Dear #notesArt friends,
I spent the week before November 5 thinking a lot about how to handle the Day After, whether it was the outcome I wanted or the outcome I didn’t. The idea of anything overtly commiserative or celebratory didn’t sit well with me; I have a pretty rigorous policy of keeping politics away from #notesArt. With few exceptions—like the last two days of the election—I’ve stuck to this principle for three years.
#notesArt was born and bred on Instagram Stories, starting in late 2021. I remember being conflicted about launching a project that existed primarily on social media—that was a part of the internet I thought I’d only just sworn off for good. There was, I’d decided, very little happening on social networking platforms that justified the amount of time and attention I put into them. I realized I felt a sense of physical illness every time I opened Twitter or Facebook. You never knew what was going to hit you in the face, but you knew it was going to be something: rage, snark, fear, preachy contempt. There is no healthy way to experience the ongoing affairs of nine billion people, expertly condensed and optimized into a torrent of unending dysfunction.
The compromise I made was that while #notesArt might exist on social media, it wasn’t going to be influenced by it. I knew I didn’t have any interest in memes or trying to go viral. I wanted to make and share art, mainly because that was an important aspect of my life that I’d mostly abandoned. Up until that point, whenever anyone asked me if I was working on any cool art projects, I said I didn’t have time. What I didn’t say was that a lot of that time went into scrolling through feeds.
Nothing about social media has changed, and judging by how Wednesday night went, it is probably going to get worse. We are subsumed in—and consumed by—politics on social media, to such an extent that we probably barely notice its psychological effect beyond an unending, mostly subconscious sense of malaise. Some of it may be informative or useful. I suspect a lot of it isn’t doing us any good. #notesArt being a personal art project, I’ve chosen to keep that a clean, unmemified space, largely free of any connections/references to contemporary events.
There are a million things in my head right now that I could draw regarding the glaring act of depravity we’ve once again been handed. I don’t need to draw them; they’re in your head, too. I don’t feel like contributing to the darkness. There is already enough of it to go around.
Here’s a nice landscape. Don’t read too much into it. Seriously: don’t. I didn’t have anything in mind when I was drawing this besides color—no statements, no metaphors. I like drawing sky textures and remote buildings. That’s it.
Get offline for a bit. Go somewhere quiet. Walk in the leaves with someone who doesn’t stress you out or consume your energy. Take the time you need to refocus and prepare for doing what comes next.
In the meantime, when you want a break from politics, you can come and hang out with me wherever you get your #notesArt.
—Chris