Creativity in Times of Calamity

What writing still means in a world on fire

Photo by Alessio Soggetti on Unsplash

In happier times, there never used to be a feeling of guilt that went along with writing what I wanted to write. It would be an end in itself regardless of the topic. But as I’ve watched democracy erode around me, there’s been a growing sense that the only subject worth talking about is politics.

I think a lot about the concept of “ikigai.” It’s a Japanese term that translates to “a reason for being,” and more specifically, refers to finding the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can make a living doing. But more than the world needing a greater number of writers, I often feel that it needs more people speaking out against tyranny, both at home and abroad.

I hate to speak in unilateral terms when I say that not all writing is created equal. But it’s hard sometimes for me to build a case that erotica is essential to our species’ endeavor for a better world. When I write fiction or cover entertainment, I can’t help but fear that there are greater uses of that same linguistic effort.

I’m torn between two camps. On one hand, it’s just not possible for people to contend with all of the misery that’s out there. To take in each dismal news development as it happens is to consume more negativity than human beings were meant to stomach. Maybe there’s an important role I’m playing in continuing to write what I want to write regardless of what it is. Maybe people need escapes from the calamity taking place around them, and maybe writing can serve that function.

And yet, I’ve heard drug dealers make that same argument: “If they’re not getting it from me, they’ll just find it somewhere else.” It’s possible there’s real damage in helping people to keep their heads in the sands by writing about anything other than what’s most urgent. Maybe there really is sense in the idea that people will do whatever they can to get away from the miasma, whether it’s through books, satires, reviews, TV shows, or sprawling virtual worlds. And maybe I’m still fighting an essential fight just by keeping my words human and refusing to hand over the reins of creative control to an artificial hive mind.

One of the most deleterious effects of our political moment is the way that it’s allowed even more pressing issues to take a back seat. Climate change has by and large drifted from the public conscience ever since Donald Trump was inaugurated. The dismantlement of America’s democracy has caused the very collapse of our planet’s biodiversity to take a back seat. At the same time, this presidential administration has become a key engine of the industrial world’s refusal to stop polluting — no matter the cost.

There’s hardly a solution to these overarching ecological problems that doesn’t hinge on the United State’s participation. There will be no green new age for Planet Earth if one of its most powerful nations erases their citizens’ capacity to fight for that ambitious goal.

Every time I sit down to write something fun, light-hearted, absurd, or trivial— about the philosophical intrigue of airplanes or the subtle interactions of my day-to-day life— I wonder if I’m choosing the superfluous over the necessary. If I’m helping to let a slow-rolling apocalypse advance in silence because I didn’t believe I had anything novel to contribute that day.

But taking the alternative route is as exhausting as it is unsustainable. When every piece becomes another desperate plea or dystopian inventory-taking, it’s hard not to feel like I’m just rewording the same old cries for help. And if no one’s listening, what’s the point? Why be a voice in a chorus whose most grave and impassioned dirges are inevitably destined to be buried by the arrival of the next day’s news?

This sense of paralysis isn’t uncommon. The belief that, “If you’re not solving everything, you’re doing nothing,” may be as old as the ego itself. But it’s been reinforced by the modern pace of catastrophes and our ability to stay so maddeningly up to date with each new “Breaking news!” development. There’s no time to catch your breath before the next fire starts.

I don’t want to become just another narrator of decline. I don’t want to be one more voice screaming “end of the world!” cries through a megaphone. There’s nihilism in that, too. To focus only on the bad is a veiled surrender in itself.

Sometimes I wonder if the deeper problem isn’t what we write about, but the way we umbilically tie our worth to our productivity. If we see writing as worthwhile only when it performs a clear function — informs, persuades, or provokes emotional reactions — we start viewing language as a tool rather than an artform. And that saps humanity from the creative process. It reduces writers into mere vessels for messaging.

One of art’s greatest powers is its ability to emerge from the chaos of the world unburdened by it.

I didn’t get into writing because I wanted to be efficient. I started because it gave shape to disorder and helped me to make sense of the senseless. Even when the subject at hand is rambunctiously unrelated to humanity’s greater plights, it still helps me to navigate the world and remain in touch with what makes me feel alive.

Maybe that’s the piece I keep forgetting — that connection is its own form of activism. Maybe there’s something critical in simply reminding people that they’re not alone in their fears, wishes, wounds, or complexities. That others are living through the same surreal moment and finding their own ways to stay afloat. Doing what they can to stay sane in this relentlessly spinning world.

Maybe what resistance looks like is refusing to let paranoia or rage or despondency flatten our creative instincts. Writing not only about what’s urgent, but what sets our souls on fire — even as the world burns.

We can’t let the pandemonium of the present day erase the strange, hilarious, ridiculous, or delightful. When we allow the negativity of the world to stifle our artistic impulses, we forfeit the range of emotions and sensations that come with being alive. Being conscious entities born into enchanting, flailing confusion.

None of this is to say we should retreat or turn a blind eye to our world’s dire state. But if all we offer is fire and fury, people will stop reading. The goal can’t be to terrify people into action. That’s what authoritarians do. The goal so often is to stir people into remembering what’s worth saving.

So maybe the answer isn’t to write only about politics, or never about politics, but to allow the political to exist as one part of a broader human experience. To make space for joy and grief and quiet. To occasionally give the floor to outrage and vertigo without losing sight of awe and curiosity — because all of it still matters. All of it is part of the life we’re trying to preserve.

I still don’t know if writing about a dream I had — or some review of an underrated movie — is my wisest or most selfless move in a given moment. But I know that every time I stop myself from putting my thoughts onto paper, something inside of me stiffens. My creative side recoils. And that recoil is a loss of its own.

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