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Activist and Founder of the #metoo movement

Women of color are victims of sexual violence at disproportionately high rates compared to white women.

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Three years into the #MeToo movement, there may be more awareness around workplace sexual harassment. But a new report finds that almost three-quarters of people reporting such harassment suffer from retaliation if they complain.

More than 7 out of 10 people who reported sexual harassment at the workplace said they faced some form of retaliation, up to and including being fired, said the report. It analyzed 3,317 online requests for legal help from the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund, between January 2018 and the end of April 2020.

The finding on retaliation was one of the most striking of the broad-ranging report, shared with The Associated Press ahead of its release Thursday. It also found that workplace harassment severely impacted workers' economic, physical and mental health, and that often, people were subjected to more than one form of workplace harassment - both sexual and racial, for example.

The study was conducted by the National Women's Law Center, which houses and administers the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund, launched in early 2018 to help workers who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to take their complaints of sexual misconduct to court. It connects them with legal assistance and in some cases helps defray costs.

The number of people reporting retaliation was "shocking," said Sharyn Tejani, director of the fund.

"Retaliation takes all different forms," she said. "Losing your job, losing shifts, losing pay - or if you've already lost your job, you can't find another job in that industry."

On top of that, Tejani noted, is the further complication of the coronavirus pandemic. "So now you have a situation where there's incredibly high unemployment, some jobs are going away and never coming back, and so for all the reasons that people are afraid of reporting and afraid of being retaliated against, COVID-19, like it does with so many things, makes it so much worse and so much more problematic."

Tejani said the study was conducted nearly three years into the fund's operations "to see if the trends we were noticing were really going on, and also because we know that secrecy helps sexual harassment flourish. The more we can talk about it, (we can) let people know, 'You are not alone, this isn't anything that you did, this is about how workplaces are and how they shouldn't be.'"

The report found that power dynamics remain a strong factor fueling sexual harassment. More than half, 56%, of workers who identified their harasser in their online requests said it was someone they reported to.

And often, harassers were not held accountable; nearly two in five people, 37%, said nothing happened to the perpetrator.

Tejani said that here, too, the pandemic has exacerbated an already difficult situation.

"When you have a huge power differential there is more likely to be harassment," Tejani said. "Because of all the economic stressors, COVID-19 increases the power a supervisor can have, because people are so much closer to the edge, and much more willing to put up with things in order to keep a job."

Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the law center and co-founder of the fund, said the scenarios outlined in the report should sound "an alarm to legislators and policymakers: Until harassers are held accountable, workplaces will remain unsafe for everyone."

In a statement, she said the findings "reveal the courage it takes for people to come forward and report the harassment and abuse they're experiencing in the workplace."

Among the findings:

- Of those who experienced retaliation, 36% said they were fired, and 19% said they'd experienced poor performance evaluations, or were otherwise treated poorly at work.

- Most people reported harassment to their employer, 64%, rather than a government agency, court or law enforcement.

- Nearly a third (29%) of those who reported harassment said nothing was ever done about it.

- Nearly one in five people (19%) said the harassment had a damaging impact on their mental health.

Tina Tchen, president and CEO of the Time's Up Foundation, noted a positive sign in the findings, which is that more survivors are coming forward.

"While it's outrageous that sexual harassment and assault at work remain so prevalent, it's inspiring to see so many survivors rise up to fight back," Tchen said. "If one thing's clear, it's that we're never going back to the days where sexual harassment will remain hidden in the shadows - and that's a good thing."

A landmark 2016 report on sexual harassment by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said roughly three out of four people who experienced harassment never reported it "because they fear disbelief of their claim, inaction on their claim, blame, or social or professional retaliation."

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Time's Up study: Many who report harassment face retaliation

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Three years into the #MeToo movement, there may be more awareness around workplace sexual harassment. But a new report finds that almost three-quarters of people reporting such harassment suffer from retaliation if they complain. More than 7 out of 10 people who reported sexual harassment at the workplace said they faced some form of retaliation, up to and including being fired, said the report.

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In clinical settings, creative arts therapists provide art, music, and dance/movement therapies, as well as therapeutic writing instruction, for military patients, veterans and their families. As part of Creative Forces, creative arts therapies augment the many different types of therapy offered as part of patient-centered clinical care. Creative arts therapies aren't "nice to have" capabilities in this model of care, they are "NEED to HAVE" services.

Creative Forces creative arts therapists deliver an estimated 1,000 treatment sessions per year, reaching about 200 new patients every year. Typically, a patient treated by a Creative Forces creative arts therapist has multiple sessions to ensure therapeutic goals are meet. National Endowment for the Arts-supported creative arts therapists delivered more than 17,000 treatment encounters in 2019.

The Arts Endowment funds creative arts therapists, associated research and performance measurement, equipment, and supplies at selected clinical sites across the nation, including telehealth services for patients in rural and remote areas. Administrative support for this work is provided by the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine. Military partners-the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs-provide a functional space for the clinical therapy sessions, patient referrals, collaboration on clinical care and research, as well as additional creative arts therapists.
Telehealth
Creative Forces' telehealth component connects creative arts therapists with patients in rural and remote places via video conferencing platforms. In 2017, the Arts Endowment partnered with the Rural Veterans TeleRehabilitation Initiative, an enterprise-wide initiative of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Rural Health (ORH) to deliver rehabilitation therapies to rural veterans wherever they are. Creative Forces partnered with the RVTRI to allow it to offer music therapy via telehealth at the North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System. Creative Forces subsequently implemented a similar program in Alaska, allowing patients from Basset Army Community Hospital in Fairbanks to receive creative arts therapies from providers working out of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage. In November 2019, the National Endowment for the Arts and ORH announced plans to expand the telehealth component of Creative Forces. Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center (Indianapolis, Indiana), G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery VA Medical Center (Jackson, Mississippi), and VA Northeast Ohio Healthcare System (Cleveland, Ohio) have been selected to join Creative Forces and the Rural Veterans TeleRehabilitation Initiative, in collaboration with the Veterans Health Administration Office of Rehabilitation and Prosthetics Service and National Program Office, Recreation Therapy Service, as the newest telehealth sites.

IMPACT

Creative arts therapies are non-invasive, non-medication-based, and reduce healthcare costs. These treatments have wide-ranging impact:

PHYSICAL: Promotes physical rehabilitation -- improved cognition, memory, sensory-motor function, impulse control, concentration, and sleep.

EMOTIONAL: Promotes psychological health -- improved interpersonal and communication skills, management of difficult emotions (frustration, grief, anger), and reduced depression, stress, and anxiety.

ECONOMIC: Less time spent in medical care and therefore lower healthcare costs.

CREATIVE FORCES CLINICAL SITES

These are the Creative Forces clinical sites in alphabetical order by state.

Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER), Anchorage AK

Fort Carson, CO

James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital, Tampa, FL

North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System, Gainesville, FL

National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE) at Walter Reed, Bethesda, MD

Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, NC

Fort Hood, TX

Fort Belvoir, VA

Navy Medical Center Portsmouth, Portsmouth, VA

Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Tacoma, WA

Creative Forces clinical sites selected to join in the future:

Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center, Indianapolis, IN

G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery VA Medical Center, Jackson, MS

VA Northeast Ohio Healthcare System, Cleveland, OH

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In clinical settings, creative arts therapists provide art, music, and dance/movement therapies, as well as therapeutic writing instruction, for military patients, veterans and their families. As part of Creative Forces, creative arts therapies augment the many different types of therapy offered as part of patient-centered clinical care.

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Painted by Artemisia Gentileschi, a rape survivor. This was the first painting to depict the elders accosting Susana as traumatic.

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As the sexual misconduct scandals continue to unfold, our gender team is providing updates and analysis in a newsletter. Today, we present artwork inspired by the cultural reckoning - made by you, our readers. Sign up here to receive future installments, and tell us what you think at nytgender@nytimes.com.
Judy Chicago established the first known feminist-art program in the United States, in the fall of 1970, at the California Institute of the Arts. Later, she formed the art collective known as "Womanhouse " because, as she put it, " women artists were simply not taken seriously."

Two decades later, the Guerrilla Girls forced attention to the fine art world's gender and racial disparity with their gorilla masks and guerrilla-style stunts. ("Guerrilla Girls' definition of a hypocrite?" read one poster. "An art collector who buys white male art at benefits for liberal causes, but never buys art by women or artists of color.")

From Picasso's Guernica - observed as a cry against the atrocities of the Spanish War - to the graffiti of the Arab Spring, social movements and injustice have long inspired art of all forms. The #MeToo Moment is no exception.

We asked readers to submit work on this theme. In her piece above, the Michigan-based illustrator, Libby VanderPloeg, showcases the concept of momentum: "When people join forces," she explained, "they can exert greater leverage over a situation."

Below, eight more of the pieces you sent our way, with comments from the artists.

"This is a watercolor piece, portraying three individuals of different ethnic groups and genders, that demonstrates how the victims of sexual assault and harassment vary. "The individuals are removing tape from their mouths to signify victims finding the courage to come forward. "Having more than one person in the piece shows the unity within the movement and how rape culture affects more than just a few people."
- Graciella Delgado is a 17-year-old artist in Houston, Tex.

"I was around 15 and a man approached me on the street, said he liked my shoes. I thanked him. "He then began to list every other part of me he liked (legs, mouth, hair, everything), following me down the street as I tried to leave the conversation. First by politely excusing myself, then by breaking into a run.

"That was the first time I felt myself seen as nothing but a collection of body parts. It wasn't the last."
- Alicia Tatone is a graphic designer in Brooklyn, N.Y.

"The cartoon is pretty self-explanatory, but for me it's just about how women who share stories often find out that we all often experience the same pain, no matter how different our backgrounds."
- Hilary Campbell is a cartoonist in Brooklyn, N.Y.

"I have my own lifetime of #MeToo experiences, and one response I have to the courage of those contributing to this uprising is the sense of pure joy and freedom when I imagine that culture is finally in ruins. "There are serious aspects to this movement, but I want to show the inevitability and inherent positivity of its impact as something to be celebrated."
- Kathleen Morris is a textile and collage artist in Australia.

"I drew these sketches in a shelter for women and children escaping domestic violence. In order to preserve the privacy of women, I portrayed only their ears. "The shape of our ears is unique, like our fingerprints. However near the partners are, they still can't actually identify that shape."
- Olga Prudnikova is a freelance illustrator in Berlin.

"I like that this piece shows that we as women are all a collective force, just as the ocean is a large force made up of individual water drops."
- Caralena Peterson is a writer and artist in Washington, D.C.

"My image was inspired by the #MeToo Revolution, my personal experiences with the male gaze and a healthy amount of frustration and repulsion. What I hope to convey in this image is the sense of verbal, physical and energetic male ownership that is placed on women in society."
- Beata Kruszynski is a freelance illustrator and art teacher in Ontario, Canada.

"By hiding the dolls' faces, I hoped to highlight how the objectification of girls' bodies takes away their identities."
- Dora Guo is a high school student in Lincolnshire, Ill.

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The #MeToo Moment: Art Inspired by the Reckoning

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As the sexual misconduct scandals continue to unfold, our gender team is providing updates and analysis in a newsletter. Today, we present artwork inspired by the cultural reckoning - made by you, our readers. Sign up here to receive future installments, and tell us what you think at nytgender@nytimes.com .

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The dreams had mostly stopped. Still, he found himself awake, blinking in the dark room. Four A.M. He lay unmoving for a moment under the duvet. His T-shirt was stuck to his back-night sweats, the pillow swampy, the sheets damp. Roll to the other side. Spread out on the chilly sheets. Keep the eyes closed. As soon as both eyes opened, it would be straight to dull business, an organizer already laid out with his morning meds, a bottle of room-temperature Fiji water alongside.

This time tomorrow, he would know everything. Well, not exactly this time, more like 10 A. M., but, in any case, all would be decided. He believed, truly, that he would be exonerated. How could he not be? This was America. Maybe there was a moment, a day or two right when this all began, when he believed that this might be it, the end of the road. He understood Epstein hanging himself in his cell-because what would life look like, afterward? No more dinner parties, no more respect, no buffer of fear and admiration that kept you in a kind of pleasant trance, the world shaping itself around you.

And, yes, there was a moment when people no longer returned his calls, looked away from him on the street, no room at the inn, etc. But, almost as quickly, other people showed up, rushed to fill the void. Came to his Super Bowl party, let him use country houses, consult with family lawyers. He was staying at Vogel's Connecticut house now, for example. A man wouldn't let another man stay in his home if he was truly a leper.

He was fully awake now, adrenaline lighting up his brain, the itch to make plans, get to work. He turned on the bedside light and sat against the pillows. He guzzled the last of the stale water, groped for his legal pad. It was better, he'd learned, after the punishing rounds of discovery, to keep lists on paper. Papers got misplaced, papers disappeared.

He called Joan. "This is off the record," he said, instantly.

Her voice was sleepy. "Hello?"

"Do you agree?" he said. "I need a verbal."

"Harvey?" she said.

"A verbal," he said. "Off the record."

"Sure, Harvey."

He heard someone in the background. "Who is that?"

"It's Jerry. We're in bed."

"Well, get out of bed, O.K.? This is for your ears only. I'll call back in five."

