Here we are, in the wake of an election that will install, in our nation’s highest office, a twice-impeached former president, a convicted felon, an adjudicated sexual offender, a man who tried repeatedly, in his first term, to end federal funding for the arts.
In that first term, the arts would not be defunded. In the coming years, if Donald Trump succeeds where he previously failed, art won’t end, it will merely become even harder for the people who make it to live in this country. For now, as it always does, art and culture can provide solace or serve as a galvanizing force. Spotify users streamed Billie Eilish’s mournful “What Was I Made For?” 1.46 million times this week. I suspect that Ross Gay’s beautiful “Sorrow Is Not My Name” might make the rounds online, as it did in 2020.
At VF, we asked artists of all kinds to share the work they’re turning to right now and contributed some of our own touchstones.
“I’ve been going back to Nick Cave, both his music but especially ‘Red Hand Files,’ his long-running newsletter in which he answers fans’ questions with a special emphasis on loss, grief, faith, making art in times of crisis, and how hope can be a ‘warrior emotion.’” —Megan Abbott, author of Beware the Woman
“The television series, I, Claudius. Robert Graves wrote the novels. Behind-the-scenes power struggles during the early Roman Empire.” —Margaret Atwood, contributor to Democracy: Eleven Writers and Leaders on What It Is—and Why It Matters
“The new adult coloring book from Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford, Magical Worlds, contains enough pages of delightful flowers, vines, castles, fish, potion bottles, and pumpkins to distract oneself from the stressors of the world. Get instant gratification with the 150 colors of Prismacolor Premier, Derwent Chromaflow, or Holbein Artist Colored Pencils. Maybe layer for days with Faber-Castell Polychromos. Add some sparkle with Caran D’Ache’s new Cosmic Blue metallic pencil set. Or ditch the book and just indulge in some soothing paint swatching of Daniel Smith’s granulating watercolors and the latest Gansai Tambi set by Kuretake.” —Dale Brauner, VF research editor
“I deeply admire Mariame Kaba’s writing. Her work is an invaluable source of hope. Her commitment to justice and collective care reminds me that we are not alone in our struggles. We have the power to create meaningful change, even in the face of overwhelming systems. Let This Radicalize You offers a vision for a world built on empathy, solidarity, and long-term liberation. In a time when it can feel like progress is slipping away, her unwavering belief in people’s capacity to transform society provides a much-needed lifeline. I’m also listening to music that moves my soul and creative practice. The song “We Pray,” by Coldplay, feels like a timely anthem. It features an array of international musical artists including Little Simz, Burna Boy, Elyanna, and TINI. The energy of their voices makes me feel alive and powerful.” —Glory Edim, author of Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me
“I am turning to Virginia Woolf’s inflammatory feminist polemic Three Guineas, published in 1938 as fascism was on the rise in Europe. As if Woolf were peering down the decades to our own fraught moment, she writes of the coming to power of ‘a monstrous male, loud of voice, hard of fist, childishly intent upon scoring the floor of the earth with chalk marks, within whose mystic boundaries human beings are penned, rigidly, separately, artificially; where, daubed red and gold […] he goes through mystic rites and enjoys the dubious pleasures of power and dominion while we, ‘his’ women, are locked in the private house without share in the many societies of which his society is composed.’
America has once again elected a cult figure with dictatorial aspirations, an angry manchild daubed in orange who threatens to take care of women “whether they like it or not,” whose VP berates women who have chosen not to have children, who is too macho to acknowledge his own paternity (“my wife has three little kids”). And so as I reread this passage of Three Guineas today, and think about how to fight back, I am put in mind of a few lines by the poet and activist Diane di Prima, from her collection Revolutionary Letters (1971): ‘NO ONE WAY WORKS, it will take all of us / shoving at the thing from all sides / to bring it down.’” —Lauren Elkin, author of Scaffolding
“Because I needed a clear-eyed jolt of cold reality on that morning after the long night, I turned to the poem ‘The Second Coming’ by William Butler Yeats and listened to ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ (ironically) by the Who. On my to-wallow-in list: Bill Evans’s studio version of ‘My Foolish Heart,’ as well as the live version from a classic 1961 Village Vanguard session. On my nightstand for the days ahead: Sarah Elizabeth Lewis’s new book, The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America.” —David Friend, VF editor of creative development
