Struggling and conceptualizing Struggling
There’s an interesting article in Today’s New York Times about artists working in These Times. You might read it if it isn’t going to get in the way of your working.
I’m interested in it because it acknowledges what we all know: that there is something that many of us experience as debilitating in this moment. Living in a time when so many people are getting sick and our leaders are so totally lost and our futures all seem uncertain and the hideous inequalities of our cultures are all hanging out there...it’s easy for us to want to crawl up in a ball. Or go volunteer to do something that could actually help.
I’m thinking about this on three ways—but there are (I’m sure) more than three ways to think about this.
First, it was largely the failures of our culture to imagine, to listen well, and to respond creatively that got us into this. Those of us who have more finely honed skills in imagining, listening, responding, and making are really needed now. We may not be making any cures, but we are keeping alive the skill sets that will be necessary to re-make the world.
In the article, one of the interviewees recommends that artist spend this time in reflection and I think it’s totally possible for the four of you to consider this. After all, you are NOT launching your career here, you are working in a cloistered circumstance to see what it is that you make, to discover who you are as a maker, and to explore what interested you. If what you are doing with your time amounts to a detailed accounting of what any of that is for you now...you’ll have made good use of your time.
Lastly, I’m thinking that most of the conditions that are so hard for us to live with now have actually already existed, to lesser degrees and not necessarily for us but for others. What’s really intense now is the way that all of these forces press on us: the possibility of being very sick, the harsh inequities that racism and capitalism and sexism express onto us, the possibility of mortality, the terror of being alone, the inadequacy of our governments and the ridiculousness of our leader (and etcetera). All this feels urgent in new ways. Those of us who have the big privilege to be “inessential” workers and to stay out of the fray of the active fight against the disease and the necessary caretaking of the rest of us have the pretty big luxury to be experiencing that pressure in relation to its philosophical, psychological, and creative consequences.
We should do that work well. We should reflect carefully and make, as we can, to do our part to make sense of what is going on and to do our best to carry on the important work of making things, which is one of the ways that our culture expresses its most sophisticated flowering...and also is a way for our culture to come to know itself, to challenge itself to be better, and to heal itself. It’s also how it is that we can see each other in these dark times.... our work is like a beacon that helps others who are also struggling to find their people, to cluster together, to feel, at least for a while, even if in a limited way, a little less alone.
I’m interested in it because it acknowledges what we all know: that there is something that many of us experience as debilitating in this moment. Living in a time when so many people are getting sick and our leaders are so totally lost and our futures all seem uncertain and the hideous inequalities of our cultures are all hanging out there...it’s easy for us to want to crawl up in a ball. Or go volunteer to do something that could actually help.
I’m thinking about this on three ways—but there are (I’m sure) more than three ways to think about this.
First, it was largely the failures of our culture to imagine, to listen well, and to respond creatively that got us into this. Those of us who have more finely honed skills in imagining, listening, responding, and making are really needed now. We may not be making any cures, but we are keeping alive the skill sets that will be necessary to re-make the world.
In the article, one of the interviewees recommends that artist spend this time in reflection and I think it’s totally possible for the four of you to consider this. After all, you are NOT launching your career here, you are working in a cloistered circumstance to see what it is that you make, to discover who you are as a maker, and to explore what interested you. If what you are doing with your time amounts to a detailed accounting of what any of that is for you now...you’ll have made good use of your time.
Lastly, I’m thinking that most of the conditions that are so hard for us to live with now have actually already existed, to lesser degrees and not necessarily for us but for others. What’s really intense now is the way that all of these forces press on us: the possibility of being very sick, the harsh inequities that racism and capitalism and sexism express onto us, the possibility of mortality, the terror of being alone, the inadequacy of our governments and the ridiculousness of our leader (and etcetera). All this feels urgent in new ways. Those of us who have the big privilege to be “inessential” workers and to stay out of the fray of the active fight against the disease and the necessary caretaking of the rest of us have the pretty big luxury to be experiencing that pressure in relation to its philosophical, psychological, and creative consequences.
We should do that work well. We should reflect carefully and make, as we can, to do our part to make sense of what is going on and to do our best to carry on the important work of making things, which is one of the ways that our culture expresses its most sophisticated flowering...and also is a way for our culture to come to know itself, to challenge itself to be better, and to heal itself. It’s also how it is that we can see each other in these dark times.... our work is like a beacon that helps others who are also struggling to find their people, to cluster together, to feel, at least for a while, even if in a limited way, a little less alone.
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