SongWriter: Michael Ian Black + Victoria Jones

You can listen to a story from Michael Ian Black and a song written in response by Victoria Jones here:

A strange reality of the times is that practically the entire artistic world has aligned itself with the Left. There are furious bitter men like James Woods and Jon Voight that were once actors, it’s true, but the vast majority of the art world cast their votes for Democrats. Even country-leaning artists like Jason Isbell and Taylor Swift, who know that large swaths of their fans are Republicans, are unwilling to take the financially conservative (and morally bankrupt) path of tactical non-partisanship. The White House recently put together a list of 274 celebrities and asked many to record PSAs about the coronavirus. Three agreed to participate, each later withdrew their permission. 

Though we often focus on technique – precise guitar arpeggios, vivid paintbrush strokes, or clean narrative arcs – empathy is one of the most fundamental jobs in art. The artist takes in an experience, inhabits a perspective, and then portrays the emotional reality as if it is their own. If an artist inhabits that perspective poorly then the art is usually bad, a caricature. But when an artist inhabits a perspective with empathy and humanity, the art feels emotionally authentic. This is as true in Gillian Welch’s “Orphan Song” as it is in Michaelangelo’s Pieta. 

I’ve spent the last few years telling myself that the mass-alignment of artists on the left is proof that artists are better at empathy than most. But after the election I’ve struggled to feel empathy and kinship with Trump voters. I struggle to think about those 70 million Americans without resorting to dehumanizing caricatures. It seems to me that the kindest interpretation is to understand these folks as hurt and angry, but that interpretation contains jarring cognitive dissonance: How much can you empathize with people who support a racist president without turning your back on the people they want to victimize? 

One of the joys of the SongWriter project is watching one artist deeply consider and inhabit the perspective of another. In the final episode of the second season Michael Ian Black tells a story about stealing, and songwriter Victoria Jones speaks about religious faith and honesty in the face of human failure. In the episode you can hear how hard Victoria works to find commonality with Michael’s experience. “I really enjoyed Michael’s story,” Victoria told me, “Because I am, like, ‘Yeah, bro, that’s how we need to be living. You don’t need to have this edge of shame. Just own your stuff!’”

Still, it is clear that they are about as different from one another as two Americans can be. “I could never,” she laughed, “get on a podcast and talk about my petty life of crime.”

Ben Arthur is the creator and host of SongWriter. The next live SongWriter show will be December 19th, featuring Jonathan Lethem reading from his new novel, The Arrest, and a brand new song written in response by Tift Merritt. More information can be found at SongWriter’s FB.