Hitting the Unmute Button

shaking off paralysis and moving ahead

Accounts Payable

Violence and despair have pushed this nation into a free-fall. And no one knows where we’ll land. The national turbulence has churned up a great deal for us personally as well, which is no surprise because that’s how loss operates. It’s tempting to beat a retreat into daily life, into beauty, into the quotidian—even into my deeply personal grief. But I cannot afford to—no one can. The death of our child Bailey has made me more vigilant about protecting those in the margins and more fierce about a democracy I took for granted. I leave political analysis to the talented, abundant writers in that sphere, but I cannot pretend that I’m not frightened and distracted.

Here is my week in review:

• I watched and rewatched the horrific videos of the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

• I sabotaged my writing time.

• I worried about our daughter.

• I scrapped one half-written Substack post, then another, then gave up.

• I started an article for a trade magazine I contribute to, then decided I didn’t know what I was talking about.

• I filled out mindless paperwork.

• I ran errands and walked our dog Rose.

• I read excellent and thoughtful essays on Substack and then doubted I could call myself a writer.

• I read the news constantly and drove my husband crazy with my pronouncements of doom. He told me he didn’t want to hear Stephen Miller’s name first thing in the morning. Makes sense.

• I gave money to GoFundMe sites in Minneapolis.

• I went to a protest.

• I stared at my email backlog. How could I have 5,258 emails?

• I ignored the emails and shopped for seeds and tubers instead.

• I made lists and looked at cute boots I don’t need and didn’t buy.

• I watched Becoming Katherine Graham (highly recommend) and the addictive The Pitt (which features another Isa, the very talented Isa Briones).

I did everything to numb and distract until I forced myself back into the studio to paint my way out of this corner and get back to work.

colors of January

After the presidential election in 2000, the author Toni Morrison slipped into her own despair, one that also metastasized into creative torpor. She wrote: “I felt foolish the rest of the morning, especially when I recalled the artists who had done their work in gulags, prison cells, hospital beds; who did their work while hounded, exiled, reviled, pilloried. And those who were executed.

And then Morrison got back to writing and provided this bit of rocket fuel:

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. …I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art. TONI MORRISON

more colors of January

I have been making quick, daily notations of color, watching the tempo and tenor of light shift with longer days, looking for patterns while noting a few key details in pen — all an homage to my native Colorado. Down the line, I plan on making these into artist books. Does making a visual register of the wild places around me have an immediate impact on this nation, as the norms and laws that bind and govern no longer apply? Will these protect from terror or reverse evil? No, not at all. But meditating over the details of place reorients and inspires me, like that red dot on a train station map that says: you are here, and now you can see how you get to there. A pause, then a way forward.