Well, well, well…
In the interest of speaking freely and from a place of frustration, I’m hijacking my own content schedule to talk loosely about “freedom of speech”. Maybe it’s not freedom of speech, but the ability or agency to speak in the hopes that someone, somewhere might one day hear, even if they don’t listen. I suppose it’s more of an opportunity to speak freely. Not that I hold back often anyway. I know the freedom of speech debate rages on in far more fraught territory than exists here, dreamt of in my crackpot philosophy.
Viva La Vie Bohème!
I remember watching Moulin Rouge! in my teens and becoming more than a little obsessed with this bohemian ideal, an army of writers, poets, artists, thinkers, and dreamers, all led by the key life tenets of beauty, freedom, truth, and above all, love. All you need is love. Determined to express themselves at all costs, against all odds, well, take a look at me now. I also remember watching Romeo & Juliet and thinking Mercutio seemed to be having the best time out of everyone in the story. It also occurs to me now that both of those things are Baz Luhrman productions, so I feel I should also add to that list the viral YouTube video attributed to Luhrman, though I don’t know that he necessarily has any connection to it. The footage is Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen), a delightful tirade of positivism and life advice aimed at graduating college students from someone looking back on their life from its endpoint and reminding us all to feel freer, make space for joy, be happy not just in spite of, but actively to spite all those situations and people around us who wouldn’t wish it to be so for us. And that we should also wear sunscreen. It was important enough to go into the title of the song, parentheses be damned, and so it’s worth a second mention here.
While these are all stories told of a very different time (not the sunscreen one, which seems to become increasingly prophetic as time screams on), they speak to so many of us. For many different reasons. They spoke to me as someone who desired, and has always desired, to be an artist, primarily a writer. I think we’re mostly into Moulin Rouge! territory here, but I wanted to be the penniless bohemian writer, and I suppose for a while I was. I’ve done the starving artist bit, I’ve moved to Paris and brooded freely on the streets in the rain, I’ve travelled several parts of the world, I’ve learnt the languages, I’ve watched Midnight in Paris, I’ve read the books, and yet, I don’t feel like an artist. I make, I write, I conjure, I edit. I have a vision. But I’m hardly Yeats. (That’s as modest as I get.) I’d love to live in a world where I could make my art uncontested and live quasi-comfortably in relative squalor with other artists while preaching about truth & love. But it’s not realistic anymore, maybe it never was. I think they call it golden age thinking. In fact, I’m being modest, I know they call it that, Owen Wilson says it in the film. I’m trying to sound less pretentious and condescending. It isn’t working.
Revolutionary Letters
I’ve been called a revolutionary, a troublemaker, Michelle from the Resistance, Willy Wonka (for my experimentation, not my dress sense), and I have deserved many of these names. I was once even referred to as “the ringleader”, I wasn’t, but I also wasn’t yet in the habit of correcting people. I’m not often a bold or confrontational person, I’m diplomatic to a fault. My personality type is even called “The Mediator”. I find the best, most effective way of doing what needs to be done in a way that also makes people happy, from the bottom to the top. Sometimes this plays into my role as people-pleaser, but I’m trying to work on that too. I’ve been in silent protests, sit-ins, boardroom pow-wows, discussion panels, advisory boards, councils, and disciplinary hearings, and asked one too many questions at every available opportunity. It’s not my fault, I’ve got six pages of notes to get through at all times! People tell me I know too much. I know ways of finding out more than I should know. I question too much. No-one ever seems to believe me when I say things could be different, and they don’t believe me capable of proving them wrong. Maybe I should “put up and shut up” or “keep my head down” or “stay small so I’m less of a target” or “keep calm and carry on” or “bite my tongue” or “grin and bear it” or “do what I need to do to get through”. But for some reason that neither I nor my long-suffering therapist seem able to fathom is why I keep feeling the need to rock the boat. Every single time the boat either capsizes or I’m made to walk the plank. Either way, my hair gets wet, and I never quite know why. It hasn’t made me fearful of upsetting the apple cart, it’s just made me wary of people on boats. Or pushing apple carts.
I feel guilty though. Guilty that I can’t do enough. It’s far too grandiose to conjure the image of Oskar Schindler saying “I could’ve saved one more” but I could make more of a difference given the opportunity. All of my workplaces seem to have descended into relative mutiny under my control, all of my educational institutes have at one time or another had me sitting in an office with a panel of my peers and superiors debating the necessity for better representation, all of my ongoing relationships and friendships have endured frequent battles of conscience & my desire to be a better person, and to do better by other people in the name of progress. I feel guilty also that I’m doing a PhD research project that should be pursued doggedly 24 hours a day, while I only have the time to offer up measly offerings of moments snatched between other pursuits that keep food on my table. I also feel guilty that I’m writing this now instead of working on my research.
