how (& why) we make art when the world is still the world

part one

Photo by Aleksandar Kyng on Unsplash

The thing that I can tell you about me is that I’m dysregulated. Obviously. I think it’s normal, but it doesn’t make it any less complicated. I have to clean the house each day, or the things in there will take over. I have to move my body a lot, or - guess what - I might not move it at all. I’m addicted to getting all the day’s information from my phone. But the phone is a nightmare, a window to specific and deliberate destruction. distraction. deviance. death. It is where I learn about everything happening and what we think about it. The data is always skewed in our interest. My phone is an echo chamber; it always sells me back to myself. I have several unbought items in my shopping cart because the A.I. knows who I am and what I think I need to make everything better to turn my face away from the blood. Serum. A pretty notebook. Novels. Saurkraut. New tea. Liquid eyeliner. No make-up make-up. New boots.

The phone is also where the people I love the most live. It’s how we reach out and touch each other’s lives. We pour into each other. We say

I’m thinking of you, or I know it’s been a while, sorry - how are the kids? Or Do you need anything? I’m going to the shop. Or I miss you. Or I want you; what should we do about it?

Anyway, between staring at the dark metal thing and otherwise into space/the abyss, art-making has been a bit tricky. Obviously.

Sometimes, I think my brain might be starting a revolt. Just when I think I know exactly what I want - surprise, I don’t! I think about the conscious and unconscious privilege I have in each moment to disengage with the constant devastation happening to human life. Here. Now. On the planet, yes, in every damn minute. It has always been this way, but the dissonance is more challenging than ever before. Well, we have the evidence in our pockets, don’t we…beeping countless times a minute, a growing spectrum of notifications?

I want to make my art. I live for my art. But what can a person like me (or you) say? What should a person (like me or you) be writing? Should a person be writing?