Life Imitates Art; Art Interprets Life
Andor, Literature, and a Haunting Melody
A few weeks back, we stopped at our favorite local bookstore. It’s one of our go-to lazy Sunday afternoon outings – nosing around for Rare Finds and Must Haves. This bookstore has plenty of both.
It’s a quirky place, with creaky floors and a unique smell that mixes the warmth of old building with the crispness of new books.
The front table that greets you is filled with staff picks.
They glared at me.
1984. The Parable of the Sower. Animal Farm.
“Nice current events section,” I said to the person behind the register. They laughed. And I laughed.
But it wasn’t really a joke.
The most memorable course I took in college was ostensibly about the literature of the Romantic Period, but it was more of a history class than anything else. The quirky, bespectacled, frazzle-haired professor rightly pointed out that we would never be able to truly understand the text we were reading – we’d never understand the depth and nuance and brilliance of it – if we didn’t have proper context.
So we studied period art and music, read newspaper articles, learned about the political landscape, immigration patterns, epidemics. We observed what was happening in and around the artists of the time to understand what they wrote about, and why.
Because art is a lens; a frame; a framework. It’s the tool by which an artist explains and dissects the human experience. So it’s hard to fully appreciate the art if you don’t know the experience that’s being interpreted.
Perhaps that’s why we all feel as though we are living in a movie.
Image credit: Disney
By now, you’ve likely heard of the Star Wars series Andor. It’s an excellent show that was recommended to me by a dear friend, who gently suggested that I watch it because its message is especially relevant today. (She was right.) Technically it’s about a man named Cassian Andor, but it’s really about oppression, and rebellion, and humanity, and hope.
It’s about the brutal, brittle nature of authoritarian regimes – and about the everyday people who are instrumental in the effort to take them down.
I got into the habit of grabbing a scrap of paper and pencil when I sat down to watch it – so frequent were the moments when I wanted to jot down a phrase or a bit of dialogue. On scribbled notes by the remote, I tracked the quotes like I was keeping score – snippets of inspiration delivered via galactic western:
“The pace of repression outstrips our ability to understand it. And that is the real trick of the Imperial thought machine. It’s easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident.”
“You'll never feel right unless you're doing what you can to stop them. You're coming home to yourself. You've become more than your fear. Let that protect you.”
“The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness. It is never more alive than when we sleep.”
There are storylines and moments within the series’ two seasons that feel shockingly similar to recent events – almost as if the series was literally ripped from yesterday’s headlines.
But it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been.
It was written and filmed years ago.
It simply feels resonant because – just like those books on the Staff Pick table – it tells a new version of a story that’s as old as humanity and government and the quest for freedom. It may be a new angle, a fresh perspective, a unique shade.
But we all recognize the chorus.
If you’ve ever been to the symphony, you know how a melody can haunt you as it travels through the different sections of the orchestra. Maybe it’s the strings that first introduce it, followed a few measures or minutes later by the woodwinds, who take over and add their own unique breathiness.
Then perhaps the horns jump in with a powerful surge – maybe in a different octave, or with a crescendo that lifts your heart out of your chest and makes you want to scream or cry or both.
In each iteration, in each echo, it’s the same melody – the same combination of notes. But each section carries the tune in its own special way, with its own flavor and resonance.
It’s as if each era has its own orchestral section – its own symphonic take on the same melody that’s been playing through the ages, passing lessons through the refrain.
So while our modern experience is unique, it’s also an echo of times before – the continuation of a tune that was first played long before we arrived.
Now it is simply our turn to sing.
The other night, the same friend who recommended Andor explained that science fiction isn’t about the future. It’s about the present, dressed up in such a way that we don’t recognize it.
Stripped of familiar surroundings, we can spot the tyranny with fresh eyes.
The artists and authors and composers and filmmakers of our time are stripping our modern world of its familiar surrounding so that we can see it more clearly – and so we can see ourselves as the protagonists in the quest for freedom.
Just as Orwell and Butler and Bradbury and Atwood did in their time.
Friend, there is a reason that autocrats fear art. There is a reason they ban books.
That is the reason you should read them.
Let’s get to work.
Actions for the Week of June 10, 2025
Friend, things may be heavy – but you can lighten that load by doing something small – a “small deed” – to bring about the world that you want to see. In doing so we tell the world, the universe, our leaders – and most importantly, ourselves – that we will not go quietly into that good night.
I call it Action Therapy.
That’s why in each Tuesday post I share a few “small things” – usually a Small Thing to Read, a Small Event to Attend, and a Small Call to Make or Action to Take. My intention here is to give you actions you can tuck into your week with ease – and know that you’re doing something today to make tomorrow better.
Join me in doing so. It matters.
“Small” Event to Attend (But This One’s Not Small): No Kings!
First, this Saturday, join tens (hundreds?) of thousands of your closest friends who will be protesting around the country at a No Kings protest. These events have taken on added resonance in the last week, and there are hundreds of events. Find one local to you here:
In the leadup there are many virtual trainings and events, including a town hall with AFT President Randi Weingarten tonight June 10, 2025, at 6:00 pm ET. Check them out and register here:
Second, Set Your Calendar to Next Tuesday to Join Field Team 6:
Field Team 6 is a partisan voter registration organization that has reached out to millions of unregistered likely Democrats since 2019. They do this in-person, and via email, text, phone, and handwritten postcard. They reached out to 26 million people in the 2024 cycle – and if you want to help them in 2026, I’ve got great news! They’re hosting a call next Tuesday to welcome new volunteers.
Tuesday, June 17, at 12p PT/ 3p ET. Welcome to Field Team 6 (For New Volunteers). Join from anywhere but RSVP HERE!
Small Thing(s) to Read: RFK JR Endangers Vaccines, Medicaid Work Requirements Report
First, RFK Jr. has fired the ENTIRE Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). That’s the nation’s vaccine policy committee. This is incredibly dangerous. To understand the implications, I highly recommend reading Your Local Epidemiologist’s explainer here:
I’ll have more on that in the coming days, but it’s a good time to get whatever vaccines you’re eligible for.
Second, the Brookings Institute published a great explainer on how Medicaid work requirements will not do what Republican messengers claim it will. The conclusion: “Medicaid work requirements set up a classic Hobson’s choice. To the extent that the provision’s requirements primarily lead to the disenrollment of so-called “able-bodied” adults who are enrolled in Medicaid but are not working, it will save the Federal government far less money than projected—that group is relatively small, tends to have very low service use, and spends the least time on Medicaid.
Thus, if the requirements are to save money, they will have to primarily disenroll those they purport to protect: enrollees drawn from the larger group who are already working 80 hours a month or enrollees from the much more expensive group who are not working but who report activity limitations.”
Read the full report here: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/any-way-you-look-at-it-you-lose-medicaid-work-requirements-will-either-fall-short-of-anticipating-savings-or-harm-vulnerable-beneficiaries/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Small Call to Make:
As I laid out above, RFK, Jr. has fired every member of the panel that helps approve vaccines. This is a full-on assault on vaccines, and will have plenty of impacts – the extent of which we will learn in the coming days.
You can call your Senators and Representative to push back on this. Five Calls has already updated their typical script for RFK, and you can find that here: https://5calls.org/issue/rfk-hhs-autism-registry-vaccines/
But I’d also like to encourage anyone who has a Senator on the HELP committee (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) to specifically call that Senator and ask what the committee is going to do about this. (MO residents – Hawley is a member of that committee.)
During his confirmation, Kennedy promised that he would not make the changes that he has now made. In fact, Senator Cassidy said in his floor speech recommending confirmation that: “If confirmed, he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes” and “If he is confirmed, HHS will provide a 30-day notice to the HELP Committee if the agency seeks to make changes to any of our federal vaccine safety monitoring programs, and HELP Committee will have the option to call a hearing to further review.”
Finally, Cassidy said “I will use my authority as Chairman of [the HELP committee] to rebuff any attempts to remove the public’s access to life-saving vaccines without ironclad, causational scientific evidence that can be defended before the mainstream scientific community and before Congress. I will carefully watch for any effort to wrongfully sow public fear about vaccines between confusing references of coincidence and anecdote.”
So? It’s time to call your Senators and say that RFK has violated that promise, and that you want to know what Cassidy and the rest of the Senators on that committee are going to do about it.
Watch the speech or read it here: https://www.cassidy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cassidy-delivers-floor-speech-in-support-of-rfk-jr-to-be-hhs-secretary/
The HELP Committee membership is here: https://www.help.senate.gov/
I appreciate seeing how understanding history can help us receive art in fresh ways, and how you bring together the various strands over the years so that we can pick up our part of the music now. We'll be participating on Saturday here.