even if i can’t change the world
– Dickinson Season 3 Episode 10
i’m still going to write
and even if no one ever cares
even if it makes absolutely no difference
that there was a person
named emily dickinson
who sat in this little room
day after day
and wrote things down
just because she felt them
Available on Apple TV+
That part, at the end of the 3 season series of Apple TV’s show Dickinson, struck me because that is, to the artist, the primary thing and it summed it up so beautifully and succinctly. We are just there, day after day, writing or painting or making music – doing our arts – because we feel them. I look around at my studio, lovely space that it is, where I return to every day. My easel and the door to the garden, the computer and phone offering windows to the world at large. So I return every day and paint and, really, that’s the whole goal – to make the art of what it feels like, for me, right now in this now.
It is the warp and woof of politics and cultural movements, the song of the birds and the wind high in the trees, all woven together to give to you, dear reader, dear audience, a reflection that isn’t selling anything or promoting anything. It isn’t of one particular soapbox or another. It is simply an honest portrayal of the now – of what it is and could be – shooting for the highest aims and settling in a place that I hope is nourishing.