On Art and Politics

As an Artist who very briefly worked in politics I want to clarify something. Telling the truth isn’t political. It’s the thing politics doesn’t do. Posturing, pandering, pontificating, sure. But truth telling? Look at our politics. Can you find truth? Can you find consistent, uncomfortable, unrelenting, uncompromising truth? They are doing something else.

The insistence on dismissing Artists who tell the truth as “political” is meant to make the truth, and those Artists, unlikable. Nobody likes politics. We’re all sick of being lied to. More politicians than not are doing things for the wrong reasons. The exceptions are just that, exceptions. We’re all tired. But the truth is the thing that sets us free! So see this narrative for what it is; an attempt to manipulate you. An attempt to make truth telling precarious. Because the truth is what changes things including our politics which, as we’ve established, is a separate and distinct thing from truth telling and also art.

If you are an Artist who is telling the truth? Keep going! You are doing the thing that great Artists have always done. Shinning a light in the dark. That is the legacy of Artistry. A thing which, for the record, predates politics. Out of all the things our Ancestors could have done or discovered, in the very infancy of humanity, they found the impulse to create. They found the impulse to tell the truth of what they saw and felt with human hands and human hearts. Across continents and mediums, bridging genres and time; we bring the light. What an incredible power made more so when we stop letting a confused culture inform how we see ourselves and that power.

Every Artist can, obviously, do whatever they want. Create whatever they want. Voice whatever they want. Advocate for whatever they want. Or not! But to position yourself as above “politics,” while claiming a stance of unity and love, is really just an admission of privilege and naivety. The system protects you, so no, your existence is not “political”. But understand this: neither is the existence of the people whose lives and freedoms have been politicized by bad actors who understand that a fearful divided world is easier to control and manipulate. A world where a handful of billionaires set the agenda is a world with small and petty ambitions. Those ambitions, and what they cost, would be unpopular if they were made known. So though you may feel insulated, rising above it all, these cycles of greed and violence cost you your humanity too. They inform your world too. You don’t have to create or engage with that. But please don’t opt out and call it love.

Unity requires being willing to see the people you are unifying with. Unifying is an action. Love is a verb. A lot of what gets passed off as love is actually just tepid tolerance. Being willing to stand next to someone doesn’t mean much if you refuse to look at them.

Love would never tolerate the dehumanization and destruction of others. Ever. To call neglect love is to expose the wound.

We give the love we know. We pass on what’s been left unhealed. But the story doesn’t end until the story fucking ends. And our story, this story of war and genocide, of scarcity and oppression, of supremacy and dehumanization; remains firmly at the discretion of our hands and our hearts.

What if on the other side of this, we find it in ourselves to truly love. Imagine how such an outcome textures everything that preceded it. It does not change the suffering or the brutality or the past. It cannot raise the dead. We will never regain what has been lost… and our grief remains to remind us that none of it was necessary. But what if these cycles end with us? Imagine a world built with love as its compass. Imagine a unity grounded in love as its anchor. Not in an abstract passive way, but in a way that is real and rooted and felt.

There is life beyond the world we’ve been given. There is truth yet still to light the dark. But we can’t face that truth with our backs turned and our eyes closed. We can’t face that truth while calling it something else.

In the matter of art making and art sharing, please be clear: the truth is the whole fucking point.

When standing on the precipice of history, as we are, it is easier to write when you know yourself to wield a ferocious pen. Our choices will always inform what comes next, they are the mark that each of us might make. It is never too late to make a new choice. We all have the power to create life. To stand with truth and life. To stand for love and justice. We will forget that. But we will also remember. And the Artist who takes the stage to remind us, is always a gift.

Look at this world; both beautiful and devastating.

Lend it your voice.

What would love do?