I am a cell in a huge living organism

What can artists do in the hour of genocide?

You're out of muses and the world's full of horrors. What's an artist to do? Nick Cave suggests to stop being so precious—that it is precisely in perilous times that we must ply our trade:

If we are to call ourselves artists then we must avoid the myriad excuses that present themselves and do our job. Yes, the world is sick, and yes it can be cruel, but it would be a whole lot sicker and a whole lot crueler if it were not for painters and filmmakers and songwriters – the beauty-makers – wading through the blood and muck of things, whilst reaching skyward to draw down the very heavens themselves.

The above is part of a longer response to two artists who came moping into Cave's inbox about not being able to find inspiration, which everyone knows is for dweebs. It's definitely worth reading in full, and I suggest subscribing to his newsletter while you're at it. Now go turn your despair into Guernica (the artwork, not the massacre).

On that note, the author Max Porter’s disillusionment with the state of things found form in a brilliant piece of writing called "Wild West," which he performed at the Palestine Festival of Literature last December. (You can read the text in Issue Four of Tolka.) I can't think of a more worthwhile way to spend 12 minutes….or can I!!?!…no I can't. Luxuriate and seethe:

One thing I keep reading over and over again from writers is that they can’t articulate the criminal tragedy taking place in Palestine. Well, that’s because those of us who write from within the imperial core are entrenched in what Fargo Nissim Tbakhi calls Craft, the linguistic sanitizer that “keeps us polite while the boot is on our neck or on somebody else’s”:

The Craft which is taught in Western institutions, taken up and reproduced by Western publishers, literary institutions, and awards bodies, is a set of regulatory ideas which curtail forms of speech that might enact real danger to the constellation of economic and social values which are, as I write this, facilitating genocide in Palestine and elsewhere across the globe.

His manifesto is for all writers who wonder about what they can do in the hour of genocide. More than that, it is for all of us about everything. Please, do read it.

You might remember my interview with Lexie Smith last summer. She's the bread evangelist who spent sent sourdough spores around the world, including to my mailbox. Last week, she wrote about the project for the New York Times, in a piece that moves from the pandemic to Palestine. "Throughout history, bread has been linked with political power," she writes. Drawing attention to Israel's bombardment of Gaza's bakeries, Lexie, who is Jewish, proclaims that "bread is a bellwether, its absence a death knell."

Two weeks ago, I met a musician at a friend's birthday. Dima's the musician, Kirill's the friend. Both are from Russia. The next day, Kirill sent me a link to Dima's music. On Dima's Instagram, I scrolled to a selfie from March, 2022, which he posted less than a month after Russia invaded Ukraine. In the caption, he explained what he was feeling. It was similar to something I expressed recently as well, about world-pain.

Here it is, translated from Russian, with a few lines cut for brevity:

I wrote on February 23 that we are all one and now I feel it more than ever. I, as a cell of a huge living organism, feel pain, guilt, grief, anger, despair, and powerlessness.

And I welcome these sentiments. I'm alive and so is my heart. Over the last three years, I have learned there is no need to run from feelings. You don't need to try to explain them to yourself, to suppress them, or to spit them out somewhere. You can only open up and experience them, let them move through you, even if it's unbearable.

I'm alive and I feel pain and I don't need to answer the question whose it is. She is mine. She is yours. She is ours. Thank God for the ability to feel it.

Yes—she is ours.

Some heavy reading this time around. Will try to lighten things up a little in the next edition.

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It gives me great joy to share things I've read and liked so that others can read and like them too. As such, I’ve expanded this practice beyond my WhatsApp chats with friends and brought it to lol/sos.

Every month, I publish a selection of my favourite (mostly long-form) writing. Here's the first. I organize the works around a theme or weave them together to maintain some semblance of order, but they're not necessarily urgent or essential. The only criterion is my belief that you’ll enjoy them, which, if you like this newsletter, I’m sure you will.

On that note,

• Did any of these pieces make you feel something?

• What’s the best thing you've read lately?