Joan liked him. Legitimately liked him. She was tough, no-nonsense, but happy to soft-pedal an actor's D.U.I. in return for a lengthy profile, gladly accepted screening invitations and was a reliable fixture at after-parties. They'd had fun times. The junket for the film that he'd triaged out of near-disaster: Harvey had hunkered down in Sag and basically rewritten the script, while the director was hauled out of rehab and barely propped up by a team of A.D.s. An Academy campaign. The liaison in Japan who took them to Gold Bar-the only white people in the place. Uni on filet mignon, a skinny press assistant hanging around who wouldn't touch it. Who cringed when he put his arm around her, cowering on the banquette. They'd left her at the place, as a joke. As he remembered it. Let her try to find her way back to the hotel at 3 A. M. in Tokyo. This was before phones, when people got legitimately lost. And, as he remembered, Joan hadn't exactly gone out of her way to help the girl, or insist they take her home. She had thought it was funny, too.

He dialled again.

Joan answered on the first ring.

"I want to give you the first interview after I'm exonerated," he said. "I do. But I want to make sure you have all the facts, all the facts. 'Cause there is a lot," he said, "a lot that has been suppressed in this case. You would be shocked to find out even a fraction of what the other side buried-"

"O.K., Harvey. I'm just walking downstairs, O.K.? Just hold your horses."

"And this is off the record, Joan."

"Yes, Harvey."

"This time tomorrow"-he corrected himself-"or, you know, tomorrow, not sure when, specifically, this whole case will be revealed for what it is: an elaborate fraud, an attempt to litigate regret and make me a scapegoat. A fraud, it bears saying, that you and your cohorts at the so-called paper of record were willing participants in. A lot of very bad actors there, your colleagues. Some might say there's a civil RICO case to be made against you-"

She didn't respond.

"Joan?"

"Sorry, my kid has an ear infection, I think she's awake. Can you hold on a second?"

He hung up the phone.

Time to get dressed, start the whole mess again. The Loro Piana half-zip, navy, good American bluejeans. The ankle bracelet was slim enough that it actually did seem more like a bracelet. Even as light as it was, it messed with his stride, this little annoyance, ever present, never quite fading into the background. Enough clearance underneath to pull up his thin red socks. Socks from the place the Pope gets his. Tomato red, cotton lisle, made in this tiny shop by the Vatican.

He splashed his face with water. Tightened his belt. He was losing weight. Funny that this was what it took, in the end. Not the hugely expensive doctors, the sachets of vitamins meant to replace meals, the overnight sleep study at Weill Cornell and daily Pilates instruction. All it took, it turned out, was total annihilation. Attempted annihilation, he corrected himself, the threat of annihilation.

"There's been an assassination attempt," he heard in his head, as if from a news announcer, "an attempt on the President's life." This had been a recurring thought lately: an assassination attempt, an assassination attempt. He had survived an assassination attempt. Because how else could you describe what they were trying to do to him? The shocking, incredible resources they had marshalled against one man? He was just a man, just one man in red socks and a too-thin T-shirt, an ache in his left molar, a bad back that was basically on the verge of collapse, all his cartilage scraped away so his spine was a teetering Jenga stack of disks.

A little frightening, the carpeted stairs, his ankles feeling hollow and frail. He gripped the bannister. Better to just take the elevator from now on, one of the reasons Vogel had offered the house up, that cheesy elevator.

Downstairs was quiet, the rooms dark, though a few lights were on in the kitchen. He'd assumed no one was awake, but then Gabe stepped out from the pantry. He was fully dressed, face bright and avid.

"Good morning," Gabe said, smoothly, as if this were a normal hour, as if it weren't only 5 A.M.. Harvey supposed that was what Gabe's job entailed, being perpetually unsurprised. "Can I get you a little breakfast? Coffee?"

"Coffee, yes." Harvey patted his stomach, absently. "Breakfast, no, not yet. My juice, the regular."

"Certainly. The breakfast room is all set up. Let me know if you need anything else."

Gabe brought in the coffee, the glass of juice. Grapefruit juice interfered with Harvey's Lipitor. So lately he was allowed only a splash with seltzer. He missed the full glass, the scathing mouthful that used to start every day. Four newspapers were lined up in tidy order alongside the placemat-he'd gotten used to blurring his vision a little, preëmptively, just to lessen the shock upon encountering his own face suddenly on the front page, his name swimming above the fold.

Seeing the photos had been rough, worse than he'd imagined. You let go of a lot of things, had to get used to shame, but it was hard to totally abandon vanity. Harvey hobbling with the walker, the suit that the lawyers had insisted be slightly ill-fitting, slightly cheap. They wanted to make everyone feel sorry for him. A strange pose to take, at least in public. It was, he supposed, what he used to do easily enough in private-my mother died today, he said, watching the girl's face change. I'm so lonely, just sit with me a minute, just lie here with me. Patting the hotel bed, over and over. Gripping a wrist with his face in a moue of sorrow-come on, he said, come on. Be a nice girl, not a sour one. I gave you a massage. Now you can give me one. It's only fair.

He aimed the remote at the big television. It took up almost the whole wall, a very Master of the Universe, situation-room setup, a little rich for Vogel, who was, essentially, a money manager. He clicked the remote once, clicked twice. The screen remained blank.

"Gabe," he called out. Nothing. "Gabe," he said, louder, aware of how aggro his voice sounded, a bark, really, exactly what people expected from him. He should watch himself, just get into the habit of corralling certain impulses, though who was here to make a note of any bad behavior except Gabe?

"Of course," Gabe said, taking the remote. He was so anodyne, so mild-hard to imagine him having sex, eating food, meeting any human need. He asked what channel Harvey would like.

News, naturally. On mute.

The sun was not visible yet, but the light had changed. A new day, time to get to work. He dialled the lawyer's number. It went straight to voice mail. He dialled again. The same. And again.

The coffee was cold. Gabe brought a new carafe before Harvey could shout for him.

As Gabe poured a fresh cup, the possibility of God considering Harvey's fate floated across his mind: a frowning white-bearded daddy gazing down, making a list of his good deeds, his failings. Like maybe this would be taken into account tomorrow. Affect the verdict.

Harvey forced himself to catch Gabe's gaze, forced himself to smile. "Thanks," he said, smiling hard so his eyes crinkled, and Gabe smiled back, pleasantly, though his brow furrowed a little and he seemed to be in a hurry to leave the room.

O.K., the day had barely started and already he was being kind, making moves. On the giant screen a blonde in a red fitted dress was leaning on the news desk, staring feverishly into the camera, and Harvey stared back, downing the cup of coffee. She was gesturing at numbers on a green screen, numbers that he didn't understand yet, numbers that meant nothing to him, but soon enough the blond woman would reward his attentions: the context would be explained, the meaning revealed.

He went outside to make a few calls, putting on a waxed barn jacket from the front closet. Sure, all the staff had signed N.D.A.s, but better to be careful. He strode far enough away that Vogel's house-a boxy brick Colonial with flickering gas lamps, likely repro, at the gravel entry circle-was barely in sight, though now the neighbor's driveway was visible. Vogel should landscape this out, so you didn't have to gaze on the neighbors, or, more important, so the neighbors didn't gaze on you.

The sun was up now, a thin disk that offered no warmth, even as dew started to drip from the hedges. Nature was revving itself up. He was chatting to Nancy, the most loyal of the assistants. Nancy, with her M.S. boyfriend and schizo mother, her sad Minnesota childhood-she would never leave him.

"Harvey?" Nancy was saying. "Kristin wants to come up around three, she wants to leave the city before traffic. Is that O.K.?"

A turning, a shift-something drew his eye across the vast lawn, above the hedges. A man, opening the front door of the house next door, padding outside in old-fashioned pajamas, a puffy coat. He paused for a moment, tilting his gray face to the chilly sun. Then he walked down the steps and made his way along the driveway to the front gate. Did he see Harvey standing there? He didn't appear to. He stooped to pick up the blue plastic bundle of the newspaper, then walked back to the terrace. He sat on a wooden bench, wriggling the paper from its sleeve.

What was it about the man's face?

"Harvey?" Nancy was saying.

"Sure, sure," he said. "Kristin. Three."

"She's bringing Ruby."

"Mmm."

The man shook the paper open, though now he stopped reading to sweep some debris from the seat of the bench. He was near enough that Harvey could see the two sad clouds of eyebrows, wispy, fading. Why did he know this face?

"And Dr. Farrokhzad is coming at eleven. They'll set up in the guest bedroom. They wanted me to remind you, no liquids for at least two hours beforehand. O.K.? And definitely no food."

"Got it," he said. Loud enough that the man looked over.

Nancy was droning on-a bankruptcy lien, some claimant who'd worked in the Holmby Hills house coming out of the woodwork. And then all at once he placed the man next door. A shock, but then, when Harvey thought about it, why should it be a surprise? He was a private man, famously so-why wouldn't he be in Connecticut, making a life among these people? Like a secret agent, embedded in plain sight. Harvey hung up on Nancy. His whole body was aimed at the man, his brain vibrating. How could he indicate, in the tone of his voice, his expression, that, yes, he knew exactly who the man was, and, no, he wouldn't make a fuss?

"Morning," Harvey called across the fence, a cheery, neighborly greeting, and Don DeLillo lifted his hand in a wave.

"Nice day," Don DeLillo said. He got to his feet, ambling closer to Harvey.

"Beautiful day," Harvey said, his heart pounding with glee, and it felt like they were speaking in code, a mutually agreed-upon code. A thrill just to make contact. A meeting of equals.

"Field sparrow," Don DeLillo said.

"Hmm?"

"There's a field sparrow," Don DeLillo said. He pointed-Harvey followed the line of his finger until he spotted it: a small brown bird, like a mouse, hopping in the icy gravel. It was dull, the color of dishwater.

"Very rare bird," Don DeLillo mused. "This time of year. Never had one before."

"Interesting," Harvey said.

"I've heard of them showing up after storms, you know. Adverse conditions."

"Right."

They were communicating something, a hidden message coursing underneath this conversation-Do you know who I am? Don DeLillo was asking. Can I trust you? Are you on the level?

Yes, Harvey was trying to send back, straining to be absolutely clear, straining to communicate the entirety of his soul in a pressurized beam of light straight to Don DeLillo's being: yes, you can trust me, yes, I'm on the level.

"Well," Don DeLillo said, squinting at the sun, squinting at the mousy bird. "I'll see you."

"Yes," Harvey said, his eyes unblinking, his voice freighted. "Yes, I'll see you soon."

Harvey could visualize the plan, see each step of the process, the whole thing unfolding cleanly in his mind's eye without any hiccups or stutters. "White Noise," the unfilmable book. Harvey's comeback. Why would he find himself here, on this earth, in the year 2020, if not for this exact purpose?

The rights were available-Nancy found out in two minutes. Of course they were, because everything would go smoothly this time. His head was spinning. He'd seen attempts, back in the day. Recalled a script for that weirdo hockey novel Don DeLillo wrote under a pseudonym, another script kicking around for the football book. Hadn't Rudin had the rights, for a hot minute?

What was that first line? He tried to remember. A screaming comes across the sky! A screaming. Beautiful. Vicious. A great first line. Maybe float a presentation card with the text, not strain to be too literal, try to squeeze an arty image out of it. Just let it land in the original form. A screaming comes across the sky. That was confidence. Already he was overwhelmed-calls to make, people to recruit. Draw up some preliminary numbers. But this felt right, exactly right. The perfect thing to jump into the moment, the very second that this circus ended and he was declared innocent. Thank you, he beamed out to the world, thank you. One of the couples therapists had suggested the keeping of a gratitude journal-even his ex-wife had snorted at that idea-but here he was, appreciating his blessings.

The buzz of his phone. The law firm. Finally.

"Hello, team," Rory said. When Rory had signed on to Harvey's defense, the papers had taken great glee in publishing a photo, gleaned from Rory's daughter's Facebook, of Rory in a pink pussy hat and aviator sunglasses, accompanying his daughter to the Women's March.

There were at least five people on the call. Harvey could not quite tell what they were saying. People kept cutting each other off-"If I can just jump in for a second"; "piggybacking off Rory's point about an immediate motion"-and now they were talking about what the next steps would be if there was another delay, what protections they could put in place for the walk out of the courthouse. None of them seemed to address the real question.

"But," Harvey interrupted, "what's going to happen? They're going to say I'm innocent, right? Not guilty. Isn't that what you promised?"

"Now, Harvey," Rory said, his twenty-three-hundred-an-hour voice oozing through the phone. "We are just going through what will happen, hypothetically. Just to cover all the bases. We've mounted a tremendous defense, and I think there's not one thing we could have done better. But. You know we can't promise anything."

"Then why," Harvey said, wiping his damp brow, "the fuck would you say anything?"

The mood shifted.

"Sorry." He was still aware that God was tracking these moments of politeness, these moments of catching himself. Or not catching himself. "You guys read 'White Noise'?" he said.

Silence on the line.

"Come on, how many people are on this call, five? Aren't you all Ivy League boys? None of you fuckers read 'White Noise'?"

The silence was uneasy.

"Don DeLillo. American master. 'A screaming comes across the sky,' " Harvey said. He said it again, his voice dropped an octave. "A screaming," he said. "Comes across. The sky."