I feel like a revolutionary, sure, but I’m not sure what I’m protesting. I can’t open an app on my phone without seeing some fresh vitriol, some new discourse on who we should be hating next and why, seeing the most vulnerable people in our society set upon and cheered on by celebrities, and I’ve seen the protests, the marches, the rallies, the social media trends, and I’ve been enraged by them all. And it is exhausting.
And revolution isn’t just destined for the streets anymore. It’s in our homes, it’s in our workplaces, it’s in our hearts & minds, it is so deeply ingrained in us, that the laws designed to keep us from protesting and the algorithms that shadowbox us from speaking out and the contracts that skilfully & wilfully prevent us from blowing the whistle are all the same action. They seek to keep us still and to keep us silent. If you’re not moving, you won’t notice as the chains get tighter, and even if/when you do notice, you’ll be so exhausted from the bombardment of information and fresh horrors live streamed into your skull each day that even as the needle comes alarmingly closer and closer to your eye, you won’t have the energy to blink or not hear the screams of the people in each video echoing in your mind as you try to fall asleep. It will be exhausting, so soon you won’t have the energy left to resist the chains. You’ll just sit and drink your fucking milk in silence.
To all the poets who carve truth from the bounds of silence, the dreamers who envision what could be if only we tried a little harder, the thinkers who challenge every unjust norm not just for themselves but everyone around them too, and the creative spirits who keep their lanterns burning even when the world seems determined to put them out: This is for you. Keep looking for yourself.
“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself” - Emily Dickinson
We are living through a time of relentless hardship and struggle. Every day, we wake up to a world that seems to be closing in on us, to an economy that is squeezing us dry and asking of us a few more drops than we can sustain long-term, to a political climate that is hostile to our very existence. The cost of living rises while wages stagnate. The wealth gap widens as those in power continue to prioritise profits over people. The assault on the arts and on the freedom to create is unending. Public arts funding is slashed, university arts courses are shut down, and artists are told, time and again, that what we do does not matter. And it’s simply not true. How quickly we all seem to forget what we were doing when the world shut down a few years ago. We weren’t all doing what the world had told us we had to do, for centuries, suddenly we could do what we wanted to do within certain boundaries. You said to a generation of people who have had to fight to exist, to live freely, to speak their truth, and to work their fingers to the bones to have enough money to pay the rent, to have enough time to pursue their true passion, to create any kind of art, to satisfy their souls, and to keep them barely alive, to then go ahead and take six months off from the rat race and stay at home. We were paid, not a great wage, but just enough. Enough to not be able to move, but also enough for us to stay where we were. And we did, we had to. We didn’t feel the chains then, because no-one was tugging at them. And then, with all the new information we had about the world and ourselves, we were asked to go back to the old system. Does that sound right to anyone?
The world didn’t stop, it didn’t fall out of the sky. We kept going. It was hard, it was difficult, it was tense. But it was also the freest any of us have been in a very long time, in a lot of respects. Who wants to work 0% for 70% of their wage and go back to working 100% for only an extra 30%? No-one. We know our value now. We had so much time that now we know how to properly value it. Is an hour of my time, and incidentally, my life, worth more than £10 an hour to you? Would I watch someone on television talk to me for an hour if what they were saying was of no interest to me and offered nothing to my life, either immediately or long-term? No, I would not. So it matters what we do now. How we choose to spend our time.
We consumed art. We watched movies, television, and listened to the radio, we watched the national theatre on YouTube. We played music and played video games. We even made art, we took up hobbies, we indulged ourselves in some things we hadn’t done since we were children, and we found out how to be curious again, about ourselves, and we gave ourselves the space and time to experiment, and to fail behind closed doors, and to try again. Unfortunately, we also learned that we could, more than ever, commodify our found talents online in the blue-lit glowing faces of millions under the guise of content creators, not artists. And we did, and continue to do so. It’s just a new tech-age rat race for us to compete in. I don’t want to go all “Black Mirror” about it, but it’s not so far from the truth.
But we know the truth: We are not just surviving; we are resisting. We are determined to thrive in spite of every effort to quash our spirits, silence our voices, erase our existence, and prevent us from speaking about our lives, telling our stories, and providing the necessary tools to rise up from the gutters.
