I don’t have much wisdom and or insight to impart about where we are as a society in the winter of 2020 except for the usual observations: that we have to become better as a culture, that things have been hard and will probably get harder before it gets easier, and that art making in such a climate is challenging, depressing, and (very occasionally) surprisingly transcend.
A small thought: that some of my favorite stories capture not necessarily revelation but confusion. Increasingly this feels like what fiction should be doing: holding up a mirror to our own human confusion, our fumbling and searching. I don’t find comfort very comforting lately, as much of it feels insincere, backward, complacent. At least as how its expressed in narrative form, whether that be in a book or a speech as seen on TV.
But I’m finding comfort in dream logic, in confusion, in challenges to simple meaning making. It’s been rough going, and I talk to so many writers who just feel stalled. They feel small in relation to what is happening. Unimportant.
Which is, of course, not the truth.
Not sure what the truth is, but it’s not THAT, not now and not ever.
More soon. I promise.
david nikki crouse 