"Isn't that 'Gravity's Rainbow'?"

He didn't recognize the voice. "Who said that?"

Rory edged in. "Harvey, excuse me-"

"Who. The fuck. Said that? I don't know you. Why the fuck are you on this call if I don't know you? Isn't that illegal?"

Rory again. "Harvey, that's Ted, he's been in court with us every day."

"I don't fucking know a Ted."

"Harvey-"

"Never mind," Harvey said. "I'll check in later."

"Try to relax," Rory said, "and just remember-" Harvey ended the call.

A quick Google, and, yes, it was fucking "Gravity's Rainbow." Well. So what. He'd been close, and the gist was the same, wasn't it? A rending of the known world. That was the whole fucking point.

Enough time, before the 11 A. M. doctor visit, to watch some things down in the screening room. They still had him on the list for new releases, though they seemed to arrive a week or two late now, and the union projectionist was hard to coax out of the city. One of the subtle ways he was punished, these days. In their absence, he found himself watching television-up until recently, he had somehow been unaware of just how many television shows there were, the astonishing glut of content that had been barfed out and was just waiting patiently to be consumed.

The screening room was on the lowest level. Easiest to just take the elevator. Squat leather couches, each with a blanket folded neatly on its arm. In the back, there was a refrigerator, well-stocked baskets of food: chips, candy in a drawer. He shouldn't. But he did-a jumbo box of Junior Mints. Who was here to stop him?

He'd been watching a show set in Chernobyl-probably eight or ten mil an episode, if he had to guess. The whole "Saving Private Ryan" chopper thing going on, sooty-faced character actors who looked like guys from his childhood neighborhood in Queens, a passel of dogs roaming through an impeccable set. Incredible, the things they were doing these days. The amount of money, almost perverse! And this got him jazzed all over again, this DeLillo project, because how could anyone argue with this level of production value, this impact? They were the culture-makers, he'd always believed-everything trickled down from people like him, choices made in a certain room in a certain office in Manhattan, choices that shaped the discourse. And even Don DeLillo would respect that. Though how much better to approach him only after the public vindication-hands clean, blank slate.

A handful of Junior Mints mashed against the roof of his mouth. The sugar made his bad molar zing. He stopped, considered a single waxy Junior Mint balanced on the end of his finger. Study the dimpled chocolate, observe the pleasing chestnut sheen. A form of meditation, he congratulated himself.

Like his mantra from that trip to Kashmir-the producers had gone way over budget, Harvey swooping in to whip things into shape. That weekend, George had insisted they all charter a plane to go visit this famous guru. The Beatles got their mantra from this guy, George told them.

It had been a miserable trip, monsoon season or some such, his armpits rashy. All Harvey drank was Coca-Cola and bottles of warm water, took blown-out shits on the hour. The whole gang of them arrived at this guru's place, the breezy arcades and Dentyne white of the walls. They were supposed to go in, one by one, sit at the feet of this emaciated guru in his caftan. Receive their life-changing mantras, each one specific to each person, your mantra somehow the exact mantra that would correct all your life's ills.

The guru stared out at Harvey from his little skull. Harvey had made himself hold the guy's gaze. As the guru leaned forward, placed a dry hand on Harvey's head, he whispered Harvey's mantra. But Harvey sniffled just at that moment, the Coca-Cola he'd pounded on the way over bubbling up behind his sinuses, and he couldn't make out the mantra.

And here's the rub-the guru would never, it turned out, repeat the mantra.

"Are you kidding?"

But the guru wasn't kidding. Harvey got angry. "Please," he said. "Come on. I'll pay you. Whatever you want. Just repeat it. Write it down if you don't wanna say it. Whatever, O.K.?"

The man just looked at him placidly.

On the flight back, queasy from the diarrhea meds, his headphones blocking out the world, Harvey slept fitfully. When he woke up, there was his assistant, across the aisle, alert to whatever his next request would be. She'd gotten a mantra, too. He took the empty seat next to her.

"So." He tented his fingers, leaned on the armrest. "Crazy trip, right? Funny?"

"Yeah," she said, cautiously. "If you're wondering about Helen, she knows we want the full breakdown by Monday, and I'm just waiting to hear back from B team-"

"I don't need to talk about work right now," Harvey said. "I'm just chatting. Can't we just chat?"

Her smile flickered.

"You have a good time?" Harvey asked.

"Um. Yeah. It's been interesting."

"You've never been to India, right?" He was just guessing.

She blinked behind her glasses. "No, never. A really beautiful country," she said. "Really inspiring."

"Right."

The silence made the girl squirm.

"So, you know," Harvey said. "Tell me what your mantra is."

She shifted, uncomfortable. "Come on," she said. Trying to giggle. "You're never supposed to tell what your mantra is."

"Oh, please," he said. "You don't believe that stuff. I think you should just tell me."

"I really shouldn't," she said.

But here was the thing. They both knew, as soon as he asked the question, that she would tell him her mantra. It was just a matter of how long it would take, what the moments between his demand and her capitulation would look like. In the end, it would be the same to him as any other moment of triumph. Only the in-between was different, made up of a different sequence of concessions, the particulars of each person. Some people resisted, some people did not. Some people went still, unmoving; some people started laughing, out of discomfort. He enjoyed it all, even these milder victories-it was like different flavors of ice cream. And, ultimately, he was always sated, the other person breathing hard, squinting, shifting, some new shame in her face.

Now he woke in Vogel's screening room to the looping menu screen, the season over, his hands smeared with Junior Mints. A glance at his phone-twenty minutes before the doctor arrived. An infusion for his back pain, something he'd never tried before.

Enough time to splash his face upstairs, swish around a little toothpaste, change his shirt. His eyes were bloodshot, his throat sore.

Harvey lay on his bed with his shoes on. Or not his bed. Vogel's bed. He missed his own bed. No way to keep the bed, was the gist. His ex-wife wanted the bed, among other things. She got the bed, and most everything else. Now she was sleeping on the horsehair and cashmere. She'd been interviewed by Vogue, her portrait taken by that photographer who shot everyone like they were in a Cadillac commercial or a police procedural. Very network. His ex-wife's gaze was downcast, a waif dressed in a thick knit sweater and a long skirt, perched on a boulder by the rocky shoreline. She looked brave, sorrowful, as if she'd persevered through a great difficulty. Probably she could not have designed a better exit for herself, as clean and frictionless as slipping away from a party.

Harvey refreshed his e-mail. Refreshed the news sites. He searched his name, scanning the comments sections, a recent habit. Or more of a compulsion, forcing himself to wade through the vitriol until he came across at least one nice comment. He took it as an omen, and as soon as he read that single nice comment he was released. It took a while, this time, but he found one:

Maverick1972: It's verrry INTERESTING how the girls are suddenly crying when they were asking for jobs and cars at the time! Harvey isn't a monster its not his fault hes got what they wanted and took what he could who would blame him!!!!

Not the most eloquent defender, Maverick1972, but it gave him heart, a little rush of victory. And why shouldn't he feel confident? One of the younger lawyers had e-mailed him PDFs of all the exhibits, shown him how to scroll through the evidence they'd amassed over the past two years. A simple glance and it was all there: photos of every single one of them, hugging him. Kissing his cheek! Pushing themselves into him, pressing their faces to his face, practically humping him there on the step-and-repeat.

Uncle Harvey, they called him, afterward.

Gabe knocked on the door. Time for the infusion. A new way they were treating chronic pain, a new attempt to mitigate the constant shock from his spine, his body a bombed-out war zone: the only thing that helped lately was the horse pills, swimmy Vicodin afternoons light-headed in the sauna, scratching his chest and arms, slapping his limp dick without any response. He'd forgotten he wasn't supposed to drink water before the infusion, much less house a box of Junior Mints, but probably, like most suggestions, it didn't really matter.

Harvey got to his feet, with some effort. Groped for his phone. An e-mail he'd started to Nancy-cc Lewis, Honor Keating, a few of the sharper guys from the old days, people who'd been waiting to hear what he was kicking around. He was like Bob Evans, he thought, his heart stirring, marshalling Towne and Nicholson to make "Chinatown." And here it was-the perfect property, his very own "Chinatown," only better, because it didn't need that little creep Polanski to rewrite the whole thing. Though, it was worth pointing out, look what had happened to Polanski-sex with a thirteen-year-old-anal!-and he'd basically been sentenced to parole, no jail time. Everything ruined by a few unfortunate press photos leaking when he was supposed to be in preproduction. Despite all that, Polanski was still making movies, still skiing the Swiss Alps with pals and winning awards. Harvey was small potatoes, compared. These were grown women.

How could anyone think Harvey belonged in jail? It was so unlikely. He'd only half listened to the jail consultant, a meeting set up in Rory's conference room. The man had tried to scare Harvey, slamming the table hard when he saw Harvey was on his phone.

"Do you think this is a joke?" the man had screamed, neck ropy above his polo shirt, spittle flying from his mouth and landing, to Harvey's disgust, on his own lips. He wiped it away, deliberately. Went back to his e-mails.

"White Noise"-they could make a real art-house push, emphasize that this was an old-fashioned movie, a classic. What Bob Evans would call a people picture. Get Brian on the phone. In time for next awards season-it wasn't a crazy goal, wasn't a totally unrealistic timeline. People wanted to help him. He had a million favors left to call in.

He shuffled to the guest room, still typing on his phone. "Now is the PERFECT TIME to do this MOVIE, " he wrote. "we as a nation are hungry 4 meaning."

The curtains in the guest room were drawn, but the lights had been turned up to a blazing wash, a fat leather recliner pulled into the center of the room, a whole setup already plugged in and humming away-a bursting I.V. sack, a heart monitor, a silver tray of antiseptic swabs and packaged needles.

"NancY pls get Numbers pulled 2gether aSAP so I cn present 2 don delillo 2morrow eve, find out if thre is nice resto nearby, make a res, he can bring wife is f he has or gf?"

The doctor came in-tan, sexless, a chain around his neck, and hairless forearms. Plum-colored scrubs. Had he done that on purpose, removed all his body hair?

"Sir?" the doctor said.

Harvey didn't look up from his phone.

"Sir?

"Jesus, what?"

"I just need your finger, sir. Let's just slip this on," the doctor said, clipping a pulse monitor on his ring finger. Harvey pretended not to notice the man's smirk. Fuck him. Fuck the hairless doctor.

"O.K.," the doctor said. "Remember the basics from the phone consultation?"

Harvey stared at him-Gabe had done the required phone call in Harvey's place. He nodded.

"We've been starting people at a hundred, for chronic pain like yours. How does that sound?"

Harvey shrugged. "Let's do more."

"It might be best to just see how you respond at a hundred."

"More," Harvey said, mildly, and watched the doctor start to respond. "More," Harvey said again, smiling a little, "more," and the doctor finally gave up, sensing, maybe, that Harvey could keep this up as long as it took.

"O.K.," the doctor said, brightly, "let's do one-thirty-five," as if he had been the one to suggest it. He left, and a nurse came in.

The nurse was named Anastasia, a Russian with bleached hair and too-dark eyebrows. Shapeless scrubs, a pair of white Keds, tightly laced. She was brusque but not unkind.

"And how are you, Anastasia?" Harvey said.

"Good," she said, cheerful. She was maybe twenty-five.

"Having a good day?"

She made a face, then smiled. "Back at work, you know. It's fine."

"Right. You do anything fun lately?"

She didn't seem at all bothered by his questions, happy to chat. "I went on vacation with my husband."

"Oh, yeah?" he said. "Where did you go with this husband?"

"Have you been to Miami?"

"Have I been to Miami?" he said. "Yeah, sure. Sure I've been to Miami."

"We went. Me and my husband. I think he liked it more than me. He saw, he liked the"-she stopped, made a ballooning gesture in front of her flat chest. "All the swimsuits. His eyes were, like, pow," she said, a googly expression on her face. "I think he wanted to stay."

"Sounds like a real dick, Anastasia."

She giggled. Amazing, these Soviet girls, just happy to have a husband. Probably husbands who knocked them around a little, why not. The things he could do for Anastasia, if she gave even the slightest indication of receptivity. He reminded himself to ask Gabe to find out more about her. Who was this husband? Some pale Russian with sunken eyes, guzzling protein shakes from Costco, probably a pit bull in the back yard.

Harvey adjusted himself in the big leather chair.

"Comfy?" Anastasia said.

"Mmm."

They mixed in an anti-emetic, and a little Xanax, too, so people didn't freak out, Anastasia explained. "So you won't even be worried."

The doctor came back in, smiley, fratty.

"And are we feeling ready?" He looked only at the air around Harvey, no longer making direct eye contact. Good. Let the doctor be afraid. He'd signed an N.D.A., they all did.

The machine was the size of a toaster. A thin tube hooked up to a port in the back of his hand. Anastasia prepared the area with a shot of lidocaine. Had him make a fist.

"Big strong veins!" she cooed.

He looked away when she inserted the I.V. Didn't want to think of the veins right there, under the surface. Unsettling how it took mere seconds to gain access to his insides, open him up.

"O.K.," the doctor said. "O.K. All set?"

Harvey felt his phone buzz in his pocket. "Hold on," he said.

"Don't jostle the I.V."

