Art & Love In The Time of War

If Art is Love and Love is Art and Art and Love are Assertions of the Self then it follows that War is the inevitable destruction. Destruction breeds creation. Does it? Or does it create erasure and a rush to resolve: the cogs of the humanitarian machine begin to turn and people resume their lives, look away, stay neutral or get emotional. The students protest and occupy buildings. The Man does what he does and says he will do what he can. And the wheels keep turning even whilst all structures collapse, people die, and the bombs drop one after another. The missiles are fired one after another. Erratic thunder and no one knows why it’s been raining in the desert. Oh! Wait. Global warming. Of course. Or climate change.

The bombs didn’t scare me.

I thought there was something wrong with me because the bombs kept falling and the first time I kind of slept through it. When I woke up I found out and felt nothing. That was in 2025. This time round I heard it loud and clear in late February 2026 when I was in my bed in The Pearl. The windows shook and I wasn’t confused for a second about what it was. And yet, no fear. People began talking about how they were scared and our phones began screeching with warnings. They still do whenever there are missiles and bombs. They didn’t issue warnings on phones when it happened the first time in 2025 but others were still scared.

I felt nothing.

I remained eerily calm. I didn’t understand the concern. For someone who is Bipolar I thoughts about death and suicide become as normal as thinking about what to eat. I’ve been in treatment for years now though I have tried to pretend things were fine but it was sort of like convincing yourself you’re alive when you’re barely even sure that you are. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t scared. People started making plans about how to get out if we really need to. I was even told to pack an emergency bag in case we had to evacuate but even as I packed it I knew I wouldn’t need it.

It’s not that I’m arrogant it’s just that I think my life experience thus far has given me intuition and instinct that I’ve learned to trust so much. Or perhaps just a lot of common sense. When you’re in a state of crisis what good will it do for you to lose your mind? That’s why I know when I am losing my mind it’s important to be around people who haven’t. At least not fully because I still believe everyone is a little insane. I kept my life, kept myself alive, by sticking to people who I knew would never let me die. It was and is selfish but it’s the use of privilege for the continuation of life.

Being this honest is not something I ever thought I’d do but I’ve gotten pretty good at it by now because trauma leads to criticism and criticism leads to being criticized in return and being criticized in return leads to the need to defend yourself.

People sabotage you when you’re bold and you self-sabotage as well. For various reasons. It is what it is.

I’ve been through Hell: some of it brought on by me, some of it brought on by others, and some of it brought on by an illness that I cannot control. The others were the worst though. I only accept it because I’ve learnt how to accept human beings as what they truly are and that includes me. I’ve learnt to accept myself for all the people that I truly am.

Art & Love In The Time of War: my obsession with the suffering of others while distracting myself from my own, method acting for no one but myself, driving myself insane, calling ambulances and spending time in psych wards, and then getting out, buying a guitar, buying face masks, cutting off my hair, painting over and over again, falling in love with Basquiat, joining fitness classes, falling in love with love again and accepting that I can’t be in the trenches I don’t have the mental capacity nor the patience to tolerate the bureaucracy. I don’t have the right emotional composition.

I don’t know why it took me so much time to accept this but it has. Well, I do know: it’s because I needed to be the hero. I still need to be the hero. But being in proximity to war, the war within and out, and by pushing everyone and everything away, accepting isolation and treatment, replacing one form of substance abuse with another form of self care, pills, but still that dangerous asceticism. The being a nun to compensate for past sins. Then finally I realized two very important things.

1. The universe is constantly expanding and at the edge of it and beyond exists another you. Not the same you that exists on Earth: just an infinite you. Maybe I’ve always believed that. Maybe that’s why I’m not afraid of death, in fact, I have tremendous respect for it.

   
   

2. I grew up feeling too much, finding art, being educated, educating myself and I strongly developed an alarming savior complex: I didn’t have to change the world, I had to save it, and everyone’s suffering had something to do with me. My own suffering was to always be measured to it and I expressed this and dangerous people manipulated this as they do in this world. But I still didn’t abandon this worldview - I pushed everything and everyone away and sacrificed everything, my ambition, desire, dreams, to hold on to the idea that I must be the one who saves this world. Even if the cost is self-erasure and maddening isolation because that is the price I have to pay for living. Why? I’m not entirely sure. But we know this world is broken. This world needs to be fixed and I have to fix it. I am going to be the Saviour.

   
   

   And then I finally realised the truth.

The truth is this: none of us have to save the world, not even the people who are technically saving it.

All we have to do is try to love it & everything that lives in it.

That does end the war. That hasn’t changed.

Love always ends the war.