A Return to Softness
Banned books, Nina Simone and a comic about softness.
This week we’re thinking about why dictators are obsessed with art and hate artists, why you should definitely be reading banned books, how pain turns us rigid when we need to be soft and Nina Simone (tbh when are we not thinking about Nina Simone?). Scroll down for the comic (or go here).
If you’ve been having a hard time these past few weeks, I really need you to read the comic at the end of this newsletter. It came to me fully formed on a Tuesday evening. I knew every visual detail of it, I knew the feeling I was trying to convey, I could FEEL it with all the force of memory — but I had no idea how to describe it in words or how to make you see what I meant. This rarely happens.
One of my favourite painters, Eric Fischl once said that he painted so that he could understand what he was feeling, and this week’s comic was a bit like that. The words came later.
I’ve been thinking about what an artist’s duty is in these times, when it’s easier to numb oneself to feeling. The metaphor that made the most sense to me is: illumination. Art is a searchlight, and where an artist points their gaze is how they illuminate parts of the world/the self for you. Light also plays tricks, because where we point a light decides how shadows fall, therefore the act of revelation is also an act of concealment.
There’s a reason why all the visual art from a turbulent political period will look a certain way, or choose to exist in direct contrast to what is in vogue at the time. There’s a reason why this portrait of Trump looks like this and that of the other monarch looks like this, why mainstream films under the current government in India are fixated with the machismo of heroes from Hindu mythology, and why Meta has a problem with images of women’s bodies and trans bodies.
Artists who conform don’t do so only because proximity to power will mean that their art will receive more patronage (although it probably will). The romance works both ways: political leaders know they need art to capture the imagination of people, to shape their ideas, bend their will gently and delegitimise forms of resistance. Art exists in dialogue with politics even when it doesn’t explicitly acknowledge that. Banned books, for instance, often have nothing to do with the government, but illuminate something that someone in power doesn’t want you to know.
Read: The Nazis banned Emil Nolde from painting for the rest of his life. He painted anyway and became a symbol of the German resistance. Except, archivists have discovered that Nolde was an anti-Semite all along.
Since this is arriving on the weekend, here is some Nina Simone. Scroll down for your weekly comic.
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What do you notice when a piece of art moves you, or when it causes you to freeze in your tracks? What concealed parts of your emotional self dance in response to the music?
What I’m pointing the searchlight at this week is your softness, which is in fact not separate from your resilience. When we are in pain, we turn rigid. Being in pain means we have little capacity to hold the suffering of others. Pain is the body saying - hey, I need you to pay attention to me right now (which is why, sometimes it helps to distract the mind from an aching body). Emotional pain also numbs our capacity to feel more. The only way out, is a slow return to the self.
This week, I’d like you to notice how you react when you are touched and held. What happens in your mind? How does your body react? Does it squirm? Lean in? Linger? I’d like you to notice how you react to someone else’s pain. How does that reaction change when it’s a person in your home, a stranger you see on the street, and a stranger on the internet?\(I'd like you To love yourself As you long to be loved Hold the parts That were never held\)
More soon,
Nish