It was not, as he guessed, an e-mail from the producers. Just an e-mail from his accountant: "Sending good thoughts for tomorrow." Yes, sure, Dave, thanks for your good thoughts. None of your thoughts are good thoughts, that's why you're an accountant.

Harvey said, "Is this going to be scary, Anastasia? Are you going to watch over me?"

She laughed. "Yes," she said. "Nothing to worry about." She put the eye mask over his face. Got even closer to adjust the strap. He wished he had used the trimmer-he had a corsage of wiry black hairs at each ear. He had the feeling, lately, when he looked in the mirror, that a pile of glue was staring back at him, like he was melting.

"O.K.," Anastasia's voice came, faint from the new darkness. "Now I put on the headphones. Yes?"

They were big, noise-cancelling. "Blanket," he said. Then reminded himself to throw in a "please."

Yes. A heavy fur blanket pulled over his body, tucked by Anastasia right up under his chin. Maternally, gently. He couldn't remember if he had sent the e-mail to Nancy-he should do that, he thought, quickly, make sure that ball got rolling. But where was his phone? No matter. He no longer cared where his phone was. Because here it was, it had arrived:

The cool whoosh of the future in his veins.

Ah. Ahh.

Had he yelled the word "help"? Or just mouthed it. Whatever panic he felt had appeared and disappeared in the same instant.

Welcome, the void said. We've been waiting for you.

Then his body started to rise, like a balloon nearing the ceiling, bobbing lightly. Wow, he thought, mildly. A nice drift over the city. What city? I don't know. A city. Maybe the city from the Apple TV screen saver, a generic grid twinkling below. He was moving so slowly.

When he tried to squeeze his brain around any future plans, around making the movie, his thoughts just slipped away. All he could think of was the words "white noise." White noise, yes-how better to describe what this feeling was?

Why couldn't all of life be this way, this uninflected witnessing, the relief of being a vegetable? Keep him hooked up to the machine, doctor. Twenty-four hours a day, just let him rest.

Bye!

Bye, Harvey!

What was Harvey but a cardboard cutout, really, an idea of himself? How funny that he had ever cared so much.

After maybe an hour, the sensations started to fade. He felt a familiar sorrow, like when, as a kid, he could sense the end of a movie nearing, knowing soon it would all be over, knowing that soon he would be returned to the harsh reality of the world and its disappointments.

Harvey was legitimately bereft. He pushed the eye mask away from his eyes with a clumsy hand-it felt like he was wearing mittens. And then the feeling was replaced with the information-curious!-that he was now lying on the floor. It didn't feel any different from being in the chair. He remained on the floor, very still. Feeling his chest rise and fall.

Anastasia opened the door, made a noise of surprise, then left. She returned with the doctor. Together they worked to hoist Harvey back into the chair. His legs felt weak. But he was smiling, a big dopey smile.

"You fell," the doctor said.

"I didn't feel anything."

"That's normal."

He had to pee, badly, his bladder glowing.

Anastasia removed the I.V., easing the medical tape from his arm, careful not to rip out the hair. She was so conscientious, he thought. Perfect blond angel.

"Have you. Ever tried it?" he said, with some effort.

"No," she said. "No, not yet."

"You should try it," he said to Anastasia. "You have to try it."

"I see all the people when they come out, some are crying. But mostly they are happy, they have a good experience. Did you have a good experience?"

"Oh, yes." Should he try to explain more? "Very good."

"So maybe I should try it."

"When's your birthday? Make him give you one for your birthday. The doctor."

"Next month, actually."

"O.K.," Harvey said. "It's settled. I'm getting you an infusion for your birthday."

She laughed, prettily. "Thank you."

She was not even a little bit afraid of him.

"We'll just set you right up in bed," she was saying. "Let's just lie down for a bit, O.K.?"

He hoped that she never stopped telling him what to do, never stopped explaining what was coming next.

"Right, up we go, right on the bed. Now your legs. Swing them up for me. Very good."

Harvey lay on the bed.

"Are you gonna stay here?" he mumbled. "Stay with me?"

No response. When he opened his eyes, she was gone-he was alone.

Lunch in the dining room. Gabe pouring ice water from a carafe. A square of black cod, the size and thickness of a pack of cards. Charred broccolini. A scoop of bland white rice, flecked with parsley. He still felt dazed, his thoughts dropping a little bit behind. He wasn't hungry-a few halfhearted forkfuls of rice. He felt different from the person he had been that morning, like he'd stepped off to the side of himself. His phone buzzed on the tabletop-Rory, the lawyers. He let it go to voice mail. After a few moments, the phone shivered: they had left a message. He read the transcription, auto-generated bythe phone, with one squinted eye:

"Chow had Lee it's roar a couple be back"

He didn't click to see the rest of the gibberish, letting his eyes close fully, his head resting on his folded arms.

Kristin texted-five minutes away. Some sense of duty, visiting her father in his hour of need. There had been no way to indicate that he would prefer to be alone, in order to more effectively tranquillize himself: he'd rather spend the day with Anastasia or hunker down in the peaceful bowels of the screening room, knocking himself out with endless episodes. Life was in many ways worse these days, but you had to admit: God had given people the tools they needed to be happy.

Kristin was his oldest daughter, unmarried with an A.D.D. kid, from designer sperm that had apparently not been so designer. Kristin ran a foundation aimed at improving graduation rates, and had signed a public pledge to give away at least half her wealth in her lifetime. Kristin, with her peculiar features, her downy cheeks. Kristin, who wrote an op-ed about choosing not to fly private anymore, for which she was roundly and deservedly mocked. She had never been able to see the wave coming, about to knock her down, though it was the clearest thing in the world.

Rory called again-Harvey answered. "Just wanting to touch base," Rory was saying. "I don't want to alarm you, but I know we're just concerned, about Jurors 3 and 9, especially. We fought tooth and nail to keep them off, and with good reason, and the consultant thinks they could be the vocal ones in a closed room-"

A vague image of the women jurors appeared to him, the one with a spider pin on her lapel, the other in a silky shirt buttoned to the neck, a tight cornrowed bun on her head, always staring his way. In any other situation, he would have been aware of the women's existence for half a second. If that. He resented having to think about them at all. Which one of them had laughed when they'd shown the photos of his naked body? His arms and legs starfished in that well-lit room?

"Just want to keep you up to date on our thinking," Rory finished.

"Well," Harvey said. Should he ask him to repeat himself? "I guess," he said slowly, "I'm glad to be up to date. On your thinking."

A nap upstairs, and now the elevator glided soundlessly down to the ground floor, depositing him, the vulnerable human, safely at his destination. He padded toward the front door, one hand trailing lightly along the wall, in case he needed the support. Kristin was milling around the entry hall, Gabe fluttering in the background. She was in a turtleneck and a quilted vest. Silver earrings and pulled-back ponytail. Awfully severe. She looked sober and anxious, her daughter clutching her hand tightly, though she was eleven or twelve.

"Grandpa!" the girl said, when she caught sight of him approaching, hobbling down the hall.

For a moment, Harvey was taken aback, his chest warming with legit joy. She sounded so guileless, Ruby, so cheerful and wholesome. When he smiled at her, already the girl seemed uninterested. Was this an A.D.D. thing?

"Hello, you," Harvey said. He cleared his throat. He felt less groggy, less glitchy. "Hello, both of you."

"How are you, Dad?" Kristin said, hugging him with one arm.

"You know." He zipped and unzipped the half-zip of his sweater. "The bastards try to get you down." He blinked at the top of the girl's head. "Sorry. I mean the jerks."

Kristin patted his upper arm. "Well, we're here to get your spirits up. O.K.? We'll think positive."

He wished Gabe would just take over, like a cruise director, steer them toward the proper activities, keep them all energized and happy, maintain group morale, but Gabe had disappeared. "How was the drive?"

"Easy. Whatever."

"Boring," Ruby said. "How come there's an elevator in a house?"

"For people like me," he said, "people in pain. It's easier than the stairs."

Kristin's face rippled-who knows why?

"Are you hungry? Come in," he said. "Let's sit. Sit down at least-why are we just standing around?"

Gabe had put out silver bowls of potato chips, peanut M&M's. He appeared in the doorway to take their drink orders: Kristin wanted an espresso and a glass of seltzer, Ruby was already chewing the potato chips and shook her head.

"Water for me, too," Harvey said.

Ruby sat on the floor, leaned back against Kristin's legs. Kristin perched primly on the love seat, playing absently with Ruby's hair. It occurred to him that maybe she, too, was antsy, needed something to occupy herself.

"Having a good trip?" he said.

"We went to Ellis Island," Kristin said.

"You know, my grandparents are in the . . . book, register, whatever there. Did you see them? Find their names? Your great-grandparents. When they came from Warsaw."

"Uh, no. You didn't tell me that."

"You didn't tell me you were going."

A run of beeps from Ruby's phone, her head bowed in concentration.

"And," Kristin said, "we saw a matinée of 'Hamilton.' "

"I've seen it twice already," Ruby said. "This one wasn't even the original cast."

"That's true," Kristin said. "Her friend at school is the kid of-what's the guy, the guy from 'Cheers' who did that Broadway show a few years ago? They were living out here, for the run. Ruby visited for spring break."

Kristin looked at him expectantly, as if he would have follow-up questions. He folded his hands neatly on his stomach.

"How's your back?" she said.

"Better," he said. And it was true, since the infusion he had felt less pain. Had mostly just been less aware of pain, had not returned to the fact of the pain at the end of every thought. "I'm trying this new therapy. New thing, very cutting edge. It was actually much better than the surgery. You should try it," Harvey said. "It's not just for, you know, pain."

How could he communicate what he had experienced earlier, how important it was that his daughter get an infusion as soon as possible? Maybe he could get Anastasia to come back this evening, get Kristin hooked up. Hell, even Ruby. All three of them zonked out in big easy chairs, drifting through space, attended to by a loyal blonde.

"And what about generally?" Kristin said. "Are you O.K.? Are you afraid?"

"Am I afraid?" He blinked, rapidly. "No, I'm not afraid." That's what he should try to make clear: how even though you felt, on the infusion, like you were floating through space and would never return to earth, it didn't scare you.

"I just," Kristin said. "I don't know. I'm here for you. I know Franny has not been the most supportive"-Frances, his other daughter, ensconced in Seattle with her bitchy tech husband; Frances, who sent him a lengthy e-mail, subject line "RAPE," and cc'd her shrink-"but you will always have me."

"Thanks. I don't think. I mean, I don't know but I don't think this is gonna go badly. You know? No one has given any indication that this is going to go sideways."

She didn't look entirely convinced. He suspected she thought that this scale of punishment made sense. It would have made him angry, usually-how could anyone believe he deserved this? Had he killed anyone? But that anger, so easily called forth, now seemed to exist on the other side of a pane of glass.

He pointed to where the roofline of the house next door was visible through the living-room window, the jag of black gables. "You know who lives over there?" he said. "In that brick house?" He paused, to summon the appropriate level of drama. "Don DeLillo."

Kristin seemed distracted, not quite listening. "The writer?"

"Yes. Yes, exactly, the writer. Pretty wild, huh, right next door to your Pops. We're actually doing a little project together, me and Don."

Hadn't Kristin majored in English? Shouldn't she look thrilled, instead of concerned?

"I'm gonna send you his books," Harvey announced. "Right now. For you, too, Ruby, a set for each of you." The gesture pleased him. He pulled up Amazon on his phone, squinting at the screen. "Now, let me just get this going," he said, pecking out letters in the search bar.

"Dad, I don't need all of Don DeLillo's books."

"Please, it's a pleasure. A gift."

"We're actually in the middle of decluttering right now," Kristin said.

"Nonsense," he said. "This is literature. Great literature. And maybe you'll want to help. I'm doing an adaptation of 'White Noise.' It's going to be big, sweetie. Huge. Maybe Ruby can intern on the set, like what's-her-face Obama. Would you like that, Ruby? See how a movie gets made?"

Ruby shot him a thumbs-up without looking over, enchanted by her phone.

"You have something in development?" Kristin sounded skeptical. "But where's the financing coming from? I thought Bob was-"

"Listen, sweetie. Everyone wants to get in on my next project. You know how many calls I get a day, people sniffing around to see where I'm headed after all this wraps up? What moves I'll make?"

Saying the words made him even more certain-they sounded true.

"But what if. I don't know. You know, what if this doesn't go as you"-she seemed to be picking her words carefully, cognizant of Ruby at her feet-"as you planned?"

"Please. You think I'm going to jail? Look at me, I'm an old man."

An early dinner, a fire crackling pleasantly in the dining room. His appetite had returned, and he swabbed the steak juice from Vogel's embarrassing Wedgwood plate with a fat Parker House roll. Ruby ate plain spaghetti and an undressed salad. She drank ice water from a wine goblet. Kristin looked bored, ready to leave. Was it such a chore to spend time with him?

The clock in the kitchen was ticking so loudly he heard it from the dining room. Didn't Kristin notice? Didn't Ruby? Why were they all just sitting here eating as this steady tick marked every second?

"Gabe," Harvey said, clutching at the man's shirt as he refilled the Barolo. "Can we get that clock off, turn it off. Is it new? How come I hear every single tick?"

"Of course," Gabe said. "No problem. I'll take the batteries out right away."

Ruby watched this exchange with interest.