“When I need to center myself, find some peace in my soul, and overall lower my anxiety and heart rate, I turn on Jon Batiste’s Meditations album. The way this year has been going, I expect it to rank highly in my Spotify Wrapped.” —Natalie Gialluca, VF senior visuals editor
Like many people, I am still processing the events of this week, and how we got here. I don’t know the answers but I do know it’s not just one—it may have been the economy, but it wasn’t not misogyny and racism. I’m turning to history and nonfiction, even though my first impulse is to escape; now is not the time to tune out information and context. With that in mind, I submit, first: A devastating work of nonfiction, The Barn, by Wright Thompson, in which he investigates the murder of Emmett Till, and how the tentacles of that crime reach into today, and inform and shape his own position as a white Mississippian (which I also am). Second, and as almost a companion read: Doy Gorton‘s White South: 1969-1970, a forthcoming book of photography from the Civil Rights era, during which Gorton (not coincidentally, also a white Mississippian) worked alongside Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis in the movement. To paraphrase what Gorton told Ralph Eubanks—a Black Mississippian and writer whose A Place Like Mississippi I also recommend—in a recent interview, Memory is real. So, that’s just me, trying to process my own context, learn from a dark history, and, I hope, better understand how to help change our future. Finally, I have read and re-read Ada Limon‘s How to Triumph Like a Girl about 50 times in the past three days; it does not lose its power, even as it breaks my heart each time. —Claire Howorth, VF executive editor
“I’ve been thinking about Lee Bul, a preeminent Korean artist. Back in 1989, for a performance piece called ‘Abortion,’ Lee hung nude from the rafters of a Seoul arts center while she talked to viewers about her experience of an abortion. Trussed in ropes while she talked, she also licked a lollipop. Abortion wouldn’t be decriminalized in Korea for another 32 years, and then, as now, there were a lot of societal and legal restrictions on how much a woman could let herself be seen. Lee was a touchstone artist for me while I was working on my recent novel Exhibit, and the daring of her work is calling to me again. You can see her sculptures at The Met right now, as part of the façade commission, four figures sparkling and gleaming with imagined life.” —R.O. Kwon, author of Exhibit
“Since I awakened at 3 a.m., both from the need to pack for an overseas trip and, well, anxiety, my fingers ambled to the Find Your Mood section of Apple Music; I went with ‘Feeling Blue.’” —Monica Lewinsky, activist and VF contributing editor
“I had hoped that in this election, America would move towards leadership that would restore a sense of unity and compassion within the country. My husband introduced me to the Joni Mitchell album Clouds, and this song, ‘The Fiddle and the Drum,’ which has helped me grieve this loss of hope. The lyrics: ‘And so once again you are fighting us all / And when I ask you why / You raise your sticks and cry, and I fall / Oh my friend, How did you come? / To trade the fiddle for the drum.’ Americans have voted against their best interests and I especially fear for the climate, for women’s rights, healthcare, gun violence, human rights, and for democracy. My three-year-old son Nilo loves this song and listens with us—he gives me a sense of purpose and inspires me to keep striving for better.” —Linda May Han Oh, bassist and composer, The Glass Hours
“‘Who’s to doom when the judge is up for trial?’ pleads the Mekons’ Tom Greenhalgh in a refrain from their song ‘Lyric,’ from the album Curse of the Mekons. (Bookish lot that they are, the line is cribbed from Moby Dick.) It’s a proverbial cry of despair in the face of a corrupt world. The narrator of “Lyric” sinks further into the abyss singing, “I drunk and drugged myself in the taverns and the alleys / I don’t know what I have inside me, something wants to come out!” Following the last outraged ‘Who’s to doom’ cry, though, we begin to glimpse transcendence: ‘above this town, above the clouds and seas / beyond the sun, past the ether, past the frontiers of the starry skies;’ and, finally, the song closes with an image from Baudelaire: ‘The infinite expansion of infinite things continues, luminous, serene, through the dark tedium of a million nights.’
