Beautiful: Cummings should know — just four years earlier, he had fought that hardest battle himself: When he was awarded the prestigious Academy of American Poets annual fellowship — the MacArthur of poetry — Cummings had to withstand harsh criticism from traditionalists who besieged him with hate for the bravery of…
Read the note →I watched this conversation between Dave Chappelle and Mo Amer and got really thinking about what artists are supposed to do. Mo’s Netflix show Mo is about Palestinian refugees, and he literally finished writing it right before October 7th happened. Hearing him talk about navigating that timing as one of the few Palestinians in Hollywood made me appreciate how hard it is to be an artist dealing with heavy, real-world stuff. I loved their discussion about how you know when a story or joke is worth telling—basically, if it makes people laugh, think, or feel something. Both of them talked about just “calling it like you see it,” even when it’s risky.
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