How to Be Different Together

by Margaret Hawkins

June 6, 2026

Hilma af Kint, “Group X, No. 1, Altarpiece,” 1915, tempera on paper, 59 7/8 x 72 7/8”. Courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

“Until we are able to look at people who have come to radically different conclusions about the world and know that we are each other’s people, we are sunk.”

— Allie n Steve, The Chicago Reader

At the end of every semester, I ask students to write about what they learned. I find out what worked, what’s important to them, and where I went wrong. Sometimes they leave with a completely different experience than I thought I’d delivered.

Some of these things I already know. I’ve watched their writing improve, seen how in a few short months they abandon cliché and embrace fresher and more precise language, which in turn allows for deeper expressiveness. They experiment with form and voice, and broach difficult subjects in brave and poetic ways.

Tonika Lewis Johnson, “Folded Map Project: 6900 South Ashland Avenue and 6950 North Ashland Avenue,” 2020. Courtesy of the artist and the Chicago Community Trust.

Reading their essays, I always hope to see they’ve fallen in love with some of the authors I hold in esteem. I want them to say they have taken up my campaigns, signed on to my crusade against adverb bloat. Sometimes they have. More often, though, they write about something I don’t associate with writing: community. I was going to say likeminded community, but it’s not even that. Repeatedly, they say what they most valued about the class was the workshop format, sitting in a circle rather than rows, listening to each other, being listened to. Every semester I see students excited by the respect and attention given their work by those who are not like them, people they formerly never would have talked with, and the opportunity to read and respect the work of those same people. They report, over and over again, how surprised they are to feel safe in the company of others.

There’s a lot of talk among commentators about the coddled younger generation(s) demanding too much safety in their discourse. It’s my impression that college students don’t want safety so much as connection. They are lonely. They are hungry for civilized human interaction and, at the same time and for good reason, are afraid of it. What makes it possible in these classes I teach is Art. Talking about it, reading it, and, especially, making it allows people to be different together, and to be so with respect and curiosity. Differences don’t disappear. On the contrary, they more than coexist. They shine. They feel exciting, engaging, and if not blandly safe, then safe enough in the very act of dialogue.

Zen garden at Chicago Botanic Garden.

The same week I was reading these student reflections a guy showed up at my house to fix the garage door opener. While he worked, I noticed unusual sounds coming out of his truck. At first, I thought it was an odd phone ringer, but its hypnotic, atonal monotony began to take shape. The sound was structured, if not exactly melodic, and I realized it was music. It began to harmonize with the sounds and rhythms of my husband sweeping sand in circles into cracks between the patio stones. I thought of the raked sand in the Zen garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden and with that realization I fell into a mild trance. I stood watching and listening for a while, transported to someplace both calm and exciting while remaining in my own back yard.

When we were settling the bill, I asked the repairman about the sounds emanating from his truck. He said it was techno music by a contemporary French composer. It turned out the repairman was a professional violist who performs chamber music. Later he sent a link.

Jonathan Fitoussi, “Plein Soleil,” 2020, video of ambient music, 47 minutes, 50 seconds.

I don’t normally listen to music or podcasts when I walk my dog, but now I listen to the French techno composer Jonathan Fitoussi and enjoy the walk in a new way. It makes me feel disembodied, like I’m in outer space looking down on the dog, the bushes and myself, and that we are all one. I wouldn’t know about this without having spoken with the repairman who turned out to be an artist. Which brings me back to what I learned from my writing students about being transgender (book recommendation below), about volcano parties, and the fact that these days girls get to play trombone.

A self-described mobile gender sound artist and teaching colleague of mine calls themself Allie n Steve. I’m using the non-binary plural here, but they are quoted in an interview in The Chicago Reader that they don’t care much about pronouns, that other people are entitled to their own view of them. Their children, they point out, call them Dad.

In a world where people are dedicated to and even proud of not getting along, where only Republican Supreme Court justices get invited to state dinners and families break up over politics, art is a way to get through it all. Art goes deeper, it digs under the wall of differences. It refuses to divide neatly into opposites. Art blurs boundaries.

David  Lang interview on Freakonomics (click image to listen).

In an interview with Steven Dubner on his Freakonomics podcast, Pulitzer Prize-winning classical composer David Lang, known most recently for his oratorio based on Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” described a musical epiphany he had at a soccer match in the UK. Listening to fifty thousand people sing “incredibly lewd” (his description) songs in harmony jolted his imagination. It was the democracy of the united voices that moved him, he says. The only requirement for joining the chorus was the belief that the home team should win.

I see it every semester. People put aside differences and listen to each other’s stories and essays for a few hours a week for a few months of their life and they start to think more broadly. It’s not a coincidence. Art is a different way to live in the world than the usual judging, competing, and rushing. It doesn’t erase differences; it might even highlight them. But it also broadens context, illuminates a web of connectedness we forget exists. A current runs between us, a hum you can feel if you listen for it.  Art is one of the best ways to make that happen.

Margaret Hawkins is a writer, critic and educator. Her books include “Lydia’s Party” (2015), “How We Got Barb Back” (2011) a memoir about family mental illness, and others. She wrote a column about art for the Chicago Sun-Times, was Chicago correspondent for ARTnews, and has written for a number of other publications including The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Art & Antiques and Fabrik. She teaches writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Loyola University.

Visit Margaret Hawkins’ website.