Harvey's phone kept buzzing on the table: texts of support. Last-minute exhortations from the lawyers, a request to RETURN MY CALL ASAP -he barely glanced at those. Some talk of bail, what to do if the judge denied their motion-"remanded," not a word he wanted to probe too hard. His eyes went soft, not exactly taking it in. Much better to focus on the other messages, the "Don't let this get you down" text, the "Soon this will all be in the rearview!" e-mail.

"Look at this," Harvey said, turning the phone toward Kristin so she could see the latest lengthy text, a fat bubble of blue filling the screen. "Paulie says he'll take me out the minute this is all over. Said to pencil in Capri in August." Nice to imagine August on the boat, the dinner at the cliffs, the low votives along the table. Maybe Don DeLillo could join. Make a note to have Nancy overnight Don DeLillo a DVD of "Contempt."

"Great," Kristin said.

"What?" Harvey put his phone down. "Why do you say it like that, like it's bad?"

"It's just. I don't know if you should be, like, celebrating."

Ruby was eagle-eyed now, taking this in.

"Who's celebrating?" He gestured at the table, the staid windows segmenting the quickly darkening sky. "Is this a celebration, some wild party? I thought we were having a peaceful dinner? A quiet dinner with my daughter and granddaughter."

Kristin sighed, stared at her still full plate. "Sorry."

Another piece of steak, another Parker House roll. The green beans he grabbed with his fingers, everything speckled from the pepper mill wielded by Gabe. "Thank you," Harvey made a point of saying to Gabe. "Thank you," he repeated, to no one in particular.

Ruby gulped her ice water.

"You tired, sweetheart?" Kristin asked her. Ruby shrugged.

"She's getting tired," Kristin said. "We should think about going pretty soon."

"I'm not tired," Ruby said.

"It's a long drive back," Kristin said. "I don't love driving in the dark."

Harvey finished his wine. Tilting the empty glass back and forth. "What's the difference between the dark now and the dark in a few hours?" He had not meant it to sound accusatory-he really wondered.

"Dessert?" Gabe said, appearing in the doorway. "Angel-food cake and berries, or crème brûlée? We have sorbet."

"I'm full," Kristin said. "Sounds so yummy, though."

"Cake," Ruby said, scooting up on her chair. "And, like, what kind of sorbet do you have?"

"Gabe, bring out all the sorbets," Harvey said, "and one of everything else. My family is visiting. It's a special occasion."

"Really?" Ruby looked at Kristin, who smiled tightly. On the table, Harvey's phone buzzed.

Joan, the reporter, had sent a series of question marks. If you really want to talk with me honestly, I think we should set up a chat tonight.

Harvey turned his phone over.

"You could spend the night," Harvey said. "We could watch something, downstairs." To Ruby, "There's candy in the screening room. You can pick whatever. King size."

"She's already had a lot of sugar today."

"Skittles have horse hooves in them," Ruby said. "Sick, right?"

"It is sick." He nodded at the gloomy horse painting over the mantelpiece, jittery in the light of the candle. "You notice all these horses everywhere? It's, like, every room has a horse painting. I saw on the, you know, hand towels, too. A horse caricature."

"You mean silhouette," Kristin said.

Harvey shrugged. "You're probably right."

Ruby patted his hand, once, twice. The gesture moved him. It would be fun, having Ruby intern on the movie. He had a swift and detailed daydream: Don DeLillo writing Ruby a letter of recommendation for college, Ruby waving from the dais of her graduation, beaming love at Harvey. But before he could respond, maybe even take Ruby's hand in his, Kristin had pushed her chair back, was gathering up her purse, folding her soiled napkin. "We should hit the road," she said.

"Are you sure you don't want to sleep over? There's so many rooms. You can ride the elevator."

Kristin smiled, sadly.

"Tea? Coffee? Anything? Let me call Gabe," he said. But their departure was already set in motion. Pretty soon he would be waving at their car as they pulled away and left him alone, and then that was exactly what he was doing. He lingered outside in the driveway, the barn jacket zipped up, his bare head cold, his nostrils sharpening with frigid air. The house next door, the house of Don DeLillo, was silent, all the windows black. No car in the driveway, no signs of life. Where had he gone, Don DeLillo?

Upstairs, Gabe had laid out his clothes for the morning: The suit hanging from the closet door. The red socks draped alongside the butterscotch split-toe bluchers. The walker probably folded and waiting by the door downstairs.

He sat on the closed lid of the toilet, waiting for the bath to fill. The ankle bracelet was waterproof, fine to wear in the shower, but he'd thought, at first, that he had to keep it dry, so he'd started taking baths. And now he preferred baths, liked feeling like a tea bag, steeping in the scalding water.

Around his body, the bathwater was cloudy with soap, tepid water he drained and refilled with more hot water. His phone and a heavy tumbler of Scotch on the porcelain ledge, the Scotch not exactly condoned by his doctors. But Gabe seemed to understand this was a special night, a night that deserved kindness. The pour had been especially generous. Harvey slipped the soap under each armpit, around the belly, the groin that he didn't quite acknowledge, a habit from childhood, hitting the area with soap but never looking at his body, his gaze focussing somewhere beyond. Then his legs, his knees poking out of the water like two bald monks. The soap shot out from his fist-he groped for it in the opaque water, then gave up.

A knock on the door-Gabe. "I'm just going to close up the house for the night," he said. "I left a sleeping pill on the nightstand with a fresh bottle of water. Can I get you anything else for now?"

"Thanks," Harvey called in the direction of the closed door. "Nothing. Thanks."

Another missed call from Rory. Forget Rory. He should get in touch with Joan. She had always helped him.

"Harvey," Joan said. She sounded weary. "I don't have time to do anything before tomorrow. You should get some sleep."

"Listen, listen. Just stay with me, O.K.? Joan? You know me. You've known me for years. I'm not a monster. You know I'm not a monster."

He'd worked hard, hadn't he? Bought his mother a house. Let Nancy's M.S. boyfriend piggyback on her health insurance. "You can tell the truth from the lies, can't you, Joan?"

"Harvey." Was she just going to keep repeating his name in that doomed register? Why was she acting like it was already over, like he'd already been convicted? His heart beat rapidly. He clutched the phone harder to his ear with wet hands. "Joan. I remember things, too, Joan. Remember that girl in Tokyo? Gold Bar," he said, triumphantly. "Gold Bar. You left her there. She was crying and you left her there. Remember that, Joan?"

"Jesus, Harvey."

"So you do remember?"

"What is this? Are you threatening me?" Her voice was a monotone, a professional monotone.

"No, no," he said, "not threatening, just-"

"Don't you dare threaten me, Harvey. Do not. Fucking. Dare."

He had never heard her sound like that. Her tone so careful, clipped. Like she was talking to someone doomed. A new and sudden panic was seizing him, a freezing bite at the nape of his neck, as if he'd been taken in the jaws of a terrible animal.

Perhaps a resolution would not be as clean as he'd assumed, not be as swift and total. All the things that had happened he could barely remember, so that at first he'd actually listened with some interest to the testimony, curious to hear what he'd supposedly done. But it had quickly become boring. He assumed everyone had felt the same way, assumed everyone was similarly bored. It had all seemed to occur at the wrong end of a telescope, far away and distorted-tales set in hotel rooms, hallways of restaurants that had closed almost a decade ago. Bar 89 no longer existed. The girl was saying he had called her once from his cell phone, told her he was standing out in front of Lady M and did she think it was totally naughty if he went inside and got a cake?

This made him look up-had he said that?

As the trial had gone on, Harvey found himself fuzzing out, daydreaming, filling and refilling his water glass just to have something to do. The other girl said he had wanted to film her. Made her pose for him.

"And did you pose for him?"

She nodded through tears. He glanced at the jury-no one seemed too distressed. Rory hadn't made eye contact with him, but Harvey could tell, by a slight upturn of his lips, that he, too, thought this was ridiculous.

"Did he invite you to parties?" the lawyer said. "And you attended, even after this incident?"

The girl looked at her hands. "I like parties," she said. "Everyone likes parties."

The trial could have ended right there.

"Joan," Harvey said. "Wait."

But it was over. He had lost her.

"Goodbye, Harvey."

He called back. Once. Twice. Five times. The calls went straight to voice mail.

Gabe had turned down the bedcovers, dimmed the lights. Drawn all the curtains. Another slug of Scotch. Pajama pants drawstringed at his waist, a purple Lakers T-shirt he found in Vogel's top drawer. Fuzzy socks with snowflakes on them, white wool and ice blue, his pajama pants tucked into the top. Cozy, cozy. He could, at this moment, meet every one of his needs: always be warm, always be fed. What if that changed? Unbearable, unthinkable. Who knows how long he sat there in the dim room? How long until a sound outside broke the spell?

Harvey made his way to the window, and pulled back the curtain. The noise was coming from the house next door, Don DeLillo's house-it was his car, Don DeLillo's car, popping along the gravel, coming to a stop in front of the house. The car's interior lights turned on, bright enough that Harvey saw the outline of Don DeLillo in the driver's seat. He seemed to be sitting very still, sitting very upright. Was he waiting for Harvey to join him? Waiting for their midnight meeting, there in the quiet countryside? An assignation amid its sleeping citizens, dreaming in their beds, unaware of Harvey and Don DeLillo vibrating on a higher frequency? Why else would Don DeLillo just be sitting there, the dome light like a beacon, summoning Harvey?

Harvey shrugged on the barn jacket, a beanie with earflaps that he grabbed from a basket of gloves and hats in the entry closet. A horse appliqué on the hat, hovering right over his brow.

One great yank and the front door was open-except the world was ending, an earsplitting, pants-shitting sound ripping through the silence. An alarm-he was in danger! Or, actually, he was the danger-he'd set off some security system, but no time to explain to Gabe. He strode out into the brisk night. A night, he noted, of no stars, a poetic observation, one he would share with Don DeLillo. The alarm continued its steady bleat, the volume seeming to increase. The covered patio furniture hulked in shadowy arrangement-he glided around it, heading toward the fence. He was moving fluidly, moving without any pain. The car came in and out of sight, the interior light still on, the beacon guiding his way.

Here was the fence, and there, on the other side, was Don DeLillo. He was still sitting in the car-talking on the phone, Harvey could see now, a rectangle of light casting Don DeLillo's face in sickly blue. The radio was on, or music was playing, the chatter drifting through the night, in the intermittent silence of the alarm. Harvey started to wave. Don DeLillo would know what to do. How to fix the things that had gone wrong. The alarm behind him was louder, he wasn't imagining it. Don DeLillo had noticed, too, his head cocked, his face turning in Harvey's direction.

"It's me," Harvey called out, raising his hand, waving, hoping to be seen in the darkness. "I'm here."

Don DeLillo was unfolding himself from the car, standing with one hand cupped over his eyes-but why? There was no sun.

"Hello," Harvey said, and Don DeLillo paused, the driver's door ajar.

Harvey was pressed right up against the fence now, the slats coming to his chin, only his head poking over, like a gargoyle. "Good evening," Harvey yelled, in a rush. His hands were gripping the fence slats, which were, for some reason, damp. His loafers were soaked.

"Is everything O.K.?" Don DeLillo called.

"I just want to talk," Harvey said, "if you have a minute? Just a quick"-he rocked on his toes, his mind grasping for the word-"a quick chat."

"Hold on, I'll call you back," Don DeLillo said into the phone, then shut the car door, making his slow way on the gravel toward Harvey. He was coming closer. Every step was audible, an icy crunch.

"Are you all right?" Don DeLillo said, near enough now for Harvey to make out his face above his scarf, a face mooning out of the darkness-his eyes were wet berries.

"I'm fine," Harvey said. "And you?"

"The alarm?" Don DeLillo gestured behind Harvey.

"Oh, yes." He made as if to glance back at the house, then actually did. The house was all lit up, a birthday cake hovering in the void. "I forgot the, uh. Security code."

"Right."

"I saw your light," Harvey said, trying to be crystal clear, to communicate, with every word he spoke, that he had received the message. "I saw you were awake, too. Both of us," Harvey said, with significance, " couldn't sleep."

Didn't Don DeLillo see how alike they were, didn't he feel it? See how they were men, both of them, men up late on this dark winter night, pondering what the new day would bring?

Don DeLillo was studying Harvey, his face turned to the side. His brows bloomed on his old gray face.

"Maybe," Don DeLillo said, slowly, "maybe you just needed some fresh air. Sometimes that helps me. When I can't sleep."

"Yes," Harvey said, beaming. "That's exactly right. We both needed some air."

His fingers were freezing, almost numb. But his back didn't hurt, not at all. His nose was runny but he didn't make to wipe it. He tasted salt in his smile. "Don't worry," Harvey said, almost whispering. "I'm not gonna make a scene, or turn this into a big deal. I just," he said, "want you to know. It's an honor to meet you."

Don DeLillo looked bewildered.

"Do you want me to call someone?" Don DeLillo said.

Don DeLillo was close enough that Harvey could touch him, if he tried, if he made an effort. Did he reach out first, or did Don DeLillo back up, his arms flapping a little, his phone clutched to his chest? Why did he look confused? There was so much Harvey wanted to tell him-they had so much to decide. But there was time, he reminded himself. There was all the time in the world. ♦

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The dreams had mostly stopped. Still, he found himself awake, blinking in the dark room. Four A.M. He lay unmoving for a moment under the duvet. His T-shirt was stuck to his back-night sweats, the pillow swampy, the sheets damp. Roll to the other side. Spread out on the chilly sheets.

