a quote for the election
As I have cast my vote and watch the results trickle in, I think of this by Ursula K. LeGuin:
“I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. […] We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; but then so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words.”
The uncut speech is more focused on financial exploitation of art by publishers, but I love the second focus on art and words as resistance and hope.
Reply via email
Published