On Doing Art in Terrible Times

I am fortunate to have in my life artists of many kinds - writers, musicians, actors, poets, painters. These people, the successful and the struggling, the purists and the experimental, all bring to my life, and to the world around them, an energy and inspiration unequaled by any other influence. Not to mention that I love them - love them not with an ain’t-my-friends-grand kind of affection, but a kind of collective you-are-part-of-my-heart kind of love. 

I don’t see them all regularly, some only when we’re involved in creative projects together, others when the spirit moves one or the other of us to call and say “I need to see you.” But they are always there. More than any other professional or personal community I belong to or have ever, they are always there in my thoughts and in that deep sense of who I am in the world, and they are the kind of people, more than any other professional or practical community, who have literally been there when I was in need.

I love them, and, lately, when I do see them, they’re hurting, doubting, struggling. 

The conversations we have invariably goes more or less like this: 

Me: What are you working on lately?

Them: (shrug) I haven’t been able to do much work. 

Me: (knowing the answer) Why? 

Them: With the world the way it is, it feels (insert: futile, senseless, a luxury, self-indulgent) 

Me: I think there has never been a more important time in our lifetimes to do art. 

Them: Why? 

Me: Precisely because of the state of the world. 

Them: But my art isn’t political. 

Me: That doesn’t matter. 

Them: But…..why? 

Me: Because art makes us more human than any other element of life, and we need that now more than ever. 

Them: (shrugging) I want to believe that. 

Me: Me, too. 

I have had this conversation in the last many months with poets, writers, actors, musicians, close friends and even more casual acquaintances. Each time I walk away feeling inadequate to the task of shoring up them and their belief in the work they do, because, truth be told, I have been, more days than not, having the same struggle myself. 

All of this has led me to read multiple pieces written on the essential nature of art to a democracy, and, actually, to any culture or political philosophy. Art (literature, theater, visual arts) has been shown in multiple studies to increase awareness both in the creators and the observers, to heighten cognitive process, to increase energy, to sharpen analytic ability, and to decrease depression. 

All of that is wonderful, and as a college teacher I have seen evidence of this in the attitude and skill of art students who took my math classes, my critical thinking classes, my classes in logic and argumentation. So these studies don't surprise me, but I think art is much more, and much more important. 

I have been writing as long as I could put pen to paper - immersing myself in a sea of words, in love with the rhythm and clarity of verbal expression, the freedom words bring to create truth woven in words, and to, in fact, create authentic people, places, and passages of life. Two periods of my life as a

writer have been wildly productive: the couple of years of my creative writing graduate program, and the years from around 2010 until November of 2016, when the rise of insanity in our world beat its unwelcome way into my consciousness, as it did for so many others. Suddenly, when I’d sit down to write, I’d find myself staring at the page, thinking of the images and stories and characters swirling in my head, and have them feel futile, senseless, a self-indulgent luxury. What got me out of it?

I’ll let you know when that happens. 

In the meantime, I get up each day and face the page, and continue writing, because I do believe, somewhere in my battered-writer’s soul, that it is an essential act of resistance against darkness. It is a deep refusal to let go of what is best in the human spirit. Someone once said that those who control the storytelling of a culture control the culture, and we have seen lately the impact that stories pushed on the public consciousness, however false and fabricated, have on our world. People respond to stories in myriad ways - out of fear, out of hope, out of a deep connection to a truth being told. For me, continuing to write is an act to appeal to the last two - to get people to deeply connect to truth and by doing so to increase their hope. Stories told in any way - through paintings, poetry, music, or on the stage, can and should do the same. 

Doing art is a deeply political act, regardless of the story being told. It can open eyes or put blinders on them. It can turn people toward the dark or toward the light. It can show both beautiful and terrible truths, or it can create false hells for us to burn in. At its best, it can show people immersed in a dark world how to see the world illuminated