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Art has always been a vehicle for creatives to express their concerns about society, and artists are taking on the Me Too movement as an opportunity to discuss a long-standing inequity in America. From political dissent to personal healing, creative expression can be a weapon or a balm. Ai Weiwei creates art to address the Chinese government's corruption. Kendrick Lamar writes poetry to highlight American's police brutality against black bodies. And Kesha creates music to explore trauma and healing from emotional and sexual abuse. All three artists create powerful messages about what's happening in their world through art. So, when the Me Too movement took off last Fall, artists began creating meaningful work in response.

Tarana Burke started the Me Too movement in 2006; its stated purpose was to "help survivors of sexual violence, particularly young women of color from low wealth communities, find pathways to healing." When Alyssa Milano sent a tweet on October 15, 2017, asking people to respond with #MeToo if they'd faced sexual harassment or abuse, the phrase went viral. Just as quickly, male titans of the entertainment industry - starting with Harvey Weinstein - fell to grace as their abusive pasts came to light, thanks to actors like Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan, and Salma Hayek, who began speaking out about their experiences.

In this article, we'll meet five very different artists who felt compelled to create artwork responding to the Me Too movement and learn what inspired them to create and what they hope the work will achieve.

Claire Salvo's Stippling Me Too Survivor Portraits

Claire Salvo is an L.A.-based visual artist who after experiencing sexual assault and witnessing the #MeToo movement felt inspired to create a stippling portrait series called ME:WE. Speaking to Artrepreneur, Salvo says the series, "tells the stories of nine women who have been sexually assaulted." Her hope she says, "is that women find community, connection, and power in these stories." Salvo also hopes the work and the courageousness that each woman has shown by sharing her story is contagious.

Healing for others is important to Salvo, but the project has also been a step in her own healing process. When she was first assaulted, it took her nine years to come forward and share her story publically. Sharing her story was the first step in healing and now ME:WE plays an important role. She says, "reading, internalizing and translating each woman's story challenges me to confront my own trauma." Two pieces of ME:WE are currently on display at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art as part of a group show called "It's Time." To stay updated on where to view the pieces, follow @clairesalvo on Instagram.

Steve Isaacs' Inktober #MeToo Cartoon

Steve Isaacs is an illustrator based in L.A. He was in the middle of an annual illustration challenge called Inktober when the Me Too movement burst onto his social media feeds. He tells Artrepreneur, "It started with just a few mentions on Twitter, then more and more, then later on Facebook, I was shocked to see an entire ocean of #MeToo's from friends, colleagues, and family. It was just everywhere." After seeing the movement's scale so up close, he decided to skip the month's prompt and illustrate what he was seeing.

Isaacs doesn't have experience with sexual harassment or assault, but what struck him to create was the scale of his own friends' #MeToo acknowledgments. "What really hurt as the #MeToo's began to flood in was they weren't coming in a smattering here and there, but from the overwhelming majority," he says. "I only created an image to show support of the movement, but my true deep respect and admiration goes out to everyone - women and men, who boldly chose to come forward with their admissions," he adds.

Erin Gallagher's Hashtag Visualization Art

Multimedia artist Erin Gallagher started making data visualizations last year after becoming "inspired by Mexican researchers who have been using Gephi for several years to visualize their own Twitter networks in order to identify bots," she says. Gephi is an open-source visualization software that allows data to be presented in different forms. When the Me Too movement broke last Fall, it wasn't personal experience that compelled her to make data visualizations of it. She says, "Initially, I just wanted to see what #MeToo looked like." She continues, "I saw it was cascading and I was curious if I could visualize that activity."

"Once I saw what the graph looked like, I realized it was important to show people - it was a massive human network," she says. Typically, Gallagher focuses her work on conversations surrounding political networks. She explains, "I try to visualize the artificial amplification to show that a certain topic is being targeted and manipulated. Conversations on social media are abstract, so it's hard to understand the scale of things without visual aids." It's been nine months since she created the #MeToo graphs at the peak of the movement and today, she still has individuals reaching out to learn more or buy them as prints. You can find more information about Gallagher's data visualizations through her blog.

Eliza Hatch's "Cheer Up Luv" Photojournalism

Eliza Hatch is a photojournalist who created "Cheer Up Luv," a series of photographs and interviews retelling women's stories of sexual harassment. Since launching the project last January, she's featured over 100 women in three different cities London, New York, and Tokyo. Before the viral Me Too movement began, Hatch says, "When I asked women whether they experienced harassment, most women would either say all the time or that they didn't know if it counted as harassment. Post the Me Too movement, women have now started to realize that their experiences are valid and that their stories have a voice."

"I started the project as a way of showing my male friends the kind of things we would have to put up with, as they never used to believe the scale of the issue when we spoke about it in group situations," she says, "However as the project grew, it became more than just raising awareness." Today, "Cheer Up Love" has become a global platform for women to find solidarity and strength. "The support from men and women for the project has been immense, and encourages me to continue my work." Hatch intends to expand the project and encourages anyone with a story to reach out to her on Instagram @cheerupluv.

It's been 12 years since Tarana Burke launched the movement and only nine months since it's become popularized on Twitter. We're already seeing waves of culturally responsive and sensitive work by artists of all types. The technical work to understand how human movements like #MeToo unravel across the world by creatives like Erin Gallagher will help social scientists develop a deeper understanding of digital communication. Soul-baring artists like Kesha, Eliza Hatch, and Claire Salvo are inspiring women around the world to embrace their trauma and shed the darkness of doubt and shame by sharing their stories. And creatives like Steve Isaacs, who've haven't experienced #MeToo themselves but see the effects in the faces of many of their friends, are adding angles of compassion and understanding to the conversation.

The complexities of solving the problems addressed in the Me Too movement are vast and will take time. Like all movements, the individuals who comprise it are unique and come with life experiences of all types. Perspectives can bump against one another and paths to creating a better culture can crisscross. Creative expression creates a valuable space, a pause in between those conversations to be vulnerable, expressive and understood. That is why art in the Me Too movement is critical and only just beginning.

What was your reaction to the Me Too Movement? Have you addressed the issue in your creative work or spoken out? Share you comments.

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How Artists Have Responded to the Me Too Movement | Art Business Journal

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Art has always been a vehicle for creatives to express their concerns about society, and artists are taking on the Me Too movement as an opportunity to discuss a long-standing inequity in America. From political dissent to personal healing, creative expression can be a weapon or a balm.

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You know the beginning: In October 2017, a major newspaper broke a story about a famous producer-a serial predator, a man who wears his ugly on his skin-and our communal ether filled with women's voices sharing private horrors, amplifying and echoing one another's words, all stamped with a hashtag. I'd recently finished writing a short story about a woman who murders men, a tale about the potential consequences of sexual harassment, and I e-mailed Kristina Kearns, then executive director of McSweeney's, asking if she'd like to publish it. I used the words quick and soon. I used the word timeliness. I thought, "How many news cycles do we have left?" I assumed that in a week the hashtag would stop trending and the world would resume its collective lack of interest in everything it revealed. I spent those early days of #MeToo feeling devastated in advance.

Sometimes I laugh at my 2017 self for her fear. Here we are two years later and that news cycle still hasn't ended; it birthed a global movement. But most of the time I'm still scared-that we'll stop trying to change the reality we exposed or that we'll keep trying and ultimately fail. That our country will keep electing presidents and confirming Supreme Court judges who have abused women.

My e-mail to Kristina initiated a long exchange between us about the role art and literature should play in a crucial cultural moment. What is the point of being a publisher or editor, Kristina asked me, if one isn't responding to-and deepening-the conversation? We need a book, she said. When she asked me to be the editor, I could not have been more thrilled.

Books invite concentrated focus and offer an immersive experience. Kristina and I both believed that giving physical form to a revolution that lived predominantly on the Internet would be a meaningful act.

At that time, the end of 2017, the stories of beautiful actresses, most of whom were white and straight, dominated the forming narrative (even though a Black woman, Tarana Burke, founded the #MeToo movement in 2006). It felt essential to me-as a queer woman, as a writer who immigrated to this country at age twenty-five, and also as a person aware of her own privilege-to start the work of compiling this book by reaching out to writers of various backgrounds. I wanted to hear from Black writers, Latinx writers, Asian writers. I wanted to hear from writers who identify as queer and writers who identify as trans. I also wanted to hear from writers who were adults before I was born, who could offer a broader perspective.

Which is to say that I wanted these sentences from contributor Honor Moore: "I remember the beginning of Women's Liberation. I don't remember particular conversations, but I remember the feeling I got when a woman declared she didn't need any movement." And this one, from contributor Gabrielle Bellot: "I had read too many stories of trans women who went to the police after men harassed them and were told by the cops that it was their own fault; what do you expect, the officers asked, when you dress like a woman?" And this one, from contributor Syreeta McFadden: "I know to expect the requisite bullshit that comes with being a Black woman in the world. I know wrong is not my name."

I wanted all these words before they were written, before they landed on the pages of this anthology. So I e-mailed writers and artists, people whose work had made me gasp in the past. I asked how they were doing, and I asked if they'd be willing to write about how they were doing, or if perhaps they already had. And in my e-mail I said: Give me essays, stories, poems, anything. It felt imperative to not limit the scope of this book to one genre. When collective pain and trauma yield art, our job as a society is to receive that art in all the forms it takes, in all its different garbs.

In September 2018, as I assembled these artistic testimonies, Christine Blasey Ford took the stand and shared the details of her trauma with the world. "Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter," she said of the men who victimized her. That one of those men was subsequently confirmed as a judge on the highest court in our land is proof like no other that, to borrow Quito Ziegler's words from these pages, "we're at the early stages of a reckoning." Our fight has only just begun.

Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings From the Me Too Movement will be released by McSweeney's Publishing in September. As the anthology's publication date was approaching, I invited four of the book's contributors-Karissa Chen, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Lynn Melnick, and Elissa Schappell-to discuss some of their thoughts on the current state of the #MeToo movement and their experience writing on this topic.

Oria: Had you written "#MeToo pieces" before-whether framed that way or otherwise-or was this your first time writing about this topic?

Greenidge: I think this is the first time I'm publishing a piece on this topic, but I've certainly written about it before and thought about it often. Writing about the aftermath of sexual violence and sexual abuse was always something that interested me, from a pretty young age. I came to the subject from the intense public discussions around familial sexual abuse and workplace sexual harassment in the 1990s. For me, #MeToo is less a revolutionary moment and more a continuation of that discussion that happened very publicly and very intensely for much of the '90s. I distinctly remember the cultural shift, when gatekeepers kind of decided "that's enough of that," and the horror and destruction of sexual violence was ignored again. It was so jarring, and I think many people forget that when they talk about the trajectory of #MeToo.

Chen: I had written a short piece for the Rumpus a couple of months before McSweeney's approached me, and at first I hoped to just republish that story. Although that piece was, in part, about someone close to me who'd been assaulted, it was a piece that I managed to keep a bit more distant from myself, less personal and more grounded in my views on the topic. When approached by McSweeney's, I had a sense of "I don't think I have anything else to say about this," which in retrospect was more, "I don't know if I can handle saying anything else about this." But when you and the other editors asked me to consider writing a new piece, I decided to try to push myself to write about a personal experience I'd avoided discussing because I wasn't sure it "counted." It turned out to be one of the hardest things I've ever written-so hard that the act of writing became the anchor. I'm so glad I did it.

Schappell: I think in some way I'm always pushing back against the subjugation of women in my work, whether it be in fiction or nonfiction. I'm angry. Writing allows me to let my anger off the leash.

Melnick: From the time I began writing as a teenager, most of what I've written about has been rape culture, in all of its many terrifying forms. From the time I was a kid, my life and experience was so steeped in toxic masculinity and violence that there was sort of no way to write literally any experience outside of that lens. I mean, that's our world.

Oria: If you'd written about this topic prior to October 2017-pre-Harvey-did the experience feel different in any way? Did your prepublication thoughts or concerns differ, regarding the reception of the work, back then compared with now?

Melnick: Oddly enough, my second book, Landscape With Sex and Violence, about rape culture as I lived it inside 1980s Los Angeles, came out ten days after the New York Times ran its Harvey Weinstein piece and literally the day that Alyssa Milano tried to claim the #MeToo hashtag, and then the slogan was everywhere. As I mentioned, I've been battling this topic on the page my entire writing life, and I can tell you for certain that my work and these subjects weren't terribly popular for most of that time. One editor of a major poetry press called my book "crass." And then suddenly I was a "#MeToo poet" and Landscape was a "#MeToo book," and it felt very strange. It also helped sales, which I refuse to complain about or downplay because I'm proud of my work and want people to read it. But I was also horribly trolled. People accused me of exploiting my own trauma, and Amazon even recategorized my book into the "adult" section, which made it unfindable in most searches for a while. I mean, there's definitely a lot of sex in the book, because it turns out that women who have been victims of violence can also enjoy sex. That's a tough one for a lot of people to understand. But all of this is what happens when a woman tries to reclaim her body for herself, I suppose. In any case, I think a lot about what Tarana Burke said to the Los Angeles Times the day after the #MeToo hashtag had blown up in 2017: "Somebody asked me, does this [campaign] amplify your work? And it does in a certain way, but also when this hashtag dies down, and people stop thinking about it, I'll still be doing the work." That is pretty much how I felt, and feel.

