In these weird times, it's essential we remember how to be happy. It's so easy to get out of the habit and forget what it feels like - to lose sight of what we're striving for.
Why am I writing books about spaceships or painting pictures of abstract nudes, you might think, when there’s been an appalling disaster or when the economy’s tanking and global warming seems so pressing and bleak? How can art possibly matter in such a world? What’s the point?
When I start to feel that way, I think back to everything writers and artists have had to contend with in the past.
Our Palaeolithic ancestors daubed handprints on the walls of their caves, and carved figures from stone and wood. Vikings told their sagas. Even as Rome fell, poets wrote and sculptors sculpted. In the Dark Ages, people were still singing songs and telling folk tales.
oets wrote in the trenches of WWI. While the Cuban Missile Crisis raged, people were still reading and writing novels and short stories.
In 1984, at the height of the Cold War, with nuclear obliteration seemingly imminent, movies and TV programmes were made and watched, books were written and paintings painted and sold.
Art doesn’t stop for history. In some ways, art is history. It’s the way we record how we feel about our present, and a window on the thoughts and feelings of the past. And it’s also one of the best means we have to influence the future.
No single painting or novel can change the world, just as no single drop of rain can wash away a town. We may feel we have no control over global events. But culture is a cumulative phenomenon, and every drop helps create the flood.
As artists and writers, our work allows us to express what’s in our minds and hearts. As consumers, it can comfort and distract us; but it can also educate and inspire, and nourish our souls.
Art is one of the candles of civilisation. If we abandon it, the bad guys win.
So, pick up that paintbrush. Open that Word document. Every stroke of paint or line of prose you make is a blow struck against entropy and ignorance, and a contribution to the net beauty of the world.
So, pick up that paintbrush. Open that Word document. Every stroke of paint or line of prose you make is a blow struck against entropy and ignorance, and a contribution to the net beauty of the world.
Add your voices to the chorus of those who have gone before, uncounted, into the darkness, and simply say to the universe, “WE ARE ALIVE!”
