In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.

Host: The city lay beneath a sky bruised by smoke and light pollution, its buildings jagged against the horizon like teeth grinding through the night. The streets glimmered with a thin layer of rain, and from a distant alley came the faint strum of a street musician — a melody lost somewhere between hope and grief.

Inside a narrow art studio, the walls were covered in unfinished canvases, their colors fierce and chaotic, as if they were painted to resist the world outside. A single lamp hummed weakly over a wooden table, where Jack sat with a paintbrush resting in his hand, staring at a half-done portrait.

Across from him, Jeeny stood barefoot, her arms folded, the hem of her white dress brushed with streaks of blue and red paint. Her eyes, deep brown and tired, followed the dripping of rain on the windowpane.

The words that had just been spoken — “In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.” — by Phil Ochs — still lingered in the air, heavier than the scent of turpentine and wet concrete.

Jeeny: “It’s strange how that line still hurts — even after fifty years. It’s like he wrote it for us.”
Jack: “Or for himself. The man sang about beauty until the ugliness swallowed him whole.”
Jeeny: “You mean the world swallowed him. There’s a difference.”
Jack: “Maybe not. Maybe the world is what we let it be. You paint, I talk — and nothing changes. We call it art, but it’s just decoration on decay.”

Host: The rain beat harder against the glass, and a faint rumble of thunder rolled like a sigh. The studio light flickered, catching the dust in midair like small, suspended galaxies.

Jeeny: “That’s not true, Jack. Beauty does change things — even if it’s one person, one feeling at a time. That’s what Ochs meant.”
Jack: “Then tell me, Jeeny — how does a brushstroke stop a bullet? How does a poem feed a starving child?”
Jeeny: “It doesn’t. But it reminds us why they deserve to live. That’s enough to start.”
Jack: “No, that’s sentiment. The world needs solutions, not sonnets.”

Host: Jack’s voice was low, husky, the kind that had argued too long with silence. He dipped the brush into black paint, dragging a single stroke across the canvas — hard, deliberate, final.

Jeeny: “And yet, every time the world turns cruel, people turn to songs, to stories, to color. Don’t you see? We protest ugliness by refusing to become it.”
Jack: “Or by pretending we can escape it. Beauty’s an opiate, not a weapon.”
Jeeny: “That’s where you’re wrong. Beauty isn’t an escape; it’s resistance. It says, ‘You can destroy everything, but not my soul.’”
Jack: “You really think a painting can stand against hate?”
Jeeny: “It already has. Picasso’s Guernica screamed louder than bombs. Billie Holiday sang ‘Strange Fruit,’ and people couldn’t look away from their own cruelty. That’s what beauty does — it turns mirrors into weapons.”

Host: Her voice trembled, not from weakness, but from something fierce — a quiet kind of defiance. Jack looked up, his eyes catching the lamplight, reflecting a dull silver that softened at her words.

Jack: “You talk like art can save us.”
Jeeny: “Not save us. Remind us.”
Jack: “Remind us of what?”
Jeeny: “That we still have hearts. That we haven’t become the monsters we fear.”
Jack: “But what if we already have?”

Host: Silence filled the room, stretching long and fragile. Somewhere outside, a sirene wailed, distant but piercing — the sound of the modern world crying out through concrete lungs.

Jeeny moved closer, her bare feet whispering against the wooden floor.

Jeeny: “Then art is the only way back. Beauty is what makes repentance possible.”
Jack: “You sound like a priest of color.”
Jeeny: “And you sound like a man who’s forgotten how to see.”

Host: Jack stood, the chair creaking, his face tense with something between anger and exhaustion. He walked toward the window, staring at the blurred city lights, their reflections like bruises on the glass.

Jack: “Look out there, Jeeny. Look at that mess — lies on billboards, smoke from greed, people scrolling themselves to death. Tell me — where’s your beauty now?”
Jeeny: “Right there,” she said softly. “In the man giving his umbrella to a stranger. In the woman singing to her baby on the subway. In the cracks where light still sneaks in.”
Jack: “That’s optimism disguised as denial.”
Jeeny: “No. It’s love disguised as courage.”

Host: Her words hung like light itself — fragile, flickering, but real. The storm outside had softened to a whisper.

Jack: “You always think beauty’s moral. It’s not. It can be cruel too — seductive, false, manipulative.”
Jeeny: “Yes. But even false beauty makes people look. And once they look, they might see what’s real.”
Jack: “That’s a gamble.”
Jeeny: “So is life.”
Jack: “And death usually wins.”
Jeeny: “Then at least we die creating something worth remembering.”

Host: The lamp buzzed, its light dimming briefly before returning with a soft hum. On the canvas before them, the black stroke Jack had painted began to dry — a line of defiance across chaos.

Jeeny: “You remember when you stopped painting?”
Jack: “After the protests. After they arrested those kids and called it justice.”
Jeeny: “You said your art didn’t matter anymore.”
Jack: “And it didn’t.”
Jeeny: “But it did. One of your murals is still standing — they couldn’t erase it completely. You gave people something to believe in, even if it was just color.”
Jack: “Color doesn’t feed them.”
Jeeny: “But it fed their spirits. You think that’s less?”

Host: Jack’s jaw clenched, but his eyes softened, as if some long-buried memory had just resurfaced — of laughter, of walls splashed with wild, unrepentant paint, of strangers who smiled as they passed his work.

Jack: “You make it sound like beauty’s enough to heal everything.”
Jeeny: “No. Beauty can’t heal the world, Jack. But it can remind the world it deserves healing.”
Jack: “And if no one listens?”
Jeeny: “Then we keep creating until they do. Or until we’re gone. Either way, we’ll have left something that says we tried.”

Host: She took the brush from his hand, dipped it in red, and gently touched the canvas — a single streak, alive and bright against the black.

Jeeny: “That’s the protest. Not anger. Not destruction. Creation.”
Jack: “It’s a quiet rebellion.”
Jeeny: “The quiet ones last the longest.”

Host: Outside, the storm cleared, and the moonlight spilled through the window, illuminating the half-finished portrait. The colors — black, red, gold — seemed to breathe in the new light, as if alive, defiant.

Jack: “Maybe Ochs was right, then. Maybe beauty is protest — not because it fights back, but because it refuses to surrender.”
Jeeny: “Exactly. It refuses to become what it hates.”
Jack: “Then maybe we should paint again.”
Jeeny: “We never stopped, Jack. We just forgot why.”

Host: They stood side by side, facing the canvas, the city behind them still humming with its own cruel rhythm. But here, in this small, paint-stained sanctuary, another rhythm pulsed — quieter, braver, unbroken.

The camera pulls back, rising above the studio, over the rain-washed streets and the endless grid of lights.

And in that vast, imperfect city — ugly in places, beautiful in others — a single window glows, and within it, two souls still believe that every brushstroke, every song, every word,
is a way of saying no to the darkness,
and yes to the light.

Because, as Phil Ochs once sang — and the night seems to whisper it now —
in such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.