Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” ~ Rumi

The Artist Does Not Apologize

Marta Spendowska

Someone will always ask it with the slight narrowing of the eyes, the pause before "nice work."

How can you paint right now? How can you think about watercolor, go shopping for the new paint tube, or wet your paper when the world is on fire?

The question contains a trap: that making art in wartime is a form of looking away. That beauty is a luxury available only when no one is dying, and since someone is always dying, you should probably stop. Watch instead. Scroll? Stay informed. Tweet angry tweets? Carry the weight until it becomes your entire personality.

When you consume catastrophe — when you let your nervous system marinate in the frequency of collapse — you are not resisting the war but rehearsing it. The doom, passed from body to body, night after night, glass of wine after a bottle of wine, becomes a kind of prayer for the thing we fear. A collective nocebo that feels like [...]

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