April 21

Frank Poranski has been playing music on the Cape for over 25 years. He was half of Frank and Chev, Blu Central, and is now, along with Kami Lyle, Bella Ciao. He is also a member of the band The Bitter and Broken Men’s Chorus. He is the artistic director of the Pop-Up Practices in the Park in Orleans, a program he co-created to give local musicians an opportunity to try out new material in front of an audience. It runs all fall and spring in downtown Orleans. Originally from New Jersey and New York City, Frank has been on the Cape for 36 years.

Resources

• 10 Ways to Turn a Small Business into a Community with Emma Straub (thanks to Grant King for this resource!)

• Here’s an interesting collection of essays about the meaning of creative work.

• Aren’t you just breaking your heart for the courage and selflessness of the people of Minneapolis? I so hope that future generations will lift them. Don’t invade a winter people in the winter… all that you have is your soul!

• The week after Alex Pretti was killed, Bruce Springsteen wrote and released a song: The Streets of Minneapolis. One artist who understood how he could respond.

• If you’d like to hear me and Art Devine interviewed about Making Light over on WOMR, you can listen here.

• Recommended books:

  • Imagination in an Age of Crisis: a collection of essays, poems, and short reflections. This book explores the vital role of the imagination in today’s complex climates—cultural, environmental, political, racial, religious, spiritual, intellectual, etc. It asks: What contribution do the arts make in a world facing the impacts of globalism, climate change, pandemics, and losses of culture?

  • Read This When Things Fall Apart, Kelly Hayes, ed. is a care package for activists and organizers building power under fascistic, demoralizing conditions; offers history lessons, personal anecdotes, and practical advice.

  • Poems for Political Disaster from the Boston Review.

• On a Generation That Squandered its Poets

• What can we do to protect our neighbors? Heidi Jon Schmidt has some ideas here.

• “Seek joy in each dawn that breaks—let it be your daily practice, your sacred ritual, your intentional act of defiance against the weight of the world. Make it your healer, your compass, your quiet revolution against despair and all that would diminish the spark within you.” (Gurdeep Pandher)

• Another Pandher quote: “Joy begins within, but protecting it demands vigilance at the borders of our attention. This isn’t about numbing ourselves to the world’s suffering—the injustices still pierce my heart, still call me to witness. But compassion without boundaries becomes martyrdom. We must learn to step back from the fire, not to abandon those in the flames, but to preserve the strength needed to return.”

• “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair. No place for self-pity. No need for silence. No room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” (Toni Morrison)

• “The promise of change drives creativity everywhere. Those happy with the world and the status quo don’t strive to make things anew, as they’re content with what exists.” (Hrag Vartanian)

• Artists nationwide unite against the Trump administration. Discover these voices!

• Listen to this new protest song as many times as you can, and whenever your heart hurts. And then listen to this one, written in the 1840s. They both are lifting my spirits.

• How artists resisted fascism a century ago: links to a review of a new book by Andy Friend (the book title is Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism 1933-1943) “for a future worth the struggle.”

• Maria Popova’s wonderfully uplifting newsletter mixes science with art; subscribe and read back issues here. (There are both free and paid versions.)

• “I listen to the news and, when I get nauseous from the political games, escape into my novels: within their pages I find shelter from the bitterness of life. To keep a small light burning against the swallowing darkness, I also write. I hold the hand of the writer within me tightly because I believe that more than any politician, it is this writer who will be of more use to my homeland.” (Afghani author Maryam Mahjoba)

• Here’s a moving essay on the dangers of dehumanizing others by Jake Norton—I found it very helpful.

• In 1995, Italian novelist and critic Umberto Eco perceived a “ghost stalking Europe (not to speak of other parts of the world).” That ghost was fascism. This is an important read.

• Some suggestions for staying creative no matter what.

• Anne Sebba chronicles how the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz survived the death camps and considers the role of music amidst genocide.