It's April, and the songbirds this morning are black caps and blackbirds. Wood pigeons and robins. The horse chestnuts are blossoming outside my window and they make me sneeze. Something is, anyway.
Recently, I was writing back and forth with a friend, another creative, who is spending time in Japan, immersing herself in the culture and landscapes of small fishing communities, research for a creative project that she's working on. It's an idyllic trip in idyllic places, and it's the sort of experience that makes us feel the good fortune that our fruitful lives can be.
But at one point in our conversation, she questioned how she could have this magical experience while other parts of the world are wrecked by death and destruction, while so much human suffering unfolds.
It's a dichotomy that we all live with when our lives play out beyond the reach of war or famine. It slips by unnoticed most of the time. When you take the first sip of morning tea, or lay your body on clean linens, or enjoy a bathing ritual. And so on, to infinity.
We cannot be blamed or shamed for not registering this for more than a moment here and there, because it's a fact of our collective existence. And it's a fact about which we can do very little. Disproportionate focus on anything we are powerless to change only ruins us. You understand how. You don't need me for that.
But the consideration shifts when your occupation involves creating art. Songs, films, stories, artisanal caramel — aren't such pursuits by comparison indulgent, frivolous, and somehow tone-deaf? How can I share a work of beauty or personal expression that no one asked me to create? Especially at a time when people are searching — at this very moment — for a safe place to sleep or a bite to eat... people for whom human dignity itself is a scarce resource..
The audacity.
But no, it is not audacious.
It's not a selfish act, and I reflected upon this until I could explain why. I chewed on it until I realized that every minor or magnificent work of art was created during moments coinciding with unimaginable atrocity.
Think of it. Someone died in pain during the time it took me to write that previous paragraph. And before I finish this sentence, about 30 human beings will begin their lives. It's difficult to fathom how many things are happening all at once. And if you consider the block universe interpretation of relativity — and I don't advise it, because your head might explode — then this moment, and all others that have ever transpired, and all moments that ever will, are happening at once.
So how do we justify the art?
How can she find peace while learning from people in the Japanese countryside about the colors of their lives, while elsewhere countless others are suffering? How dare I indulge my concern for phrases, adverbs, and punctuation marks in 400 pages of made-up text that no one asked me to create?
I know why. Because it's what makes us human, as much as our capacity for cruelty, and god help us if we surrender our capacity for making beauty, and leave the stage of human endeavor to the monsters.
Besides, who needs a whisper of beauty more than someone who's suffering?
Everything about us is true in this very moment — good and wretched, the worst and best — and all we can do is make our moments as good as they can be.
I hope this note finds you well enough to express your love for anyone or anything in some small way today.
Love you,
Chip
Two more things I've been creating of late, and I would be delighted if you checked them out:
#1 – Budapest Unscripted
An audio documentary I started just for me, chronicling the experience of landing in Hungary, finishing the novel–With Love, Budapest–and finding community at an age when most people are starting to think about settling down.
#2 – Relevant Experience
This is a serial memoir about my early working life, when I wandered through jobs the way most people move through a farmer's market.
Bonus image, aren't you lucky...
Because I love it.
