When No One Is Feeling Ok

Art In Dark Times

No one is feeling ok.
Ok? OK.
These are times.
Dark, changeful, violent, fiery.
It’s a lot.
And so much so.

It is different for creatives.
Whether you consider your work to be about now
Of now.
You are making it now.
And your audience lives now.
And now surrounds your work.
Even if you are making the most escapist stuff.
What you are escaping from
Is part of it.

But more what I want to share about
Is how it feels to make it.
It can feel important
If you are pointed.
But for so many of you -
If you are writing love songs
Or memoirs
Or painting portraits
It can feel pointless to show up
For your novella.
Or podcast.
In this mess.
When no one is feeling ok.
When you are not feeling ok.

What do you really have to offer?
Answers?
You can barely understand the question.
Maybe you have an opinion.
But you’ve come to trust opinions less.
And facts?
Facts are illusive.
Like one nights stands.
Hard to remember and they they come back to haunt you.

So how to keep making work now.
When no one is feeling ok.
I have no answers except this.
I know putting away your work
Is not the way.

No one is feeling ok.
Right?
Which means that
Besides all the self care strategies
Including being of service
What people need the most
Is connection.

Every real problem we face on earth right now
Is the result of disconnect.

And that’s where you come in.
With your not okness.
Because how can you help
With your shows and pieces and actions and thingees.
You can tell the truth.
Or more accurately
Your truth.
Not The Truth.
Truth connects us.

A tiny little piece of truthiness.
The Truth?
That seems daunting.
But a glimmer of it.
Yours.
About the big thing
Or even about a little thing
That’s big to you.
Even a little ladybug size truth.
A truth you can hold in the palm of your hand
And carry around like a rock
You found at the beach.
Till it feels so much a part of you
That you throw it back in the ocean
And still have it
Nestled in your cupped
Love and life lines.

Your truth
Your story
Your vision
Is your gift.
And you have to toss it back in.
That’s somehow how the connection happens.

Will it cause peace to erupt in the Middle East?
Will it untangle the web of because of.
And before thats.
No.

But time isn’t linear.
We almost get that.
Even though it’s impossible to know what to do with it.
And maybe somehow
What you do tomorrow
Effects what happened
Ten thousand years ago.

One way out of not okness
Is to hold the possibility
That if you move forward
Understanding what you do
You might understand more later.

And no one is feeling ok.
Feeling not ok?
It’s the perfect place to meet art at.
So your audience is hungry.
Hungry for your vulnerable piece of truth.
For the connections you can make between this and that.
For the beautiful cadence
That is louder than the screams.

You were born with this thing
That will go wonky
And be part of the static
Unless you find a way
To do it.

Even now.
When no one is feeling ok.
And maybe especially.
Let your truth be the beauty.
Like the poem says.
Truth is beauty.
So let the beauty
Be what connects you.
Especially now.
When no one is feeling ok.

Infinity Yours…
xx
Beth