Pretty Lynne Writes

It was a weekend filled with a lot of emotions. 

We learned a well known member of the VA community has died. We watched fires continue to burn threatening indigenous communities. We watched people being kidnapped by masked enforcement officers. We watched a nation protest a president who fashions himself a dictator. We learned of political assassinations and a manhunt. We watched as a nation increased its vigilance against the trans community. We watched a nation bomb another nation, and people starve because of a long war that appears to be unending. 

It feels, as a fellow creator says, “fucky out here.” 

It is fucky, my friends. 

When things are heavy, it can feel hard to create. It can feel pointless or meaningless to write a sexy little story about a couple who meet and fool around. It can feel too frivolous to make art about ordinary human things, like pleasure. 

But. 

I think it is precisely at times like this that art is necessary, that creators can reach into themselves and find what’s important to them. 

Art teaches us what it feels like to experience the world through someone else’s eyes. And whether that art is a drawing of a flower, a photograph of a beautiful body, a story about two people having sex, a script about being reassured after being harassed in public, an audio about hooking up with your roommate’s dad… these things show us what it’s like to be human, to have the most basic and universal human experiences and urges and emotions. 

I believe that tyranny works by stripping certain people of their humanity. When someone is less than human to you, you no longer empathize with them. You become concerned about keeping yourself safe from perceived enemies, and forget that those enemies are eating and hugging their kids and smelling flowers and falling in love and having sex just like you are. 

Fear is also a tool of tyranny. When we are living in fear, feeling pleasure is revolutionary. 

Every time you create something, you say to the world: “I am here. This is me. This is who I am. Maybe you feel this way too.“

So, even though it’s fucky out there, we are going to make art. We are going to write smut, and post pictures of our beautiful bodies, and write poems, and draw flowers. 

And we will weave our fear and grief and rage into our creations so that others can see them and know they are not alone.