There was a little meme going around eight years ago this month: “Bad for the country. Bad for the planet. Good for art.”
Obviously not good for art in the sense of Americans on the whole showing themselves to be in a collective mood to support “the arts,” or of being open to what art brings us: “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery,” the painter Francis Bacon wrote.
Rather, that art thrives as rebellion in a time of close-mindedness, that the artist works better when not coddled, when she is forced to rage against the machine.
And, talking of Irish artists like Bacon: When confronted with politics, it was Joyce’s protagonist Stephen Dedalus who said: “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
So times like these are times for some kind of Zen alternative to despair. For the Dublin trifecta, it was the Irish Literary Times that, on this past Tuesday’s election night, social media-ed out these lines from Samuel Beckett: “Vladimir: ‘What do we do now?’ Estragon: ‘Wait.’”
Wednesday morning, the artist-as-DJ Novena Carmel on KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic” began her playlist with “528 Hz Whole Body Regeneration,” those soothing tones you might hear in a day spa, and then followed it up with soul and gospel: “My People … Hold On,” by Eddie Kendricks; “Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled” by Lady Blackbird; “Like a Ship” by Leon Bridges, all of which felt a mightily appropriate tonic for America.
Most of my friends are artists, musicians, teachers and writers. When one member of a text group jotted a note of despair, the professional guitarist replied: “I like a good fight and we’ll fight at the margins. It’s a pretty dismal situation but I’m ready to work.”
And some are feeling a bit bad about going all Zen. A newspaper opinion writer friend, heading off this weekend to a long-scheduled meditation retreat in Big Sur, texted another group: “Going there now feels like the theater of the absurd.”
Not absurd, I replied. Sounds great to me. “That’s the best thing a person could do, in this moment. Regroup” Then, like good monks, we embraced the practical: Whether Highway 1 from the south, above San Simeon, was still blocked by the landslide. “How you getting there?” “Monterey.”
Roads will be closed. But there are alternate routes.
I personally take solace in looking at the big map of the continental U.S.A. and seeing that long line of California, Oregon and Washington, along with, out in the blue Pacific, Hawaii. West Coast, best coast! How lucky we are to live here. New Mexico and Colorado — they’re sweet lands, too. Minnesota’s mighty nice. Illinois, Maine, Vermont, Virginia — what’s not to like? What a country we could cobble together. Creative, beautiful, resource-rich, well-read. Filled with college-educated women. There’s my favorite new choice for a rock-band name: “College-Educated Women.” Who doesn’t like college-educated women? The best people, quite clearly, are college-educated women. Smart. Worldly.
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For some, the Zen thing is not going to cut it. They’re not digging the misogyny. The country singer Abby Webster, part of the alternative Western AF genre, let it out in a long note: “I am tired of being zen today. I’m tired of trying to emulate Ram Dass today. I broke plates. I sobbed uncontrollably and threw things. I felt like a baby screaming in a dark room. … This country re-elected a rapist rather than putting a woman in office. I am ashamed.”
I like the proper non-opinion journalism attitude as well. From a talk a senior editor, Jesse Eisinger, at the news site ProPublica gave to his staff: “Now we get to see if we really meant it when we said we will hold power to account. Will we do so when our subjects have true power on their side and a willingness to use it? We may be harassed. We may be sued. We may be threatened with violence. We may be ignored. Are we just sunshine journalists or are we ready?”
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.