From Writer Unboxed:
“The world is a mess.”
I keep hearing this from people who are finding it hard to access their creativity or justify making time to write.
This seems like a new challenge, partly because of the full-on speed of news stories hurtling at us in the digital age. But it’s not new. I would submit that:
A) the world has always been a mess and
B) creative works are the most powerful tool we have to oppose the black-and-white, them-versus-us, whataboutism lack of subtlety in the news.
The arts change hearts, and changed hearts can change the world.
Your creative work is important.
The world is a mess and nevertheless…we must find time to create.
It’s where we are reminded that people are complex; that we can love and hate a character; where we learn to understand why a person might make dubious choices and still be worthy of love; where we see the real, everyday impact of policy decisions made by politicians…and laugh along with characters who are living and loving and laughing amidst the consequences.
In Neil M. Gunn’s The Silver Darlings we follow the lives of displaced Scottish Highlanders forced, after the Clearances, to go from homesteading to learning to be fishermen. The social message lodges in our heats only because we fall in love with Catrine and Roddy and their communities.
In the 1960s in the US you could argue that music and movies helped end the Vietnam War. (SIng it with me: “War! What is it good for?”)
Musicians, artists, and yes, athletes, refusing to visit South Africa helped overcome apartheid.
I grew up in Thatcher’s Britain, where mainstream entertainment encouraged everyone to aspire to be Laura Ashley-clad yuppies. In reality most of us lived in or near towns dealing with miner’s strikes and teachers’ strikes and 10% unemployment and the decline of manufacturing.
Artists like Billy Bragg and Sinead O’Conner, The Specials, Pink Floyd and U2 made art out of those turbulent times.
Link to the rest at Writer Unboxed
PG apologizes for his failure to remove an advertisement for Nuance from this post. It was very late when he posted it last night.
If the world is a “mess” and you can’t do anything about it, then it’s not for you to worry about. Focus on what you can do, and do that instead. Just go about your day and write.
Absolutely
When has the world not been a mess?
“Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity, as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest.”
— Leonardo da Vinci