What's one thing that just about all of us can do right now? I've got answers.
A large percentage of the people I know are losing their minds. The ones I know who aren't losing their minds somehow or other manage not to follow world news at all. Many of them are children. Whether you're an adult or a child, though, it's apparently possible to have no idea what's going on in the world outside of your suburban neighborhood, I can say from plenty of direct experience with my fellow residents of Oregon.
But those of us who do follow the news are generally not doing well, in terms of mental health. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about ways to deal with that that might actually help everybody. I know something that works very well for me and a lot of other people around the world. If you have access to a large living room wherever in the world you are, this is probably something you can do, too: host a house concert. Then do it again, at whatever kind of interval works for you.
If you're still with me, I'll explain how this sort of thing, if widespread, can potentially cure depression and loneliness for a lot of people while simultaneously jumpstarting the movement.
Yesterday I was feeling immensely stressed from reading about Israeli soldiers driving bulldozers to bury alive starving, wounded children in Gaza, and other such stories, of the sort that so many of us read or listen to every day for the past two years or so at least.
I was sitting in my living room playing the mandola to try to calm down and not randomly snap at one of my children, when I had the thought, "I'm at my wit's end." Which I realized was a good opening line for another song about the genocide, so I wrote one. After I wrote, recorded, and broadcast the song, I felt significantly better.
Then, so many people who heard the song on one of the platforms I put it out on commented or wrote me to say that this is exactly how they've been feeling for so long now, for the same reasons, and hearing the song helped them cope a little bit better.
This is how a good song, and music generally, works. The sharing of the song and of the ideas contained within it feels good for the songwriter as well as for the listener -- even though the song may be about feeling despondent and helpless in the face of an ongoing, livestreamed genocide.
OK, I can hear some readers thinking, it's good if people don't feel like jumping off of the nearest tall building, but that's not going to halt this genocide. What we need are thousands of people shutting down all the ports and stopping the arms exports to Israel, stuff like that.
So, let's explore that thought a little. Shutting down the ports would require the kind of social movement involving tens of thousands of people prepared to commit civil disobedience and go to prison for it. We don't seem to have that kind of movement in the US -- or for that matter, in any of the other countries I regularly visit.
What we have in the US, instead, are fewer and smaller demos over the years, with more and more people I meet feeling despondent, and shutting themselves off as best as they can, to get on with life, in the face of coming to the conclusion that under the circumstances there's no other way forward. I know so many people who went to protests at the beginning, who now can't bear listening to the news or going to the few, straggly little protests that are occasionally happening in some cities.
What these many dropouts from the movement needed was community. Not just protests or other actions, but protests and other actions that involve collective recognition that we're all in terrible pain as we watch what is happening, and we desperately want to do something about it, collectively. Instead they went to rallies where they got yelled at from the stage for not doing enough to stop the genocide, and then they went home.
What they needed -- what would have made the protests potentially grow instead of shrink and disappear -- was not to hear about how inadequate we all are, but to hear about what we are collectively going to do, together, as a movement. A movement that recognizes the vital importance and value of everyone who comes out into the streets, while at the same time one that communicates the urgency of this genocidal moment.
We won't build a movement by shouting at each other about how we're suffering more than you are and nobody else can understand Palestinian suffering, or any other versions of identitarian nonsense with no bearing on reality. In reality, we all can feel the horror of what is going on -- that's both the problem here, and the solution. Pretending it's not the case is profoundly demoralizing for so many people who are in pain that is deep. How deep? That matters about as much as the length of your middle finger does.
If it is the case, as I would argue, that music and community could have kept all those people in the fold who are now being hermits and avoiding the news to try to keep what's left of their mental health intact, and if it is the case that music and community could also bring so many more people into the movement, to grow these currently unimpressive ranks, then we obviously need more music and community.
How do we build that? And more specifically, what can one person do to contribute towards that end?
I would say the most universally accessible kind of initiative, that can potentially involve most individuals in most societies who want to do something, is host a house concert in your living room.
Of course you can just bring people together for other activities, and that's great, too. If like-minded people gather together for conversation and food, that in itself is a very good thing, that helps sustain the mental health of everyone, as it at the same time helps keep people engaged -- socially, with each other, and potentially also with activism.
But if you host a pot luck dinner followed by a house concert -- which has long been the common procedure in the folk and punk music scenes in the US and Canada in particular -- at least if the artist or band is up to snuff, this is what will be the most optimal for fostering that sense of community and collective engagement that we all so deeply require in order to keep going.
In many parts of the world this sense of community is ubiquitous, and it's amazing to visit those places. In the US and some other countries, though, this sense of community desperately needs a whole lot of rekindling. So many of us who are horrified by what's going on in Gaza, within the US, and elsewhere on the planet are isolated, atomized, depressed, lonely, and disengaged. We need to find each other, to bring us all together. One living room at a time seems like a good, realistic place to start. It doesn't need to be a small start either -- there are a lot of living rooms in the world, along with a lot of potential audiences, as well as a lot of good artists.
Wherever you live, there are brilliant artists you can hook up with to work out the details. Artists who are used to playing for a couple dozen people in a living room, who are already putting your feelings into songs, are all over the place. If you're reading this, you probably know that I'm one of them. But there are many others, and I may be able to introduce you to them, depending on where you live.
In conclusion: don't be disengaged, and don't jump off a bridge. Instead, organize a house concert. It'll make you feel better, it'll make your guests feel better, it'll make a musician feel better, and probably most importantly, it'll make more of us more ready for building a real, sustainable resistance. Gotta start somewhere, and if we overlook the crucial role of the arts and community in the process, this plane will remain grounded.
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