Please Promote Your Work In The Face Of Uninvited Nightmare

I’ve seen people say they don’t want to share their books, their art, their work right now because it seems trivial in the shadows of these dark times, and I thought, I should talk about this. And my first response was going to be a long post — though, to some degree, I already did that post, and I did it way back in 2017, and honestly, it reads like I wrote that post yesterday.

So, instead of some big thing about how writing is resistance and art is an act of optimism, blah blah blah, let’s just scrape away all that stuff and go right for the heart of the matter:

We need the art.

Shit is bad, and we need books, and music, and paintings.

That’s it, it’s as simple as that.

The times are hard, and art helps us through hard times.

As such? You should never feel guilty for sharing your work because what do you think is going to help us through this bullshit? The way through nightmare is not more nightmare. We’re not going to succeed just by gulping from the shit hose and reading bad news until our eyes pop and run down our faces in a gush of aqueous goo. We need the break. We need the good stuff to combat the bad stuff. Doesn’t matter if the art is escapist counterweight or an arrow in the eye of fascism — we need it, we need it all, and we need it now. It’s not trivial. It’s a fucking life preserver.

So, tell us. Share it. Show it. Give us links. Give us that light. We need to see your painting of a penguin or your book about two witches in love or a photo you took of a waffle you made. We need the songs of rage and the poetry of hope and we need it all and we need it today, and we’ll need it tomorrow, and we’re gonna need it a whole lot over the next four years (and then for all the years after). Art is the firelight. Art is the ladder out of the pit.

It’s one of the very reasons we combat all the bad shit going on — so we can continue to make and witness art freely in this world. Art by all the people, just not a subset of them. Make it. Share it. Share yours, share others. Sell it! Buy it! Seek it. And no, this is not a post about how see, the best art is made in difficult times — that’s bullshit, because it’s harder now to make it. I sit here every day writing, and it’s like pulling the teeth out of an angry puma. I’ll write 250 words and then blink and before I even realize what’s happening I’m doomscrolling — sliding down a chute lubricated with an endless slicking of bad, weird news. I have to force myself to stop tonguing the broken tooth and go back to the work. It’s hard right now to make anything, which is all the more reason we must exalt that what is being made.

We need it.

I need it.

It is not trivial.

Rather, it is essential.