Terror is Our Alert. It is not Our Reality.

How can we not be terrified now. Every day is a fresh new hell. Every single thing we have fought for as artists and social justice activists is being smugly torn apart with an executive seam ripper while so many cheer it on.

But we are here. We are still here. All the ones who were told were were worthless, we were nothing, we are screw ups, we are hysterical, we are too angry and political. That nothing will change. But it did. Things are different, and those who build their lives living off the spoils of suffering and exploitation are doing everything they can to bring it back. They won't. The world is too connected now. They can't win the same way ever again. But they will hurt so many of us. They will beat many of us to dust.

Freedom, I promise, is at hand. Art is the way it will be realized, restored and delivered. You cannot destroy ideas, only people. And they will do that most certainly.

It just seems that cruelty always wins. Those who stan evil always win. Those who spit and crush and tap-dance of the corpse on social justice always win.

They want you to think that. They want you to give up. Violence and chaos are the ways they want to overwhelm you with despair and shut down.

Shut down. For awhile. Take a rest, take twenty. Drink some water, eat some salad, go for a walk. Cavort with kittens. Talk to your friends. And if you don't have friends, go out and connect. Love people. Love yourself.

But most importantly,

MAKE ART.

1. Find a way to make your art, and keep going. Then rest, refresh, and get back to it. It's the only way to win against evil when it settles into societal institutions like structural rot. They will fall apart. We will rebuild. Artists create. Abusers and bigots destroy.

2. Check on your people, and yourself. The way evil works is by punching down. Hold people up. Love them. Love yourself. Love beauty, it is everywhere. Love life, because the mean spirited cruelty-mongers want you to believe there is no future and you have no ability to change or have control over anything.

3. Be kind and polite (especially to yourself)- even to the people who mock you in your agony and terror. Set boundaries with strength and grace and get out of the range of weaponized privilege being wielded to maim any human with empathy into learned helplessness. It takes everything away from abusers if they can't feast on your agony. It disorders their barrage of savagery when you are polite ( as we Canadians know all too well) . If you feel you are breaking inside and can't take another moment of this... PLEASE PLEASE reach out to someone, even a crisis line. You are essential to the world getting better. And it will.

4. Shut it out as much as you can. Listen when you have to. Know what's going on, but when you're getting sloe to your limit. step away. Be strategic with whom you spend your time, even if it's family members.

5. Don't be cruel back. Ever. And don't tell those who are cruel how they are affecting you. This is intel to your deepest wounding and they will use it to dominate and eventually crush you with it. Discussion is not what's on offer now, the discourse is conquest, destruction and dominance. Don't play the game. Grey-rock and get away.

6. Show up for art. Show up as an ally. But please, please keep yourself safe. There are many dangerous blood-lusting fools who have been emboldened right now. They have been waiting for someone to crush to re-assert the lie of their supremacy. They yearn for your suffering, do not give it to them. Take yourself to a safe space to recover and rest. They have been waiting and will pounce like an apex predator on your tender open heart while the carrion animals seek to feeds off your devastated broken sense of well-being in the world. Do not let them.

7. Keep going. This will pass. This kind of evil has its time and flares out leaving a changed world behind it. None of these thugs will win, they will make a mess. Artists will be the ones who sing us through it, dance us to the future, and dream us to a better world.

I believe in you.

FM