Oria: I've been thinking a lot about the role books like Indelible can play, both in readers' and writers' lives, in shaping the conversation we're having at crucial cultural moments. Were you already working on the piece you contributed to Indelible when I reached out to you, or did the solicitation from McSweeney's inspire the work?

Schappell: I had been trying for months to write a short story that would capture the tension that exists between women who have chosen different ways to deal with having been raped. Not all women experience trauma the same way. That was important to me. But I couldn't do it. The characters weren't talking to each other; the form was wrong. So I chose to write an essay, but the essay was terrible. And after watching Dr. Ford's testimony, it felt cheap and dishonest. In fact, I think now, maybe I wanted it to be rejected, but it wasnt, which made everything worse. I really wanted to write the story I'd started. It's one of the most challenging stories I've ever written. It kept evolving, changing, and surprising me, and that's the piece that appears in Indelible. I could never have done it without support from you and the other editors.

Chen: It was only because McSweeney's really preferred a new piece to something I'd already written that I tried to take this on. And it was hard. I spent weeks tossing out first lines and first paragraphs. As an essayist, I wanted to state more than just the facts. I wanted to give more than an account of a thing that happened, a thing I was also terrified of being judged for. To me, I think every personal essay I write is a way to reckon with something that's happened; I think of each as a letter to another version of myself, the self that doesn't yet have the benefit of space or time. The essay I ended up with became a way to be honest about all the things I had been running away from while acknowledging that I didn't have any answers on what to do with those things now that I'd turned my gaze toward them. I always hope that if I can be vulnerable and honest-if I can allow space for the uncertainty that says, "I don't have all the answers, but here's what I do have"-then an audience will see a way in that space to reckon with their own questions, traumas, fears, hopes, and courage.

Oria: I believe that it's our responsibility as a society in times of crisis to encourage and receive art in all the forms it takes, and yet often our immediate literary response focuses almost solely on creative nonfiction. That's why Indelible features short stories and poems in addition to essays; for me this is a form of inclusivity as well as a way to expand the conversation beyond what creative nonfiction invites and allows. And yet this isn't something I hear discussed often, so I wonder if anyone else has thoughts on this issue.

Schappell: Fiction is a deep dive into dark waters, and that's what I wanted to do here. That's where I wanted to go. I couldn't tell the truth of my experience without lying about it. I always find other peoples' lives much more interesting than my own.

Melnick: As a poet I really appreciate that this anthology includes poetry because there are places poetry can reach that other genres can't, and yet it's often excluded from projects like this. I've occasionally written a memory or experience in poetry and then in prose, and each genre just gets to a different kind of truth, comes at it from a different angle and place, and perhaps reaches different readers-or the same reader differently-because of it. We need it all, is what I'm trying to say. And we definitely need poetry; it's not shocking that, during these dire Trump years, the readership for poetry is way up.

Oria: Speaking of inclusivity. Indelible features a significant array of voices and backgrounds; at the time I started assembling the artistic testimonies that would become this book, this felt not just crucial, as it always does, but urgent, since we were hearing predominantly from white, straight, beautiful actresses. How do you feel about the inclusivity of the #MeToo conversation in 2019? And would you say we've successfully shifted the cultural perception that appearance affects whether or not a woman gets harassed or abused?

Greenidge: I mean, #MeToo was started by a Black woman activist and rose from her work with mostly Black women who had experienced this. As with all political movements, it mutated and changed as it reached different communities. I think the documentary about R. Kelly has more recently shifted the conversation back to including Black women and girls. I think what is both exhilarating and frustrating about #MeToo is that we are all entering this conversation from different points in our processing of assault. Some of us are at the "fuck my abuser, lock him up for life, burn it all down" point-the stage of "my pain is unique and unlike anyone else's on earth." This is a necessary part of healing. Some of us will grapple there forever. Some of us get to a point when we are ready to ask "how does what happened to me fit into larger societal patterns, and how can we punish the perpetrators?" And still others are at the point of wondering "what would restitution and healing and actual societal change look like? What if we centered survivors' healing instead of just focusing on punishment?"

Certain voices and certain phases, as performed by certain types of women who are deemed more sympathetic or their pain more beautiful, dominated the debate at first. But I hope, through the works of writers like Mariame Kaba and also the movement's founder, Tarana Burke, that we can collectively move to the question of healing for survivors, first and foremost.

Chen: I love Kaitlyn's thoughts on the different points of processing. I feel like this is also a form of diversity-acknowledging how messy and imperfect reckoning with misogyny and patriarchy is, on both a personal and systemic level, and part of that is hearing the multitude of voices. I don't know if we're getting better, per se, about inclusivity. For instance I think trans issues are often talked about separately from the #MeToo movement, but I think it's impossible to talk about #MeToo and not think about the deadly consequences trans folk face due to patriarchy and misogyny. Race and class, of course, also affect everything. Last year I moderated a roundtable with several Asian American writers, and one of the things that came up was how painful it was when assault happened within the community. People often felt conflicted, in part wanting to protect their powerful, influential men; the fight for visibility in a white-dominated world is a difficult one, and taking down someone with a foothold in that world can feel like hurting your community. These nuances complicate the conversation; acknowledging the different intersections is essential to making the environment safe for discussion. I do hope we are moving in that direction.

Melnick: I also really appreciate Kaitlyn's thoughts on processing, because it's crucial to remember we are all going to do so differently, and I worry that gets forgotten. With my own work, I'm mostly writing about experiences that happened to me two decades ago and which took me a very long to write about because I needed all that time to process. I am often asked at Q&As about my own survival, and I think it's important for me in situations like that to continually point out the amount of privilege I have as a white, middle-class, straight-presenting ciswoman in regards to going through various systems as a victim of violence. I get frustrated by certain white women acting as spokespeople for survivors. Alyssa Milano? Come on! But also in the literary community, if we give victims any attention at all, we seem to favor our victims-listen to them, champion them-when they are young, cis, able-bodied, white, and "conventionally" attractive. We need to keep thinking about who we believe and why. As Karissa suggests, these conversations around rape culture are complicated and nuanced, and we don't even know all the questions let alone the answers. This shit is hard but, like Karissa, I have hope we are headed in the right direction.

Shelly Oria, editor of Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings From the Me Too Movement. (Photo by T Kira Madden)

Oria: While most of the pieces in the anthology were assembled prior to the Kavanaugh hearings, we chose a title that nods to that time, and to Dr. Ford's bravery. What was the significance for you of witnessing the Kavanaugh hearings and their outcome? Has your view of the #MeToo movement changed as a result?

Schappell: Like the majority of the writers, I'd turned in my piece before the Kavanaugh hearings. Shortly after the #MeToo movement started gaining traction I'd started working on a short story in the form of a conversation, in Track Changes, between an editor and a writer who is trying to write "her rape story." I'd tried to write my way into the story, but the formatting was too taxing, so I'd abandoned it. Then the Kavanaugh hearings happened and suddenly everything was different. I wanted to pull my piece and ask if you and the other editors would consider the short story I'd been working on.

I didn't want to watch the hearings. I remember thinking, "I don't want to do this. I don't want to watch this, but I don't want her to be alone."

That was the thing, I wanted to bear witness. I wanted, as the Quakers say, to hold her in the light. So, I sat perched on the arm of our sofa watching Dr. Ford determined to tell her story. I just kept thinking, "Someone please help her: Fix her hair, clean her glasses, get her a glass of water."

It's not that what Dr. Ford was describing was shocking; it was familiar. It felt, well, ordinary-and that was the problem. I started to weep, then sob, but that wasn't me rocking back and forth; that girl there on my sofa was someone else. Of course I wanted to push Dr. Ford's hair back from her face, and clean her glasses, and get her a glass of water. Dr. Ford was not alone; there were two of us.

If there was any question in your mind about whether or not Dr. Ford had been assaulted, the transformation she underwent when asked to relive that fateful afternoon should have dispelled it. She was back in that room with Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge, alone and terrified.

I remember the Anita Hill hearings. I remember watching those white men interrogating Hill, forcing her to describe the pornography Clarence Thomas liked, the "pubic hair" on the Coke can incident-and I knew the moment Thomas angrily proclaimed, "This is a high-tech lynching," that it was over. That he was daring these white men to refuse him, despite the fact that, until Brett Kavanaugh, he was the most under-qualified judge to be appointed to the Supreme Court. And similarly, when Brett Kavanaugh angrily proclaimed, "I like beer!" and none of the Republicans laughed, I knew it was over.

Even if those men did believe Anita Hill, what was she to them? Even if they believed Dr. Ford, what was she to them?

When Senator Dianne Feinstein asked how it was possible for Dr. Ford to remember some details but forget others, Dr. Ford, a psychology professor, explained it was a simple memory function. When a person experiences a traumatic event, their neurotransmitters code the memory on the hippocampus; they bank it. The inconsequential details, like the name of a street in your neighborhood, cease to exist, but that traumatic experience is fixed in memory. That made sense to me. It echoed my own experience.

In the middle of the hearing I received a message from a woman who had been one of my best friends as a girl, and throughout high school. I hadn't heard from her in years. She wrote, "Do you ever wonder if those guys think about what they did to us?"

A few years ago I'd have said no. Now, in the era of #MeToo, I think, yes. I think some of them wonder if maybe what they did crossed the line.

Oria: I think so too, although I've also come across very different reactions from some cis men. A writer friend recently shared with me that her husband, who's otherwise wonderful, often doesn't really "get it" when she or her friends refer to their #MeToo experiences-especially the more "minor" everyday ones. She expressed her hope that he might read Indelible, since as a writer he might be intrigued. Have you struggled with the cis men in your life-partners, family members, close friends-in this context? Do you believe pieces like the one you contributed and books like Indelible can make a difference in terms of cis men's experience of the conversation? Do you care?

Greenidge: I am not close with many cis, straight men. This isn't an accident. My experience with abuse led me, at first, to seek out companionship with and interaction primarily with women and queer people.

In my twenties I consciously decided to befriend cis straight men but, probably because of my own unprocessed understanding of the abuse around me as a child, I tended to befriend misogynists. The price of such friendship was high-it was a continual denial of the emotional truths and logic that I knew dictated my world. These were all very smart, very sensitive, well-read, extremely talented, brilliant boys. It was very seductive to think myself one of them. It was also very lonely, and seeing the depths of their misogyny was frightening.

I think sometimes when men say "I don't get it," what they mean is "I don't want to get it and I'm not going to do the labor to understand." In that case, no art can reach them. And we probably shouldn't try. We reach each other, talk to each other, and in that way, do the work to save ourselves.

Men have their own reckoning to do-both in their complicity in sexual violence and in the number of men who have also experienced sexual assault and are denied, because of patriarchy, the language and framing to even put their experiences into a cogent narrative. It isn't an accident that some of the misogynists I befriended and loved and dated in my twenties later confided in me stories of the sexual abuse they experienced.

Chen: I feel like the cis, straight men in my life-or elsewhere-who might read this and be changed by it are the ones who already care enough to try to listen, empathize, and understand. They're the ones who are already willing to do the work; I hope that a book like Indelible can push them further toward the understanding they're pursuing. But the ones who might benefit from listening the most are probably the ones who don't care to do the work and would never pick up a book like this anyway. Call me cynical, but I don't have a lot of hope, nor do I have enough patience for men like that. Some of them are in my life because they're family or longtime friends turned acquaintances, and to be honest, the idea of them reading my piece makes me a little ill. I'm certain they would find some way to judge and blame me. I don't know if any work we do can make a difference-I often feel that for men like that, the only people they'll listen to are other cis, straight men-and that even then, what first needs to be addressed are the ways in which patriarchy negatively impacts them, how it isolates them, puts pressure on them to be physical and sexual achievers, how it doesn't allow room for vulnerability, emotions, and closeness. Not to mention what Kaitlyn said-the space to confide about their own sexual assaults. Perhaps those are the necessary first steps for cis, straight men, so they can let their walls down and finally be ready to hear about what others are experiencing.

Melnick: I'm married to a cis, straight man who is deeply aware of the horrors of rape culture and its many terrifying forms, and yet certain lived experiences are still a thing he just can't know. Like, I'm going to walk to the subway in a bit, and it's a beautiful day in New York City, and I'm quite possibly going to be called after and otherwise street-harassed and it's going to make me anxious and fearful and unable to enjoy the beautiful day-and as much as my husband can understand of how terrible this is, he doesn't know the particular bodily experience of it. So a leap has to be taken sometimes, and a book like Indelible can go a long way toward helping cis men to take that leap. Or, in some cases, even to know that these situations exist! I've been on panels and given talks about rape culture and toxic masculinity, and many men are truly shocked that any of it exists, even as they are often complicit-or even active-in it. Rape culture is designed to keep cis men from having to interrogate their own actions and to make the rest of us do complicated acrobatics trying to convince anyone that our experience is real.

The introduction to this conversation was adapted from the foreword to Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings From the Me Too Movement (McSweeney's Publishing, 2019).

