Keep Making Art, Even When the World is Ending
By Kelsey Allagood | December 21, 2021 |
“We do not write because we must; we always have a choice. We write because language is the way we keep a hold on life. With words we experience our deepest understandings of what it means to be intimate. We communicate to connect, to know community.”
― bell hooks, remembered rapture: the writer at work
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When our fearless leader, Managing Editor Therese Walsh, first asked me to draft an article for WU, she asked me to write something “suitable for a weekend posting”—a little light, something you’d want to read groggily over coffee.
“Sure,” I said, and promptly came back with a two-thousand-word treatise relating writing to a lesser-known principle of nonviolence theory.
True to form, I’m here with my last post of 2021 to talk about existential crises and the sun engulfing the earth. Onward!
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We’re about to enter Year Three of a global pandemic. This month, tornadoes killed dozens of people, including workers who appear to have been trapped inside their workplace. All the while, more details are emerging about a serious attempt to overturn the results of a legitimate U.S. election. Globally, democracy is on the decline, and authoritarianism is on the rise. Climate change is accelerating. Elon Musk is TIME’s Person of the Year.
If things seem bad, it’s because in a lot of ways, they are.
And yet here we sit, we writers: scribbling our little stories, reading our little books. It can be hard to create when it feels like everything is falling apart around us.
When I start feeling down about the status of the world and my own small role in it, I think back to high school, when I first learned about our sun’s expansion into a red giant. In about 7.6 billion years, the sun will have grown large enough to surpass Earth’s orbit by around 20 percent. Scientists don’t agree on whether Earth will be engulfed or pushed away by this expansion, but any way you slice it, it’s a big risk to the existence of life.
Aside from the terrifying knowledge that Earth will, at some point, not be in the same place in front of the same sun as it is now, upon thinking about it a bit, I actually came to find the idea strangely comforting.
This isn’t me channeling Camus, arguing that we’re all free because nothing matters. Lots of things matter.
I think I find the idea of the expanding sun comforting because the sun doesn’t discriminate: the sun will engulf my hometown in central Florida as surely as it will engulf Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon. Sure, humans—such as we exist 7.6 billion years from now—might choose to rescue Shakespeare’s works and beam them across lightyears to ensure they’re preserved, leaving my own words—such as they still exist—to be consumed by a dying star. Which, if I think about it, is a pretty metal way for all traces of my existence to disappear.
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I don’t think I need to make the argument that art is a powerful force: if you’re here, you know that already.
When the pandemic first started, people acknowledged the unprecedented nature of the situation. People sang and musicians duetted each other from their balconies. There was that viral challenge from the J. Paul Getty Museum that asked us to recreate famous works of art from home using our pets and household objects.
Now, it can feel like half the world is pretending the pandemic doesn’t exist while the other half shoulders the responsibility for staying at home, getting vaccinated, wearing masks, and raising children with even fewer support systems than there were before. And even though one could argue that consumption of art has increased since the pandemic—who among us hasn’t binged a Netflix show or ten while under quarantine?—there has been no meaningful shift in the monetary value placed on artists or our work.
In short, for a lot of us, it can feel like we’re all alone in this.
And that’s where I think art really shines: for those of us who both create and consume it, art is connection. It is a way of reaching across space and time to validate one another’s experiences, to help us process the un-processable. Even if I’m not writing explicitly about the pandemic, writing and reading and consuming other forms of art helps me explore other emotions, other points of view, and what it means to be human. It might be trite to say that today we’re more divided than ever, but it’s also not wrong. If anything, we need—crave—connection today, when the things that claim to unite us only seem to drive us farther apart.
I look at writing as throwing out a lifeline, both for myself and for others I don’t yet know. And I know that I need lifelines the most when things are falling apart.
So don’t lose hope, writers and creatives. This is me throwing out a lifeline to you. Are you going to catch it?
What art helped you get through 2021? How would you like the art that you create to affect others?
Kelsey Allagood (she/her) is a writer, occasional photographer, and trained political analyst specializing in the causes of war and systemic oppression. This background led her to begin writing fantasy fiction steeped in the anthropology of conflict.
Her writing can be found in literary magazines such as Barrelhouse, GRIFFEL, Menacing Hedge, and Wanderlust. Her photography has been featured in RESURRECTION mag. She has also written on peaceful resistance movements, art as a form of political resistance, and countering violent extremist ideology.
Kelsey has a Bachelor’s Degree in international and cultural studies from the University of Tampa and a Master’s Degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University.
She lives in Maryland with her husband, mother, and a rescue dog named Henry.
