Paul Vermeersch

From the Editor: What good is making art at all when the world is on fire?

Dear reader,

It troubles me to write to you in these dark times, but I feel I must because in times such as these we might be tempted to question the power of writing at all. I hear it all too often. What good is poetry in the face of oppression? What good is art in the face of fascism and tyranny? What good are stories and paintings and songs and films and sculptures in the face of the socio-economic violence that seeks to limit people’s access to housing, healthcare, nutrition, and education? What good are opera houses and concert halls and art galleries in the face of racial and sexist bigotry? What good are such extravagances in the face of war and geopolitical violence? What good is making art at all when the world is on fire?
I hear it all too often.
One might as well ask what good is Picasso’s Guernica?
What good is James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son?
What good is Audre Lorde’s Coal?
What good is Keith Haring’s Ignorance = Fear, or Francisco Goya’s The Third of May 1808, or Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People?
And why, after all, should Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova, Alexander Godunov, and Mikhail Baryshnikov defect from the Soviet Union. Why should Joseph Brodsky live in exile?
Why, for that matter, should Woody Guthrie’s guitar be emblazoned with the words “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS”?
Why should George Orwell write 1984, or Animal Farm, or Homage to Catalonia? Why should Charlie Chaplin make The Great Dictator? Why should Billie Holiday sing “Strange Fruit”? Why should Neil Young write “Ohio”? Why should Stuart Ross write Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew?
I hear it all too often—this self-doubting, this self-censoring, self-defeating attitude. It is the artistic equivalent of “complying in advance” with fascism and tyranny. But we mustn’t fall into silence. We mustn’t comply in advance with those who would censor and silence and sabotage the voices of demonstration and self-determination and opportunity for the people. We mustn’t extinguish the flame of the human spirit.
Oh, I know, I know ... the dismal Debbie Downers of deprecation will say how self-serious all this sounds, how self-important, how self-indulgent, and how dare you, after all? But make no mistake, these naysayers are the useful idiots of despotism—mere cranks who fail to feel the strength of our communities or hear the power of our collective voices.
And so, when the orders to come to censor artists, to ban books, to cancel performances, to pull funding from cultural organizations, to suspend arts and humanities programs from colleges and universities—for these too are the weapons of inhumane governments and their rudderless enablers—we will not capitulate to silence.
We will continue to write, and speak out, and exhibit art, and produce theatre, and perform music, and show films, and publish books, and distribute little magazines like this one, because the alternative is to allow our would-be oppressors to reshape our culture as they see fit and curtail the imagination of the people so that any other way of life might seem unthinkable.
We won’t allow it.
Art makes nothing unthinkable.

Yours in solidarity,

Paul Vermeersch
March, 2025

Paul Vermeersch is the editor-in-chief of The Ampersand Review of Writing & Publishing