I feel like retreating into art

A greyness has fallen. The line between what passed for normality and what now passes for global insanity blurred sometime in the last few years. It's hard to remember. But the crises have been building for at least a few decades - the expansion of the security state post-911, the global financial crisis, Covid 19, the rise of authoritarian movements and grievance politicians cashing in hard on people who are listless and confused, ai grifting, manosphere grifting, and the climate crisis and the continued inability of corporate owned governments to do anything meaningful to address it. Maybe I'm depressed? Maybe we all are? I know I'm not the only one feeling heavy. There's a palpable level of anxiety around the place. Art feels more like an escape and a retreat from our times. Painting and making music and writing while the world burns - as though art is no longer a genuine expression of the self, but rather a woozy nostalgia-laden pursuit that closes out the grey world briefly. The…