[coffee]
As a photographer, 2020 basically kept me from traveling and feeling alive in the enjoyment of seeing new places, revisiting old happy places. I put my cameras down. Looked at them but couldn’t bring myself to take them to the lake where we spent a lot of time. (As lakes go, it’s not all that photogenic!) But, as I sat on the boat and looked at sky and lake and forest, I was inspired to write. Plus I had an iPod full of a variety of music/music styles. I had to write memories from the songs. Use the titles as titles of poems — in short, I became the creative poet of my past. Bringing these poems home, especially after our boat went to storage, I wrote a few more, including ones about having and surviving Covid. I harnessed language and wrote a book. I self-published in April. Granted, 2021 wasn’t as limiting as 2020 and the muse stepped away. I’m struggling with poetry now, but it’s still there, giving me joy in self-expression and language. And, so importantly, I’m ready to photograph the world!
Hi, Alice. Your use of music to prompt memory is a great technique. You might enjoy Al Young’s Kinds of Blue, which is a collection of short prose pieces that arose from recollections certain songs inspired for him. Good luck with getting out there in 2022 and “photographing the world.”
Alice, I love that we had nearly reversed experiences this year–2020 made it hard for me to write, but I decided to start taking my photography hobby a bit more seriously, and ended up getting some photos published in (ironically) a literary magazine. It’s so nice to have another creative outlet when one of them isn’t working out. I’m so glad you found joy in poetry and are getting back into photography!
I don’t think we are more divided than ever. I think we’re just more aware of the vastly-different cultures and beliefs than ever before because of technology. And we have not yet learned how to process those differences in a constructive way. Rather than learn from them, we fear them. As a species, we are like teenagers just learning to drive. We can jam a foot down on the gas but we don’t yet know how to negotiate a skid. For me , art and especially writing play a vital role in our evolution. Art and literature expose us to ways of life and times in history we can’t inhabit physically. But we process these things with our hearts and our brains, which when working together, are capable of deep magic. Immersed in a well-told tale, we sit across the council fire from a Lakota Elder telling the story of creation. We smell the smells, see the colors, feel the feels. Art connects our hearts to our brains without us even knowing it’s happening. So yeah, there’s darkness , but there’s light, too. We’re leaving a crumbling paradigm behind. Artist and writers will show the way forward. I love this post!! Thank you, Kelsey!
Thanks for that perspective, Susan. I also think the “outrage machine” (social media), with its spontaneity and anonymity and emphasis on clicks, has encouraged a kind of irrationality that has always been there but never had such a convenient tool not only for impulsive emotion and disinformation but group formation around hot-button issues that become impermeable information silos. We’re still learning to navigate all that, as you rightly point out. I’ve found real respite in books lately precisely because they get me away from the FOMO (fear of missing out) compulsion to check my email and Facebook and Twitter and instead oblige me to concentrate for long periods–immersed, as you put it. Happy Holidays!
Oh I LOVE the “teenagers learning to drive” metaphor–it feels so true! The reasons you stated for loving art/writing are exactly the reasons I became a writer: I loved getting to experience the lives of other people when I read about them in books. As an only child who lived in a fairly isolated environment, art (and especially books) helped remind me that we’re not alone in this big scary world. Cheers to leaving old crumbling paradigms behind!
This is so well-said, and also reminds me of a tweet or something I saw that basically said: Humans were never meant to be THIS aware of one another. We were never meant to know what everyone else was thinking, feeling, doing, etc. No wonder we all feel so anxious and defensive.
But art is the antidote. Art takes us out of ourselves, and also simultaneously helps us navigate within ourselves more deeply. It’s a bridge, and a mirror.
Thanks for this comment, and for this post!
The time we live is definitely depressing, but let’s take a hard look at history. Its plagues, dust bowls, soup lines, and wars … HORRIFIC. The Holocaust, American slavery, Vietnam. Through it all, those who created art persisted. And we will continue to do so.
“Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love—they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
—Graham Greene, The Third Man
Oh, but David, if you sugarcoat it, what is left for the artist to write, sculpt, or paint?
Hey Kelsey, Right before coming here to read your thoughtful post (I’m always excited to see that it’s your day), I saw that the extremely reclusive Kate Bush–who’s inspired me in so many ways–issued a Christmas missive. In it, she said, “With nearly two years of Covid, are any of us the same people we were before?” I don’t know why, but it really hit me that we aren’t.
Considering your question about how my consumption of art has changed, I guess I am particularly fussy about its ability to make me feel something. I’ve never been much of a binge-watcher. But in the era of streaming, if I’m not feeling something fairly soon, I’m gone. I used to watch sports fairly regularly. Now I can’t help but to be reminded of the relative meaningless of sports. So I rarely watch. I’m also quicker to DNF books. I guess for me this crisis has been one of the most potent “life’s too short” reminders ever.
