 Dear Friends, Readers, Sympathizers, Things are beginning to change. The election is finally over (mostly), and the doomsday outlook of the last few years is loosening its grip. Here in my neck of the woods the awareness of community has been heightened. Since the pandemic began, our immediate neighborhood has been going out every night at 8 pm to howl. We let our voices rip for a full minute of protest, despair, celebration, hope. That has led to friendly greetings on the street. Though we don’t all know each other well, I am quite confident that, in a crisis of any kind, we would help each other out.During these past few months of intense doomscrolling and Trump/pandemic panic, when it’s often been hard to focus on anything but the culture’s high-pitched screaming, I have spent a lot of time wondering about the role of art during dark times. Does it have a role to play at all and, if so, what is it? Because I specialize in the narrative arts, I’ve been acutely aware that the Shakespearean drama being enacted in the public space has been competing with—and often drowning out—the allure of even the most dramatic stories of novelists and storytellers. We’ve been living in a state of emergency, and quite rightly most of us have been focused on that emergency to the detriment of our imaginations. As The New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg says: “Living in Trump’s panic-inducing eternal present is bad for art, but it’s also bad for imagination more broadly, including the imagination needed to conceive a future in which Trumpism is unthinkable.” But I’ve noticed something else is also true. In my precinct, the imagination of the artists I know has not foundered at all—in fact, it has flourished. Realizing that, I want to share with you some highlights from a novelist, a playwright, a visual artist, and a poet, all of whom have been working busily away despite the bleak national landscape. What are these artists doing? They’re doing what artists always do: holding the world up for our examination and bearing witness to the human condition.  While I would never ask a fellow novelist what her current unfinished work is about, I have asked my friend, novelist Miriam Gershow, to share a few sentences from her novel-in-progress, The New Baxters. This is how the novel begins: “When the new owners finally moved into the old Baxter house, Arlys live-tweeted the whole thing.” And later in the opening chapter: “Arlys texted to Dan. Dan would not respond. He never responded right away. Give him 20 minutes. Give him an hour. He was in a team meeting or a management meeting or a budget meeting. He was in QI or QA or PA or CRM or KPI. He was busy.” A vivid imagination is on display here in spades, spinning a tale, creating a world both strange and familiar. Miriam’s sensibility is exquisitely attuned to all aspects of our cultural anxiety. Put The New Baxters on your “to-read” list when it comes out, and meanwhile, check out Miriam’s website.  Paul Calandrino (my partner) has also been creatively engaged. Despite holding down a demanding full-time job, he has just completed a full-length play called The Fifth Hypothesis.The work explores why we believe what we believe. Could there be a more relevant question? “SONDERBUGEL: This is your problem, Max—if you’ll permit me—as pertains to sasquatch. You don’t give it a chance. And if you don’t allow for the possibility, even remotely, you’ll never be able to see the evidence. MAX: The footprints. SONDERBUGEL: And eyewitness accounts. Are all those thousands of people lying? Or dreaming? Or misidentifying? MAX: Yes. Some are lying. But I’d say the vast majority ‘want to believe.’ In something wild. Every culture has its story of hairy giants in the woods. It’s archetypal. They’re a projection of something untamed and primal within us. In the case of my sister, bigfoot might be a symbol of power arising from a situation in which she felt powerless. That she was ‘nurtured’ by a female sasquatch speaks to a maternal or healing power. SONDERBUGEL: Yes, yes. (Puts his hand gently, almost lovingly on MAX’s head.) Willful ignorance is a mighty fortress.” When theaters are up and running again, expect to see a production of this play. Meanwhile, check out Paul’s website. Poet Molly Davidson, my niece, who is earning her MFA from Sarah Lawrence, offers us a reflection on the pandemic in this recent poem from her rapidly growing oeuvre: LIFE AT ONCE This morning, eagerly human, I let the sink water sing as I opened the fridge for berries & milk— the cool-blue light reminded me I ought to serve the cats their chilled cans so I began dishing the slurry when the kettle (when did I put her on?) erupted in harmony with the sink, & what had I been doing—really— while my modern life poured into the gullets of my city’s sewer.  Molly says of her poem: I wrote this poem later in the pandemic, as I was trying to understand the strange domestic routines many of us feel defined by in this moment. On one level it feels like life is very stagnant in the age of COVID-19, yet, it keeps going, relentlessly so. This poem uses the images of a morning routine to try and capture some of that bizarre duality. You can reach Molly at: Mhdave15@gmail.com   Holed up on the other side of town from me, another dear friend, Andrea Schwartz-Feit, has refused to let a bullying president slow the making of art. Her gorgeous work is on display throughout this newsletter and can be further explored on her website. A long-time Buddhist, Andrea’s work is a portal into things most of us don’t see. I, too, have continued writing throughout my last six months of silence (meaning no newsletters). I finished a novel called Hair on Fire, and have begun a new one called, The Animal Novel. Here is the closing paragraph (as it now stands) of The Animal Novel. “It is already happening. Our memories have begun to fade. We watch them sliding away to a lavender scrim at the edge of our vision. House. Business. School. Clothes. Cooking. Music. Painting. Books. Cars. Things. Things. Things. Striving. Reputations. Politics. Power. Fast. Loud. Fast. Loud. Cat. Ferret. Enough. Gone. Full stop. Sniff the glorious world.”  In other updates: I will be reactivating the blog on my website which has languished for a while. I hope to post new observations about life and writing twice a month. I hope you’ll check it out here. And I am gearing up for the publication of my novel Sinking Islands in the fall of 2021. Meanwhile, you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, (@caiemmons) linked below. Until next time, stay well, stay strong, stay confident! And take the time to discover and savor some new art. All the best, Cai |
Write me: ce@caiemmons.com
Creating Art in Dark Times
© 2022-2024 Cai Emmons, All Rights Reserved.
Add Comment