I think art should stand in its own neutral place, because I

“I think art should stand in its own neutral place, because I think that’s how reality always is — it’s this duality of being both hopeless and also full of hope.”
Thus spoke Weyes Blood, the modern songstress and philosopher of melody, whose music drifts between melancholy and revelation. In these words she unveils the ancient truth that art, like life, must not take sides in the war between despair and optimism, but must instead dwell in the sacred tension between them. For the artist, she says, is not a preacher nor a politician, but a mirror—a vessel through which the contradictions of existence are made visible and whole.

The origin of this quote lies in Weyes Blood’s reflections on her creative process and her vision of the human condition. Her art, steeped in sorrow and wonder, captures the strange balance of the modern soul: one eye gazing into the void, the other into the light. In a world riven by extremes—faith and doubt, joy and despair, creation and decay—she urges that art remain neutral, not in indifference, but in truthfulness. For reality itself is neutral; it holds both tragedy and beauty, cruelty and grace, as inseparable halves of the same whole. The artist’s task is not to choose between them, but to reveal their coexistence.

This duality of hope and hopelessness is as old as thought itself. The ancient philosophers knew it well. Heraclitus, the sage of fire, taught that all things are born from opposites—that life and death, joy and grief, are one. The river of being flows in both directions, and to deny one is to blind oneself to the other. So too does Weyes Blood’s wisdom echo this balance. She reminds us that art, when honest, cannot be purely joyful nor purely sorrowful—it must embrace both, for both are true. In this balance lies the deeper understanding of existence, where beauty is sharpened by loss, and love gains meaning only through the shadow of time.

Consider the life of Vincent van Gogh, whose paintings blaze with the color of both agony and ecstasy. His sunflowers burst with life even as he battled the darkness of his own mind. He did not paint merely hope nor despair, but the truth of their coexistence. The storm in his heart became light upon the canvas. His art stands today in that same “neutral place” of which Weyes Blood speaks—a place not free of emotion, but beyond judgment, where the spirit of man and the indifference of the universe meet and create beauty.

When she speaks of neutrality, she does not mean detachment, but balance. The artist must hold both sorrow and joy without fleeing from either. For to choose only hope is to lie, and to choose only hopelessness is to die. But to live in awareness of both—to stand still in that trembling middle ground—is to touch the pulse of reality itself. This is where art lives: not to comfort nor to condemn, but to illuminate. It teaches us to feel deeply without being consumed, to see clearly without despairing.

Indeed, Weyes Blood’s words hold a lesson not only for artists but for all who seek meaning in a fractured world. We are tempted to divide everything into light and dark, victory and loss, good and evil. But reality resists such simplicity. The wise learn to stand, like art, in the neutral space between extremes, to witness the full scope of being. When we accept that existence holds both beauty and ruin, hope and hopelessness, we become unshakable—not because we escape sorrow, but because we see that sorrow itself belongs to the music of life.

So, O seeker of understanding, take this teaching to heart: do not flee despair, nor cling blindly to hope. Stand where art stands—in the stillness between them. Let your heart, like the artist’s, be vast enough to contain contradictions. For it is in this balance that you will find truth: the serenity of knowing that the world, though broken, is still beautiful; that life, though fleeting, is still worth the song. And if you can dwell there—in that trembling space where hope and hopelessness meet—you too will create, live, and love with the clarity of art itself.