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I’ve been daydreaming about Janet Flanner again. She was an American journalist in Paris writing about art and cultural life in the 1920s, and later a correspondent for the New Yorker who deftly analyzed the European approach to war. Janet was a heady broad who spent her time with other artists and intellectuals like Gertrude Stein, Bryher, H.D., Romaine Brooks, and Colette. Her friends ran the cafes and bookstores on the left bank also frequented by Hemingway, Picasso, and the like.

One of my favorite quotes came from Gertrude Stein during that era. She was probably thinking about war and troubled times, but I suspect it applied just as well to love and the complicated relationships among her group.

“There ain’t no answer. There ain’t going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.”

My trip to Johannesburg had a touch of that sensibility. Our topics at the conference — the arts in political foment, as a means to greater social cohesion, and as potentially transformative economic solutions — they took on a seriousness in the context of a South African democracy only 15 years old and among delegates for whom ethnic-cultural conflict and economic uncertainty are ongoing sources of violence. A veil of American indifference lifted from me and I found myself in conversations with personal meaning and professional urgency.

During the conference, panelist Iman Auon made a profoundly challenging argument about the role of the arts in the Israeli-Palestinian cultural negotiation. She noticed how an emphasis on cross-cultural partnerships (conciliatory in nature) failed to recognize the great harm experienced by Palestinians, and that other inequities revealed subtle political alignments in how cultural programs were designed and funded. The result, she says, is that Palestinian artists are encouraged to support popular political solutions and perhaps also quietly discouraged from sourcing their work from the most intractable places of the Palestinian experience.

This discussion made for stark contrast with a current debate in the U.S. where a relatively meaningless volley from the overly-righteous Fox News commentator Glen Beck recently cost a green NEA communications director his job. Beck rightfully complained about an ill-conceived conference call in which artists were invited to make work in support of the President’s agenda. Fair criticism, but in doing so Beck ascribed an unreasonable priority to the issue by calling up references to Nazi propagandists. The young buck who made the mistake bears no resemblance to a Nazi (nor does the agency have that kind of power) and the issue has no business on the front page of anything. It was a stupid mistake that is being used as political fodder. Having spent this week around people who served in guerilla armies as teenagers and lost limbs in assassination attempts, the sheer lameness of this exchange is embarrassing in an acutely American way.

It’s an uncomfortable space to occupy. I’m not looking for conflict in my own life, and I’ll take idiotic punditry over actual violence any day. But I did find a little Janet Flanner in myself in Joburg. The world becomes immediately human (that is to say beautiful) when something is at stake. Part of my problem in DC (and with the domestic cultural policy in the U.S.) is that not much rises to the occasion.

It’s not for lack of opportunity, though. I spent the summer touring ten American cities looking for places where the arts are working to great effect — where things seem to resonate with their communities and have both tangible and ineffable outcomes. I now have a desk full of evidence to add to the proof my colleagues have been collecting for decades. The social, educational, and environmental benefits of a vibrant cultural life are unassailable. Further, an attentive focus on diversity is the hallmark of the cultural professions as well as our special contribution to contemporary democracy.

Now that’s a mouthful and it helps to see an example. I’ve never found a better one than the Constitutional Court of South Africa. It’s the brainchild of Albie Sachs, who is both a hero and a friend. See my photo tour to get a sense.

Today is the second day of the World Summit on Arts & Culture in Johannesburg. So far, I’ve heard speakers from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Jamaica, Spain, Nigeria, Palestine, Canada, Australia, Pakistan, Slovenia, Kenya, Singapore, and Germany. It’s been such a delight — not a single American has had the floor.

This is fun for me. I gravitate toward perspectives that are different from my own. I’m voraciously curious and a decent listener. I feel at home among a wide variety of people and a calm center inside diversity. I often feel more like myself there.

Comfort with the other has become the theme of the conference. It was first introduced by Njabulo Ndebele and has been echoed since. The work of cultural understanding, he says, is really about what human beings do when they encounter a person or an experience that they find strange. Do they shy away or ask a question? Do they engage or judge… or both? How do they deal with the feelings of disorientation — the sense that things are suddenly not what they expect or know?

The professor made the distinction that the idea of “strange” may be more helpful than “difference.” The latter tends to become a static category that masks a greater truth. Black people are different from white, for example. True in one way but also deeply false in another. It also tends to give a special pass to the one who is different, as though he or she must be accepted without question. Those moments when bad behavior is awkwardly accepted as culturally different, but ought to be challenged on its integrity.

Ndebele argued that approaching something as “strange” brings both people back into the moment. It returns us to the creative possibility of the encounter and reinforces the basic truth that all of us are strange to those we have not yet come to know. “When you arrive at the place that you don’t know,” said another speaker, “make theatre.”

As I said, it is the role of culture to give the cues. It’s our job to make the other visible, to give priority to the unknown, and to prepare in such a way that there is room to explore whatever one finds — including fear, doubt, and judgement as well as satisfaction and enchantment. Cultural spaces are designed to make this kind of interaction a norm.

It is never ours to control, but the hope is that this exposure strengthens our capacities when the strange appears in truly unexpected ways — on the street, as a loved one evolves, and in our own souls. The invitation, Ndebele says, is to ponder something at the very moment it unsettles us.

Rosebank is a privileged enclave north of the Central Business District in Johannesburg. I was up at 5am this morning and snuck into the hotel gym which technically didn’t open for another hour. I had the place to myself and watched the sun rise from my perch on the stationery bike.

A small group of men gathered outside a gate across the street. I later learned that they were waiting for the morning meal at the Catholic shelter. I’d witnessed a similar scene outside a hotel in Paris. How strange it was to hear homeless men speaking French.

I still had more energy to burn so I asked the concierge about a good route for a walk. She pointed me toward the side door and a small street busy with morning traffic. I walked north on a cobbled sidewalk toward a mall. People on foot were headed to the office and I passed dozens of men working on construction projects that seemed to be happening everywhere.

Halfway through my assigned path, I found a wealthy neighborhood tucked behind a school. The sky was bright blue, the air crisp, and I felt lucky to trade the smell of car exhaust for jasmine along the beautifully landscaped residential road.

Though the environment seemed welcoming, it was hard not to notice the security walls with prominently displayed signs, cameras, and barbed wire around every house. I said hello to several private security guards along the way and silently wondered just how out of place I appeared. I took a deep breath in a block or two when I heard peals of laughter and came upon a preschool just starting up for the day. After a long stroll the sun warmed up. I rounded back toward the hotel and stopped to chat with the homeless guys for a few moments.

Going out for a walk, taking a turn in a different direction, greeting both the happiness and the fear I feel — it all reminds me that freedom requires that we exercise it. Places become truly secure when people go outside, mill about and smile at each other. I know so much more about my own personal liberty from these walks. It’s easy for me to distinguish between the worries my mind produces and the instinctual responses that tell me when it’s time to turn back. It has also helped to feel more confident in my body — to actually feel the powerful rush that comes with danger and to learn how to manage it well. I find that I trust both myself and other people far more because of the exposure.

Of course, it’s true of speech as well. It’s not enough to have the freedom of one’s own thoughts. Democracies thrive when people say what they think out loud and it is the role of culture to give those cues. I’m off this afternoon to visit a place dedicated to such ideals. The Constitutional Court of South Africa — the building itself and its astounding art collection — was created specifically to ensure that people feel free and equal under the law when they enter the court. I fell in love with the project when I first heard about it and have tracked its progress ever since. As I was reminded again this morning, there’s a big difference between the idea and the actual experience. I’m excited to see for myself.