Little Oracles

S04:E03 | Refuge: On Mourning, Mending, and Making in Troubling Times

• allison arth

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In this spontaneous emergency episode in response to the 2024 U.S. election, I'm calling out your creative spirit: in times like these, we need mourners, we need menders, we need makers. We need your creative revolution.

We'll resume our three-part series about coming back to creativity next week, but until then, as always: take care, keep creating, and stay divine. <3

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[Intro music]

Hi everybody, and welcome to the Little Oracles podcast, an oracle for the everyday creative. I’m Allison Arth.

So I’m recording this interstitial, emergency episode two days after the incredibly consequential presidential and congressional election here in the United States, one that really magnified the hold that intolerance in so many of its forms — white supremacy and jingoism and so-called religious zealotry — have on this country, and I am deeply, deeply devastated. I’m sad, I’m feeling hollowed out; kind of betrayed, and really mistrustful of the millions of people who, whether they’re conscious of it, or they were quietly coerced, basically pledged allegiance to such myopic, hateful rhetoric and the figureheads who spread it around.

These feel like incredibly bleak times, and in a way, they are; we’ve seen the damage that can be done to civil rights — really, human rights — under the veil of this kind of governmental paternalism. And all of that is very, very real, and very, very frightening, and in the face of such real and such frightening possibilities, when the future feels overwhelming and the days feel dismal and you feel dejected or demoralized or like nothing you do matters, I’m encouraging you to make something, anything.

And it doesn’t have to be “good,” [chuckles] by some external (or even internal) standard; just take some time to make — you can make in mourning, you can make in anger, you can make in determination — but just make; tend the fire that is your compassionate, creative soul. Lean on your community, make things together, become, like, a creator coalition.

You can even make time to take in someone else’s creativity, which is like tantamount to feeding the flame, you know? You can look at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s online collection, or watch a friend’s band play a show; you can rewatch your favorite comfort TV, read something really nourishing — I really love Olivia Laing’s essay collection Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, which is all about the intersections of art and politics, if you’re looking for something kind of apropos to what’s happening now; I also love something more escapist, like French Exit by Patrick deWitt, a really dryly funny novel about a mother and son living abroad in Paris with their cat, Small Frank, and a collection of kooky neighbors. 

Because it all comes down to this: your art, your craft, your practice of making is your rebellion: it’s your refuge, it’s your revelation, it’s your recovery, it’s your way of telling yourself and anyone you share it with that your creative spirit — that wellspring of your humanity, and your empathy, and your reverence for the world around you — your creative spirit is indomitable, it cannot be conquered, it cannot be quelled, it cannot be taken away. 

So I hope you’re all taking care of yourselves and your nearest and dearest, and if you can offer mutual aid in your local communities and further afield, as time goes by, I encourage you to do so. If you need a respite from the news cycle or intrusive thoughts and you want more creative content and big book energy, you can check out little oracles dot com, where you’ll find every episode of the podcast and the original Little Oracles multimedia digital installation. We’ll resume our three-part series next week, but, until then, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine. 

[Outro music]