Protest Song
On the difficulty and essentialness of making art in times of political upheaval.
I have begun—on the page and in my mind—to write a new post many times since my last one… considering the immense beauty and complexity of a Bach violin fugue I’m attempting to learn for guitar…considering a recent ski across a frozen lake with my wife and daughter, towing along food and water for several days of off-grid living in our tiny cabin, the snow in the Adirondacks already thigh-deep, the lake ice nearly a foot thick…considering my new grain grinding attachment for my KitchenAid, upping my sourdough baking passion a notch, learning anew how to nurture my starter and loaves with fresh-ground, hard white, hard wheat, einkorn, rye…considering just today the old-fashioned snowstorm that buried everything here in a place that now rarely sees storms like this with lovely, dense, dry-fluffy snow, my cars transformed into odd, heaping mounds of white, the snow falling hard all one day, on through the night—the good, hard work of digging out, the simple, warming comfort of our soapstone and pellet wood stoves…or just the simpler-still comfort of my oft-aloof cat kneading her claws into the thick of my belly through an old, worn hoodie…..
But…
As I fall into such thoughts, I’m constantly pulled back abruptly into the terrifying reality of living in this particular timeline in these un-united states….
As viscerally disturbing as it was to witness the brutal executions of two decent, kind-hearted Minnesotans in high definition, from multiple points of view, I find the administration’s truly Orwellian insistence on alternate realities that can easily be refuted with the “evidence of our own eyes,” realities those at Fox News and other MAGAs are quick to support, like Mike Johnson who insists elected Minnesotan government officials are encouraging people to be violent (another blatant falsity), to be starkly, sickeningly, nightmarishly disturbing—the scepter of Stephen Miller channeling his unnerving look-alike Goebbels in that nasally, revolting voice—the perfect accompaniment to his ever-less-thinly-disguised white supremacist rhetoric—while casting that sinister, hate-filled scowl…all but too much to bear….
Add to these the Greenland fiasco, which may well have been at least in part a case of market manipulation to help the obscenely rich become obscenely richer….
And lest we forget that our commander in chief almost certainly raped children in his younger, swinging, “locker room humor” era of debasement—a Department of Justice almost exactly like Orwell’s Ministries of Peace, Truth, Love, and Plenty that actually foster their opposites—war, lies, torture, starvation—that blithely ignores the law signed by the convicted felon in chief himself to release the Epstein files….
“But look at all the fraud that occurred in Minnesota! Ha!” Fox News shouts. And many are quick to jump on board, this objectively wrong thing used as blanket justification for the racist excesses of ICE, the Mega-MAGA grift that has enriched Trump alone by an estimated 1.4 billion in just one year….
Nor can I ignore the illegal executions of boatmen in the Caribbean, the illegal invasion of a foreign country, the illegal kidnapping of their leader, all while pardoning a duly-convicted drug trafficker / ex-leader of another country.
Fox and other right wing MAGA mouthpieces also now seem to be turning even their own beloved radical embrace of the second amendment upside down in order to keep their narrative of radical leftists overrunning the gopher state and our country alive….
…and still Gaza, threats to Mexico, Cuba, Canada, the reframing of European alliances, the impact of needless DOGE cuts starting to hit home here and especially abroad (US Aid cuts already causing untold deaths), the stupidity and randomness of our tariff policies, the war on the history of slavery and native American genocide and LGBTQ rights and women’s rights and DEI…the first president in modern history to keep utterly silent on Martin Luther King Jr. day…the blunt, unrestrained weaponization of the Department of Justice…..
These are hard times to attempt to create things of beauty, to contemplate the wonder of the natural world, the power of poetry, music…to add in a meaningful way to the body of art humankind has constantly created since we evolved far enough beyond our simian cousins. But I try to remind myself of how essential this all is especially in these times, that many great works, much creative, inventive thinking occurred under, or in direct response to, the direst of conditions.
I’m reminded of my study abroad in Denmark and how after taking my first ever art history course in Copenhagen, I made a bee-line to the Louvre, the Prado, the Uffizi….and saw Picasso’s Guernica (along with the numerous sketches and studies he did for it). No slide or digital image of it can prepare you for its enormity, for how the striking beauty of those writhing fingers clawing upward in anguish speak to and somehow begin to counter the ugliness, the horror, the inhumanity of the bombing that gave rise to the mural. Works of such tremendous power can sustain us in times like these, I remind myself, even as I raise my own small voice in protest and try to make some sense of all this madness.
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We watch in horror from over here in the U.K. - helpless, confused, frustrated at our own leadership squabbles, and so I retreat into making my own art, writing my novel - historical fiction set soon after the First World War, escapism perhaps but also a small reminder that good things can come after very very bad things.
Your latest piece resonates powerfully with me, Arnaldo. The importance of the arts and of the constant interaction with the creative process in times like these is paramount. About Guernica and Picasso:
In the 70’s I was so often in NYC that I would drop in specifically to visit Guernica at MOMA anytime I was close by. My membership allowed me to enter gratis at any hour, so I became very familiar with that awesome work, displayed in New York until Franco finally passed away and it went to Spain where it rightfully belongs.
A year ago in September we were in Paris and spent time in the Picasso museum where I came face to face with the enormity of Picasso ‘s genius once again, a reminder that his ubiquity should never be a reason to take him for granted.
Thanks for your fine writing, amigo 👏👏