Another line, this one from the song ‘Only Darkness Has the Power’ captures my current attitude: ‘And darkness is what surrounds me so I can open my heart to the world.’ More than any other band, the Mekons understand this dialectic between outrage and despair on the one hand, and transcendence and hope, on the other. That’s why I turn to them at times like these.” — Eric Miles, VF visuals editor
“For peace of mind, perhaps ironically, I’m listening again to a book by Vanity Fair’s own contributor James Pogue, Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West (2018), which is about the standoff between ranchers and miners and the feds in January 2016 in southeast Oregon. But Pogue’s reporting is confessional gonzo journalism that humanizes these potential insurrectionists, telling their stories with compassionate context and often humorous chitchat (as a pickup-, booze-, and wilderness-loving child of left-wing activists, Pogue befriends the more ambivalent members of the armed resistance and nearly gets in over his head). At the same time, he writes a forceful condemnation of violence and challenges the cultish leader Ammon Bundy. Pogue finds militiamen who admit they’re not so different from Occupy Wall Streeters. He is a bridge builder among certain (mostly white male) American political cultures.” —Michael Quiñones, VF copy manager
“While I can’t think of a specific book, song, or film as a ‘go to’ in light of recent events, I would say that the groups in our society potentially facing heightened challenges over the next four years, i.e. non-white, LGBTQ, women, and young people—have always faced marginalization, oppression, and other often life-threatening dangers. I know you know this. Your kindness, decency, empathy, and desire to understand what someone else is going through and to be of help will be a tremendous asset over the next few years. What you think might be a small gesture could mean a lot to someone in need. It’s a perfect time to show up.” —Henry Rollins, musician and comedian, Keep Talking, Pal
“For inspiration and solace I have been wandering the gallery booths in the Grand Palais at the Paris Photo Festival.” —Lucy Sante, VF contributor and author of I Heard Her Call My Name
“I’ve been listening to Sturgill Simpson’s ‘Breakers Roar’ on loop. He wrote it as a lullaby to his son; under the song’s dreamy surface, though, there’s darkness, in lyrics that trace heartache and disillusionment and how they can pull you under. In a time like this, “a love so kind” is what keeps us from losing our minds. For me, that comfort is found in close community. This song is a balm.” —Bonnie Tsui, author of Why We Swim
“On November 6, after spending Election Day and night promoting VF’s impactful journalism—and striking digital cover—across our various social media platforms, I took a moment for myself. Separate from screens and political discourse, I enjoyed my morning cup of coffee on my roof while listening to Lizzy McAlpine’s latest album, Older (and Wiser). McAlpine’s music has often helped soften the blow of challenging times and provided comfort when life feels especially heavy. As I listened to the album’s final song, ‘Spring Into Summer,’ I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Despite the uncertain times, I feel especially lucky to be surrounded by loved ones and colleagues who reject divisiveness in favor of embracing justice.” —Burake Teshome, VF associate social media manager
“As the mood at my election watch party started to sour, we opted to put on the 1990s sitcom Family Matters instead of the news, and it was an incredible salve. The show veers between a realistic picture of an intergenerational middle-class family and the absolute heights of absurdity—a theft ring is busted at a chintzy love hotel! Aunt Rachel volunteers the family to bake 1,000 dozen tarts!—in a way that spoke more to the highest American ideals than I could have possibly imagined. The morning after, I started thinking about Marilynne Robinson’s incredible recent book, Reading Genesis, which touches on her struggles to sit with the parts of the Old Testament exploring dark human emotions and the capriciousness of God. On Wednesday, a pastor I know recommended pairing Psalm 137, which contains an honestly scary expression of rage and a desire for revenge, alongside Psalm 121, a simpler reminder of God’s steadfastness. Anger and acceptance are difficult to summon and direct at the right moment, yet both emotions are necessary in times of great disjunction.” —Erin Vanderhoof, VF staff writer
“Feeling anxious preelection, I searched for a low-stakes sitcom to watch instead of doomscrolling. That arrived in the form of Trying, an AppleTV+ comedy about an average London couple hoping to start a family. The show stars Esther Smith and Rafe Spall, who in real-life actually fell in love and went on to have a baby of their own while making the series. It is a warm blanket of a watch about people doing their best amid obstacles big and small. Episodes are 30 minutes each. Seasons are eight episodes long. Imelda Staunton delights as a scatterbrained social worker. Happy tears flow freely and often. And there is solace to be found in watching a love story of any kind that takes place far, far away from America (see also Colin From Accounts, Catastrophe, Derry Girls, and—once I’ve reached the anger stage—Bad Sisters).” —Savannah Walsh, VF staff writer
“We get to whine about Trump until Sunday, then Monday, let’s return to the ’60s. Bring back the Yippies to stop him humorously from carrying out his most egregious campaign promises. Stare at Abbie Hoffman’s book cover, Revolution for the Hell of It, and well…just go for it!” —John Waters, filmmaker, artist, and author, on tour this winter
“I have always found solace, refuge, galvanization, hope, revolutionary ways forward, and more in books. I know I will in the coming weeks. But amid the frenzied reading and writing of takes this week, I’m finding that I need a break from words. I’ve gone for walks on the beach to listen to the waves, some free music from the planet we’re lucky enough to inhabit. I’ve run my thumb over smooth black stones: nature’s tiny, pocketable sculptures. But I’m not completely off humans—or, apparently, pianos. Graham Fitkin’s “The Cone Gatherers” (tangentially inspired by the novel by the same name) moves through discordant melancholy, into something like hope, and back. And this morning, I listened to Brigitte Engerer’s 2010 recording of Opus 15, No. 3 in G Minor, Lento on repeat. There are a couple passages about two minutes in that capture, to my ear, a stunning ferocity of mourning, a sense of falling, of reaching the lowest point—and then of rising out of the depths and continuing on.” —Keziah Weir, VF senior editor
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The post Margaret Atwood, John Waters, Glory Edim, and Others Tell VF Readers How They Are Finding Solace in Art appeared first on Vanity Fair.
