Art Saves Lives: The Patuxent Paradox by Jillian Danback-McGhan

Editor’s Note
by Ben Weakley | September 29th, 2024

Jillian Danback-McGhan is among the most talented, insightful voices among the post-9/11 generation of authors writing about service and conflict today. We were grateful to her for being with us at 2024’s Day of Belonging at The Mansion at Strathmore this month. What follows is a transcript of her keynote address from that day, a piercing and personal story of heeding the call to create against environmental and cultural pressures. We hope you are as inspired by her words as we who were lucky enough to hear them were.

When I was sixteen, a psychic told me I would find myself in Hollywood. I thought this meant I would be a movie star. Imagine my surprise when, fourteen years later, that place turned out to be Hollywood, Maryland.

Hollywood, Maryland is part of the Patuxent River Corridor, colloquially known as Pax River, a peninsula bounded by the Potomac River to the west and the eponymous Patuxent River to the east. I’d recently gotten married, separated from the military, and joined my husband, who was still in the Navy, at his duty station in Pax River. The area existed outside time and logic altogether. It was as common to spot a horse and buggy tied to a hitching post outside a supermarket as it was to witness the latest drone technology, launched from the Naval Air Systems test facility, flying overhead. Pax River is home to St. Mary’s College, where the poet Lucille Clifton taught for years and was inspired to write her famous poem “Blessing the Boats”. It is also home to a former Confederate prisoner of war camp, which inspired dozens of locals over the years to erect flags and banners with hate slogans in their front yards. The area’s natural beauty took my breath away; the sentiments shared by many of my neighbors often left me speechless. To live in Pax River, for me, was to inhabit paradox.

“Art, at its core, is about connection to some deeper truth or feeling, to others, even to ourselves.”

Prior to moving there, I taught literature at the US Naval Academy, where I discussed books and ideas with my colleagues throughout the week and visited art galleries in DC and Baltimore on the weekends. My artistic life flourished in Annapolis. After years of undisciplined scribbling, I’d taken my first serious steps to commit to an artistic practice and was finally pleased with the progress I’d made in my writing.

All this came to a halt when we relocated to Pax River. We moved to a neighborhood populated by engineers who didn’t take warmly to outsiders. When I missed one of my husband’s squadron events for a grad school class, I was derided for not being a supportive Navy spouse. The same people later cautioned my husband about “allowing his wife to work” and warned him to not let me earn more than he did. Later, I had a flare-up of a chronic condition, causing me to be bed-ridden for weeks and lose nearly 30 pounds. When I was well enough to go outside again, my neighbors told me how great I looked. I’d never felt more miserable.

Separating from the military had been difficult enough, yet I suddenly had to contend with an abrupt transition from subject to object in an environment hostile to nearly everything I wanted to pursue: literature, I was told, was frivolous; going back to graduate school – impractical; pursuing an ambitious job – pointless. How could I support my husband’s career if I was always working?

My husband and I consoled ourselves that this move wasn’t permanent. We’d be there for two years, at most. In the end, we lived in Pax River for five years. I abandoned all my writing efforts during that time. In fact, for four of those five years, I didn’t write a single line.

Art, at its core, is about connection to some deeper truth or feeling, to others, even to ourselves. Such connections aren’t bounded by time, space, or geography. It is why we marvel at paintings created centuries in the past or texts written in ancient languages. Art brings us closer to each other and, by extension, to our shared human experience. We may compose in isolation, but we depend on each other to make meaning out of what we create.

It shouldn’t be surprising that, severed from the connection to my previous community and my understanding of my own identity, my ability to write dried up. While seeking out a new community seems relatively simple, reality is always more complex. You see, I had the intention to start tomorrow. Except tomorrow didn’t arrive for four years — I was too fearful to start over. And so, loss compounded loss. I was too afraid to seek the connections which would make writing possible, yet without the ability to write, I felt devoid of any agency, defenseless against the absurdities and contradictions I observed each day.

For us, the lucky ones who call ourselves creators, our art is inextricable from our identities. Whether what we make remains only for our own eyes or delights an audience of millions, our creation is core to our sense of being. We make art with our lives, yes, but also our lives are made through our art.

How confusing it was, then, to be a writer who didn’t write, a person who merely existed in this time and place without any real meaning. I became as much a paradox as the place I inhabited.

While I didn’t write, I did read others’ work. One day, I discovered the author of a book I admired was not only a fellow woman Veteran, she also taught writing workshops for Veterans in the area. Art may transcend time, space, and geography, but sometimes it is as accessible as attending a workshop an hour away from your house. I attended the author’s workshop and, miraculously, managed to write for the first time in years. This experience led me to seek out other opportunities to connect with people through a shared love of art. It helped me write, revise, and ultimately publish my first book. And it encouraged me to mentor other Veteran writers, two of whom will be publishing their first books next year.

“We make art with our lives, yes, but also our lives are made through art.”

 Eventually, I left Pax River, yet by that time, it hardly mattered. I didn’t resolve the Patuxent Paradox; no one can. By connecting with others, I learned to live within it. Writing restored my agency over it. The psychic had been right all along– I found myself in Hollywood.

Many of you have had to navigate your own paradoxes. You’ve had the experience of trying to make a life despite life’s absurdities, of feeling trapped between who you are and who the world wants you to be. This may be a consequence of your military service or your childhood, of having to confront the illness or death of a loved one or facing your own maladies. It might even be a consequence of simply living in this moment when forces in the world are insistent upon division. No matter the cause, the fact that you’re here means you are taking steps to live within it. You’ve avoided the trap of tomorrow because you are here today. To paraphrase Lucille Clifton, you have sailed through this to that.
Today, of course, is a day of belonging. Yet in your interactions with one another, I would invite you to move from that place of belonging toward true connection.

Your art will be better for it. You will be better for it. And it is not an exaggeration to say all our lives will be better for it.