In the UK, funding for higher education arts courses has been cut time and time again, with the government labelling them ‘low priority’ or giving us the moniker of “Mickey Mouse” courses. In the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts constantly faces threats to its funding, often scraping by on less than 0.01% of the federal budget. These cuts send a clear message: Creativity is expendable. Art is unimportant. The voices of poets, painters, dancers, musicians—of all who dare to speak their truth through creation—are not worth listening to.
This message is a lie.
Art is more than necessary—it is vital. Poetry is more than mere words—it is a weapon, a shield, a force for change. In times of crisis, poetry has always been there, a beacon of hope and a cry for justice. From Pablo Neruda denouncing the horrors of fascism, to Langston Hughes exposing the lie of the American dream, to Adrienne Rich confronting patriarchy and inequality head-on—poets have always been at the forefront of the fight for a better world.
And we are still here. Even as we are pushed to the margins, even as we are told to be smaller, quieter, more palatable, we refuse. We refuse to disappear.
Today, we face new battles. We face a world where queer communities are under attack, where our very existence is questioned and legislated against, where trans rights are rolled back, and queer expression is policed and punished. We face a world where the arts are dismissed as frivolous, where creative thinking is seen as a threat to the established order, where university programs that nurture the next generation of artists are shut down in favour of profit-driven, ‘practical’ disciplines, and we’re letting them do it.
But we will not let them win. We will not let them silence us. We will not let them crush our spirits.
To the poets: Your words have power. Use them. Speak out against injustice. Write poems that make people uncomfortable, that challenge the status quo, that demand change. Remember the words of Seamus Heaney, who wrote, "But then, once in a lifetime, the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme." We are the tidal wave. Let our words rise up. And wash our streets clean, with the force of a tsunami of hope and a clearer path to community, a vision of truth and freedom. It’s not idealistic, it’s within reach if we all demand it loudly enough.
To the dreamers: Do not let them take away your vision. In a world that tells you that dreams are futile, dream even bigger. Dream of a world where every person is free to express themselves without fear, where every voice is valued, where art is seen not as a luxury but as a cornerstone of our humanity. Dream of a world where we all have a place, where we all belong. Because we absolutely fucking do.
To the thinkers: Do not let them dull your mind. Think deeply. Question everything. Challenge every lie, every injustice, every attempt to diminish the value of creativity. Remember James Baldwin’s words: "The artist’s struggle for his integrity is a kind of metaphor… for the struggle which is universal and daily, of all human beings on the face of this terrifying globe to get to become human beings." Your thoughts can change the world. Do not hold back.
To the creative spirits: Do not let them extinguish your fire. Burn brighter. Create more boldly. Let your art be your resistance. Let it be your declaration that you will not be silenced, that you will not be erased. In a world that tries to quash us, let us respond with all the force of our creativity, our passion, our determination. We are always finding new and ingenious ways to do things and see things, let’s apply ourselves to the world’s greatest problem, and solve it once and for all.
We are not just artists. We are revolutionaries. We are not just dreamers. We are builders of a better world. We are not just poets. We are voices of a new reality.
We have survived so much. We have faced up against hatred and ignorance, apathy and violence, poverty and exclusion. And we are still here.
We are still here, fighting for a world where art is valued, where creativity is celebrated, where every person, regardless of their gender, sexuality, race, or background, can live freely and fully.
This is our call to action. Not out of hatred, but out of anger—righteous, justified anger. Not with violence, but with passion—unyielding, unstoppable passion. Not with despair, but with hope—unbreakable, unshakeable hope.
We will not put up with this interminable bullshit any longer. We are taking the world back. We are reclaiming our space. We are demanding that our voices be heard. We are insisting that our lives, our art, our creativity, our very existence be respected.
We are the revolution. And the revolution is here. We are the weird & the wild ones.
Let us rise up, together. Let us fight for our right to exist, to create, to dream, to live. Let us build a world where the arts are not just an afterthought, but the very heart of who we are.
(I’m veering wildly into Charlie Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator here, so I’ll draw it to a close rather rapidly!)
And yet, the words of Mr. Keating from Dead Poet’s Society keep echoing in the back of my mind like a siren call of warning. Ah, the warnings of sirens.
“Sucking all the marrow out of life doesn't mean choking on the bone”
Maybe life is just a choke hazard anyway, fuck it. Marrow for one, and a fun straw.
In solidarity, survival, and pissed-off determination & defiance,
Poet Chaotique. x
[insert a plea for coffee here]
I love this! This is the shit I'm talking about! And occasionally get in trouble for! Fantastically written and so true!
Oh gosh, always getting in trouble myself in the ways you describe. Glad to know I’m not alone in that, at least. Cool post, I dig your message a lot.