2025-07-10_comfort - disturbance

i can’t find the ‘exact’ origin of this quote, but: “(art should) comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable” resonates quite a bit in a lot of ways.

it’s not our primary job to, as the liberals say: “get people on our side”. our primary concern should be to help the people that are already here stay here (alive) and to show those that would be here if they knew it existed outside of themselves that it does, that we do. that they’re not just weird or wrong or broken. that we’re here and that there will be places for them to come to and explore themselves in ways they, and not their normative, status quo upholding environments desire. and if that means disturbing the ones upholding said status quo, if that means making them uncomfortable in ways they might have never known in their privileged worlds, good.

they should not be our ultimate focus. we need a certain number of them (those that are willing to be disturbed in their current ways of living and are then willing to act in solidarity with us) to effect social change at certain important scales. but if we focus mainly on them, eventually, there won’t be a “us” to act in solidarity with anymore. so: comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. because that is how we will survive and thrive.