I was doing an artists talk with Jason Travers at 68 Prince Street Gallery in Kingston, NY, two weeks ago, and the subject of politics came up. Jason said he kept going back to sinking ship analogies. “It’s sometimes lost that even on the sinking Titanic there was hope for humanity. While it was sinking, there was a string quartet playing for panicked passengers. These musicians kept playing while the ship went down. The man who led that quartet was Wallace Hartley. I don’t want his name to be forgotten. There was a time when I would think about him and feel angry— why are you playing music when you should be getting on one of those boats? Now I look back at his contribution differently, and I do think it was a contribution. He was doing the only thing he could do. He was restoring a sense of humanity at the moment it was most needed — even if no one was listening. In a way, that’s the analogy for the artist today. I feel like Wallace Hartley — playing music while the whole world is falling apart and nobody’s paying attention.”