As for how I’d like my work to affect others, I don’t think my goal has changed all that much. I’ve always wanted whomever the work connects with to feel something. Maybe that desire has just grown more intense.
Happy holidays, Kelsey. Thanks for always making me feel something with your words. I know it takes effort. Wishing you better days ahead.
Ditto on the DNF and sports and “Life’s too short” insights. Have a merry holiday, Vaughn .
Funny thing you should say that. Lifeline? Yes, and how odd that an activity so solitary should be the very thing that makes me feel connected in the lonely desert of the pandemic.
When working on a story, I’m by myself but I don’t feel alone. Am I tho throwing a lifeline out or is it being thrown to me? Not sure but it doesn’t matter. Reading may be saving us but writing is saving me.
“She who speaks to us from the depth of her loneliness speaks to us of ourselves.” — Simone de Beauvoir, writing about Violette Le Duc’s memoir, La Batarde.
Thanks Kelsey. I always think of Eileen Spinelli’s wonderful little picture book: THREE PEBBLES AND A SONG about the joy of art, how it saves us. It really is about connection. I’ve read some great books, kept writing but above all, it’s singing sacred music that has taken me out of this chaotic world to things transcendent, knowing God holds all things in existence, that He’s in control, not men. Been singing music composed throughout the ages, from Prudentius in AD 400s to Josquin and Byrd from medieval times to Ephrem Feeley’s new Christmas carol “In a Manger” that I learned he put together just this week. Simple and beautiful. Here’s a link if you want to listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eInRo1fbxM4
You might also enjoy this, Vijaya: Chanticleer singing Biebl’s “Ave Maria:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7C-VXZVSTw
Love this, David. Esp. for the entire Angelus. But the purest recording of Biebl’s Ave Maria is by Voces 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41KBZsdC2dw
And since this is the season, I’ve been enjoying Handel’s Messiah. The conductor, Barnaby Smith, is a joy to watch.
In many ways 2021 was more difficult than 2020. I thought the pandemic would be over, or at least “more” over. I thought wisdom and love would prevail over fear. So wrong.
Writing projects helped bring focus, meaning, and escape as usual (and I like to think that’s what I bring in some small measure to others) but I think the art that helped me get through 2021 was learning how to be still. When I can be still (no easy task) it’s easier to just be—and to listen. To get a glimpse of something I need to learn; to know.
My granddaughter recently introduced me to bell hooks, and your opening pulled me right in. Well done!
“I think the art that helped me get through 2021 was learning how to be still.” Such an important point, and one I’ll be addressing in my January post. Thanks for that, Peg. Happy Holidays!
Thank you for this, Kelsey (although I disagree that Camus believed nothing matters). Indeed, one can feel quite along — thanks for the lifeline. (And here I’ll channel Joan Armatrading: “Throw me a life line/Save me.”)
Your point that we must continue to foster and nurture our creativity even in the worst of times brought to mind the late great Irish poet Eavan Boland’s wonderful collection In a Time of Violence, which sadly I’ve packed away (we’re moving), but I found this poem of hers online which speaks, albeit obliquely, to the issue.
IV Quarantine
In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking – they were both walking – north.
She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.
In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.
Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:
Their death together in the winter of 1847.
Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.
Here is where the tiny world of the disabled writer is almost protective: my bubble has expanded not, the year was spent plowing on through the middle volume of a mainstream trilogy (safely set in immutable 2005/2006), one word, one scene, one chapter at a time (and now very close to the good part which ends this volume).
In a dip in the covid graphs, we were lucky enough to travel ONCE to our son’s wedding reception in Boulder (a year after their zoom wedding) to a 99% vaccinated three days of parties with people from as far away as South Africa and Mexico – at which NO ONE got sick.
And we are now locked down again at our retirement community in California where everyone is vaccinated and masked. It’s not that different when it’s your regular life. Except for the masks. Which we only wear when out of the apartment (not much). There is not a d**n thing I can do for the rest of the world except NOT get sick (so I don’t take up resources at packed hospitals) and keep putting one writing foot in front of the other. And send money as we can to the people who ARE doing all the work. Not the way I’d planned to spend my life, but I don’t know how other people manage to get out of bed.
Finishing Netherworld has been my sole focus since 2016 – and now it’s in sight. And I have hope from a twisted source: my chronic illness, ME/CFS, is actually being studied along with long-covid – after being ignored by most researchers and government agencies for well over three decades. I don’t like the way this has happened but I may benefit some day. Weird, eh?
Beautiful post. Thanks for your thoughts and the responses they inspired.