practiced, on nerve-wracking days, I practiced, and I practiced every day in between.
I moved to the Lower East Side in New York City at age 17. It was less than two hours away and it wouldn’t stop calling my name. Briefly I lived with an older brother, but moved out before long. Again, I was too young to live alone in NYC, but I did it anyway. I was also blessed to have found many “surrogate parents”—all invariably African-American—who invited me into their families, supported my dreams, made sure I found my footing in the world, which ultimately led to my sense of connection, thanks to huge-hearted people who saw my true nature and never questioned my goodness.
I lived in New York City at a time when the people and events of its crumbling streets were not so safe, but I lived to tell the tale! Quickly after arriving, I was trained as a musical instrument restorer and technician of woodwind instruments and eventually opened up my own small business at age 18. This was my first interaction with jazz (which I was studying at JazzMobile and City College in Harlem). As for the musicians and their broken instruments, I got calls night and day from jazz musicians—some renowned, some striving-to-be—all needing an instrument re-corked or adjusted in some way. Along with their business, I dove into the realm of jazz, my flute as my weapon.
In the late 1970s, when I was 20 years old, I moved to Paris. There, I had the opportunity to meet and make music with musicians from West Africa, the French West Indies, and Brazil who made up the amazing cosmopolitan energy of Paris. Though racism was in full force, these people nonetheless held French ‘post-colonial’ passports and were intent on carving out musically and culturally rich lives. Music opened this amazing door for me to step into a brilliant community of artists, and I never looked back.
I took my flute repair business with me but supplemented this by working in a small, family owned music store, playing music for dance classes, modeling for life drawing classes, and performing in jazz clubs. I connected with musicians from all over and fell headfirst into a love of African and African Diaspora history and culture.
But even in Paris there is danger.
Paris is where I, as a 21-year-old, didn’t know just how high I had to keep up my guard. Paris is where I lost the last shred of my innocence when an acquaintance (whose home I had stopped in briefly) would not let me leave before he raped me at knifepoint.
In the years that followed, I determined that my stance was not going to take me into silence or hiding over the crime perpetrated against me. My assault happened during the 1970s, when the common practice of our society was to look away from this sort of evil. Like many other women before and after me, I was forced into finding my healing where I could, as the world at large was not providing the care I deserved. Though most people didn’t want to listen, I spoke up. The #MeToo movement was nowhere in sight at this time.
I refused to retreat, and arts activism became a guiding principle for the rest of my life. I composed music, I painted with each bold color on my palette, I built sculptures from clay with my bare hands, knowing full well I could speak about my trauma in this language. I would never lose art, and it would never abandon me. Therefore, I would survive. Most importantly, I knew in my heart that the noise I made about injustice and abuse would one day serve to help others. And I was right.
Over time, I healed. I lived in NYC and eventually travelled often to such places as Brazil, Bali, Mexico, and Spain. I was able to patch my psychic holes with art, relationships with like-minded people—and most importantly, with my father’s identical twin, Reginald Pollack, a renowned painter who pointed the way to my healing through encouraging my creativity, wherever it took me.
Through that long and painstaking process, a drive to help others was instilled in me using the arts as the vehicle. As life continued, I worked as a professional flutist, but fell much deeper in love with the cello. I led my own ensembles, performed with several groups, and even recorded two CDs of Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Brazilian jazz. I visited Guadeloupe seven times (as part of an on-going music project) and saw the effects of colonialism on a people and the ravages that the slave trade had left in its wake. There was such profound injustice, and I felt it. I wanted to respond by supporting the growth in others in any way I could. Life was calling me back to activism. Yet, this sense of a divide between my creative life and my drive to help others felt like a fracture that could never be melded into one.
One day, when I was about 50, I was sitting at my workbench working on a flute while CNN was buzzing on the TV. A spokesperson for the Polaris Project began speaking about human trafficking, modern day slavery. They said the problem was worse than ever. I set my tools on the counter with a gentle thud, my mouth hanging open.
This news was horrifying.
