Sturgill Simpon’s apocalyptic tune “Make Art Not Friends” is taking on a new meaning for me these days, in this Our Time of Corona. A year ago it was a song of escape, a dream of woodshedding one’s self to contentment, unconcerned while the world burned.
But now that I’ve got my wish, now that I’ve spent too much time holed-up and cut-off, it’s twisted into one of those twilight zones of unintended consequences. Making art without friends isn’t so great after all.
We’ll see how it all shakes out sooner or later, and by the time I post this we might have moved on, shrugged our collective shoulders and wandered back to last year’s habits, good or bad.
Or we might be stuck in a whole ‘nother round of the “new normal,” app-tracked as we go about our daily tasks, invisibly wired to everything, while walled off from the daily grace of face-to-face interaction, desperate for a stranger’s affection, the once-banal sort that’s meted out with a store-bought cup of coffee.
This time, I hope the lonesome lesson sticks. So many times I’ve selfishly clashed with best buddies over “creative differences,” fought for a chord, thrown down over a lost lyric. And now, chastened by the sapped strength of middle age, missing the easy crutch of Parliament Lights and Miller High Life, I’ve been unwilling to commit, to get involved, to pack another late-night obligation onto the creaking calendar.
But more heads are better than one, and wonderful as YouTube can be, we learn the most from each other. We sound best live and in the moment, when our words ring and strings resonate, where eyes and ears and handclaps are woven together, harmonize in time and place.
It’s hard to make art without friends. And now I’ve come to realize that the inverse is true too: It’s hard to make friends without art. Our ties grow tenuous without the shared struggle, without showtime-driven necessity. Relationships suffer without the A-game accountability of mutual creation.
So Sturgill, I get you. (And lordy, I do so often need those times of day-long retreat, to let my thoughts swirl without distraction…) But making art and making friends are not exclusive outcomes, not at odds with one another.
Turns out they’re often one in the same.
‘Til the green-light’s lit, here’s an easy take on the tune, complete with chair-squeaks in the middle-eight, live from a quarantine near you:
