In the midst of winter, an invincible summer

Here are six of the best articles on arts and culture that The Conversation US published in 2020 – three of the most-read and three I chose to highlight.

For many Americans, lockdowns, office closures and layoffs have meant more time spent at home. And depending on your living situation, it could also mean a lot more time spent alone. As someone who lives by himself, I struggled to adapt to life without the comfort of companionship. As an editor, I’ve found myself drawn to stories about finding meaning in solitude.

University of Michigan artist and professor Janie Paul has spent years interviewing prisoners who become engrossed in making art while incarcerated. With inmate after inmate, she witnessed lives that had been drained of meaning and agency become imbued with purpose and possibility.

“I sometimes wish the day was longer when I’m painting,” one prisoner told Paul. “It’s like I don’t belong in time anymore.”

University of Washington environmental scholar Jennifer Atkinson reflected on the growing popularity of gardening during the pandemic. Without the electricity of concert crowds, the camaraderie in classrooms and the buzz of coffee shops, gardening, she observes, “arises as an antidote, extending the promise of contact with something real.”

Finally, Matthew Redmond – a doctoral candidate in English at Stanford – wrote of Emily Dickinson’s last years, during which she rarely, if ever, left her room. Her best friends and favorite correspondents died, one after the other. And yet she continued to write, producing some of her most striking meditations on mortality and redemption.

“Living in the shadow of death,” Redmond writes, “Dickinson remained enamored of life. This, as much as anything, makes her a hero of our time.”

The most dire of circumstances, it turns out, can still contain beautiful moments and open up new opportunities.

As Albert Camus once wrote, “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”