The person said that there were more people currently enslaved than at any other point in human history. I had spent decades reading about this topic, through history, literature, fiction, poetry, theater…but had understood the problem of slavery to be of the past. Not the present. Then, with CNN announcing there was going to be an upcoming seminar about the anti-trafficking movement, I grabbed the phone and signed up.
In the following week, I attended the seminar in central New Jersey to learn all I could about this horrific practice, and I left feeling more traumatized. An estimated 45 million people of the modern day were enslaved, 70% to 80% of those people enslaved in sex trafficking. Approximate 80% are girls and young women of color. I felt taken by a horrible paralysis.
With a searing pain in my heart like I had never felt before, I thought to myself, “What am I going to do now?”
All this information bubbled in my head for six months, turning my thoughts into a roiling cauldron. The painful truth caused me to search for a way to help transform the lives of trafficking survivors.
One morning in 2012, I woke up with a notion and said aloud, “This is the day.”
I called a friend and said, “I am starting a non-profit.” I had no idea what I was doing, but I was going to figure it out. I told her my story. I told her the germinating ideas that had been sown. I told her that I knew my work as an artist could be shared. Very aptly, my friend suggested I teach those survivors about what I knew and show them how I had found healing.
In that moment, Crossing Point Arts was born (though it didn’t have a name or a personality at the time, it did have a face—many faces, actually). Artists would teach their skills to survivors to give them a way to voice something that they can’t otherwise express. Survivors could begin to reconnect with the world. I reached out to the two friends I thought most likely to join me on this journey, a vocal instructor, and a dance instructor. To my everlasting gratitude, they both agreed. I wrote up a brief proposal, ran it past my boyfriend who gave me a nod of approval, and took it over to Polaris Project. To my amazement they said yes.
What began with a small group of women, all survivors of sex trafficking, grew to serve both men and women who have survived all kinds of trafficking from all over the world, their ages ranging from 12 to 60. Throughout the seemingly endless beginning stages of the project, I reminded myself of the hope we could create for others. Seven years later, I see it. And now, we have reached nearly 3000 people.
Crossing Point Arts. The name comes from a specific moment that survivors experience: the point in which survivors cross over from enslavement to liberation, from pain to healing. When they come to us and begin something like a group song or dance, they dip their toes into what we do. They often arrive with a dull look in their eyes accompanied by a faraway stare. But within ten minutes of working creatively, I see their eyes shine, I hear their body language, and I see them show up, really show up. We are here to bring them through that crossing point, both mentally and physically.
As survivors grow and heal through our arts programs, they can then become teachers. This creates a cycle of hope, of relatability. I hate reliving my own past trauma, but have done so in order that I may let my healing overflow and become a source of inspiration and hope for trafficking survivors. Isolation only multiplies our trauma. On the other hand, connection, hope, expression, and relationship all breed life. At Crossing Points Arts, we learn how to live again, and how to live well.
Hence, I reached the crossing point of my own life, where my language of art speaks deeply to the human soul.
This is the story of Anne Pollack
Anne Pollack was born into a socially aware family of artists and discovered passion for the arts at an early age. Anne dealt with the painful absence of family support from a very early age, and began living on her own by age 16. Growing as a musician, and inching ever closer to activism (an energy that had started so early in her life), Anne was guided by the clear and loud messages surrounding her: the voices of the Civil Rights Era and the Women’s Liberation Movement. These were the messages that gave her strength and set her on her journey. As a survivor of sexual assault, she was inspired after learning about the plight of victims of human trafficking and formed the non-profit Crossing Point Arts where art is used to help these survivors reclaim their humanity. Anne continues to work as an artist in her own right and some of her works are featured at Anne Pollack Productions (http://www.yourfluteworks.com/annepprod/). She loves to travel, Maui being her next destination. She occasionally takes the advice of her parrot who tells her, “Just relax.”
If you would like to learn more about Anne’s work with Crossing Point Arts, please visit:
Crossing Point Arts is celebrating their 7th year of bringing the arts to survivors of human trafficking at their Fall Gala, with a highly anticipated performance by Craig Handy and 2nd Line Smith, on Thursday November 8, 2018.
This story first touched our hearts on September 28, 2018.
| Writer: Adam Savage | Editor: Colleen Walker |