Shelly Oria is the author of New York 1, Tel Aviv 0 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014) and the collaborative digital novella CLEAN, commissioned by WeTransfer and McSweeney's, which received two Lovie Awards from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Her fiction has appeared in the Paris Review and elsewhere. She is the editor of Indelible in the Hippocampus (McSweeney's, 2019), an anthology of #MeToo fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her website is www.shellyoria.com.

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Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings From the #MeToo Movement

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You know the beginning: In October 2017, a major newspaper broke a story about a famous producer-a serial predator, a man who wears his ugly on his skin-and our communal ether filled with women's voices sharing private horrors, amplifying and echoing one another's words, all stamped with a hashtag.

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The #MeToo movement, founded by activist and 's 2017 Person of the Year Tarana Burke , has spoken truth to power by confronting predatory men and opening secrets of sexual assault, harassment, and inequality in industries from to . The idea is simple, yet courageous and revolutionary: What if every woman who had been sexually harassed or assaulted declared "me too," challenging a culture of silence?

It's estimated that more than 80 percent of women have been sexually harassed or assaulted, meaning that there are numerous voices to listen to, learn from, and affirm (as well as voices that aren't yet ready to share). Since poetry holds a long tradition of bold truth-telling , and because research reveals that writing can be healing , literature can be a great place to start learning and speaking out.

According to Hummel's recent reflection on The Poetry Magazine Podcast , the poem "Letter to My Blackout" is a rumination on how Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court triggered past memories of sexual violence. It uses the form of a villanelle -where several lines reoccur throughout each stanza-to show how survivors relive trauma.

Hummel's poem does the important work of showing just how commonplace assault can be. The poem opens at a party that has become sinister: "Dear sip, dear shotgun, dear pound: / beneath the house, the kegs roll in; the party flips its switches down." It also pushes back against assumptions about who society considers an attacker, with Hummel emphasizing, "He could be anyone, and he abounds." With this poem, Hummel characterizes a typical experience, calling readers to recognize and speak out when similar events have happened to them.

Make a Change: One way for more leaders in government to understand this complex, personal issue (and the laws surrounding it!) lies in reaching gender parity in government . Donate to or get involved with She Should Run to learn more about how to fracture the glass ceiling.

These six erasure poems , which also appear in O'Hare's book, All This Can Be Yours , take the apologies of famous men accused of sexual misconduct and transform them into brutal, poignant truths. For example, O'Hare turns Harvey Weinstein's six-paragraph apology statement in The New York Times to this searing poem, all through the power of black ink: "I came of age in a / culture / of / demons / I / respect / more / than / women."

With these erasures, which also include "revised" statements by Kevin Spacey and Louis C.K., O'Hare refuses to let remorse triumph over justice. She also quite literally shows that it's possible for survivors and their allies to reclaim their narratives.

Make a Change: In response to the Hollywood emissions that O'Hare writes about, more than 300 women in the entertainment industry founded TIME'S UP, an organization that advocates for stricter policies surrounding sexual misconduct, as well as a legal defense fund. The TIME'S UP allows people to share their own stories, donate to the cause, or purchase some awesome ally swag.

Like Hummel's poem, Safia Elhillo's "Men Follow Me" shows the repetitive nature of this issue. Sexual harassment is even more common than sexual assault, and Elhillo's poem breaks down the ways in which it manifests in women's daily lives, including , on public transporation , and on the .

Elhillo creates an impactful refrain out of these experiences, writing, "men follow me / on instagram / on twitter / home from the subway station / through my front door / over the years." The fear and exasperation captured in the poem work as an urgent call for women to be free and safe in public spaces.

Make a Change: The Stop Street Harassment organization has many online resources, as well as a for those affected. They also host and promote International Anti-Street Harassment Week each April, inspiring people from 41 countries and 6 continents to write and draw messages against street harassment on sidewalks across the world. Many local women's organizations take part in this event, so contact yours for more information.

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The Poetry of #MeToo: Powerful Poets Speak Out - Read Poetry

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The #MeToo movement, founded by activist and 's 2017 Person of the Year Tarana Burke , has spoken truth to power by confronting predatory men and opening secrets of sexual assault, harassment, and inequality in industries from to .

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Looking for the e-book of Indelible in the Hippocampus? Click here.

"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter," said Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford when she testified to congress in September 2018 about the men who victimized her. A year earlier, in October 2017, the hashtag #MeToo shone a light on the internalized, normalized sexual harassment and abuse that'd been ubiquitous for women for generations.

Among the first books to emerge from the #MeToo movement, Indelible in the Hippocampus is a truly intersectional collection of essays, fiction, and poetry. These original texts sound the voices of black, Latinx, Asian, queer, and trans writers, to name but a few, and says "me too" 23 times. Whether reflecting on their teenage selves or their modern-day workplaces, each contributor approaches the subject with unforgettable authenticity and strength. Together these pieces create a portrait of cultural sea-change, offering the reader a deeper understanding of this complex, galvanizing pivot in contemporary consciousness.

Featuring in order of appearance: Kaitlyn Greenidge, Melissa Febos, Syreeta McFadden, Rebecca Schiff, Diana Spechler, Hossannah Asuncion, Nelly Reifler, Courtney Zoffness, Quito Ziegler, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Jolie Holland, Lynn Melnick, Caitlin Delohery, Caitlin Donohue, Gabrielle Bellot, Karissa Chen, Elissa Schappell, Samantha Hunt, Honor Moore, Donika Kelly, Paisley Rekdal, Hafizah Geter, and Shelly Oria.

Praise for Indelible in the Hippocampus

" Indelible in the Hippocampus will stay with you, long after you've closed its cover."
- Bustle Magazine, Six Books That Contextualize Harvey Weinstein's Monumental Guilty Verdict

"Bracing and urgent... the writers offer a sense of communal feeling, bravery, and triumph."
- Publishers Weekly

"This book is a proper danger to patriarchal silencing."
-Ashley Judd

"This anthology does so much to humanize, again, the stories that have emerged from the #MeToo Movement, already much dismissed and pushed off to the margins. And while that would be enough, it is more than that. There are many beloved writers here, in discussions of the movements that led to this moment, the ways in which too many of us have struggled alone with what happened to us, the legacy of the culture that created these assaults, and inspiration for taking action on restorative justice. This is a book for those losing heart, those already fighting, and those just finding their voice. Which means give it to everyone."
- Alexander Chee

"This book is like a tinderbox in my hand, ready to start a fire."
- Jami Attenberg

"Indelible in the Hippocampus is a vital act of witnessing, a fortification for the body and the sprit, a reckoning with violences that belong to both the present and the past. 'Speaking lights a candle in a room inside us," Gabrielle Bellot writes. This is a book that is going to light so many candles, in so many rooms."
- Laura van den Berg

"At once illuminating and poignant, these writings both shatter and heal."
-Tabitha St. Bernard-Jacobs, The Women's March Director of Community Engagement

"Indelible in the Hippocampus is one of the most profound and moving books I've read in quite some time. Personal, political, and artfully written essays, poems and fiction. Raw in its honesty and fearless with its insights. This book read as a revelation to me, and I was grateful for it. It should be read by anyone, everyone."
-Victor LaValle

"This anthology functions as an empowered testament and treatise, a book for anyone interested in social justice....belongs on campuses and in community conversations...Not just candid and clear revelations of abuse, but powerful demands for justice."
- Kirkus, starred review

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Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings From the Me Too Movement

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Looking for the e-book of Indelible in the Hippocampus? Click here. "Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter," said Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford when she testified to congress in September 2018 about the men who victimized her. A year earlier, in October 2017, the hashtag #MeToo shone a light on the internalized, normalized sexual harassment and abuse that'd been ubiquitous for women for generations.

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https://www.amazon.com/Me-Too-Anchio-Daniela-Gioseffi/dp/1946116084

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Creative Expression and Healing

by Douglas Eby

Creative expression can transform our painful reactions to traumatic situations, providing renewed strength of our identity and a way to give voice to difficult feelings.

Art that we create - or even made by others - can remodel our inner realities.

Some think art needs to have that kind of impact to be worthwhile. Franz Kafka wrote, "I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.. that affect us like a disaster... A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."

Clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. Stephen Diamond says creativity "is one of humankind's healthiest inclinations, one of our greatest attributes," and explains in his book, " Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity," that our impulse to be creative "can be understood to some degree as the subjective struggle to give form, structure and constructive expression to inner and outer chaos and conflict... for meeting and redeeming one's devils and demons."

A number of actors and other artists have talked about this kind of "constructive expression."

Meryl Streep has said acting "has to do with working out private passions that are almost inscrutable to me.. I just get to work out all my murderous thoughts and my weaknesses and my failures and things I don't want to do as a parent or work out on the family.

"I need [acting] as an outlet. I love it. It feeds my imagination. It connects me to understanding."

Sally Field was 17 when she won an audition for Gidget and later said, "Before, I had always felt so trapped. Acting saved my life."

Charlize Theron as a teen saw her mother shoot her father in self defense, reportedly after he had threatened to kill them both with a shotgun.

She said in a 2004 interview with Diane Sawyer for Dateline that her work has helped her deal with it.

"I think acting has healed me. I get to let it out. I get to say it and feel it in my work and I think that's why I don't go through my life walking with this thing, and suffering."

In a later newspaper interview she added more perspectives on her experience.

"I don't know how to say this without sounding strange," she said. "But I feel like having this tragedy at such a young age has given me a leg up from other people. Because, man, from 16, I knew the value of life and I knew how quickly it could be taken away. And from that moment on, I made a choice to either swim or to drown, you know?"

Theron commented on other misconceptions surrounding her attitude to the tragedy. "People want to think that I am this tortured soul, that my work is drawn only from this one well.

"And though I would never sit here and say that it didn't mark me, or mould me into the person that I am, my life has had many painful journeys and heartbreaks since my father died, many of which I draw on for my work."

[From Charlize Theron on playing a self-mutilating sex addict in The Burning Plain, by Kevin Maher, The Sunday Times, March 12, 2009.]

Like a number of other powerful actors, Charles Dutton has prison experience, in jail at 17 for murder. He developed an interest in theater, and after his release was accepted at the Yale School of Drama.

Speaking of prison, in her book Gifted Grownups: The Mixed Blessings of Extraordinary Potential, Marylou Kelly Streznewski says that gifted people "form a disproportionately larger portion of the prison population, perhaps as much as 20%... in contrast to the 3 to 5% of the general public. Is the conflict created by being 'different' connected to antisocial attitudes and behaviors? Do they get into trouble because it is fun? Or interesting? Or a clever game? Does crime have its roots in deep hurts?"

Those "deep hurts" can also fuel creative projects. Director Allison Anders made her film "Things Behind the Sun" as a way to deal with her rape.

Native American painter Roxanne Chinook has had personal experiences of trauma, including rape and family violence.

She says her art helps healing from the traumas of her past: "The process of creating strengthens and restores my spirit."

[From the page Healing and art.]

Rosanne Cash deals with the deaths of both her mother and father, Johnny, in her album " Black Cadillac," and noted in a Los Angeles Times interview: "I'm not the first person to make an album about death; I'm not even the first person in my family.

"My dad made music about his own death coming. He was an artist, and he could use his own life in an unsentimental way to make art. He was unafraid. For the rest of us that could be hard. But I understand it. And I learned from it."

"An artist makes art to save her life." writes, "I was first introduced to Art Therapy while in a psychiatric institution. There, I learned that when there are no words, there can be pictures.

Marlene Azoulai

"I learned that an artist is not necessarily someone who has studied art, but one who has something to say, and the courage to say it. I learned that an artist is someone who makes art to save her life.

"I have Dissociative Identity Disorder - DID/MPD, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. I am also bipolar. I do not consider my being a multiple to be a disorder, however. I see it as an elaborate system that my/our psyche devised, in order to deal with severe trauma."

She goes on to quote a passage:

"If you bring forth what is within you what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." --Jesus, from The Gnostic Teachings.

Azoulai adds, "I do a lot of what I call 'shadow-work', both in my writing and art-making.

"I find my self/ves identifying and owning my demons. Creating my/our mythos, out of the icons we have un-earthed from within our selves. This culture we live in exiles demons, without getting to know them...

"The Persian poet Rumi said, 'Be a full bucket, pulled up the dark way of a well, then lifted out into light.' This is what telling the truth means to me."

Marlene Azoulai - from her essay " On Telling the Truth" on her site.

Disturbing emotions

The book Emotional Alchemy by Tara Bennet-Goleman is about dealing wtih negative thoughts and emotions that "disturb our inner equilibrium," as the Dalai Lama writes in the foreword.

Psychologist Bennet-Goleman says the antidote for such disturbance "is mindfulness, which involves being aware of our emotions without being ruled by them."

Creative expression, like psychotherapy and spiritual development, can be a way to become more aware, and also deal with high sensitivity.

Among other experts, Linda Kreger Silverman, PhD, director of the Gifted Development Center in Denver, says gifted and creative people tend to be emotionally sensitive throughout life.

That kind of intensity and sensitivity can lead to strong passions like anger in response to abuse.

Dr. Diamond says there is "a very strong correlation between anger, rage and creativity. Most of us tend to view anger or rage negatively, associating it almost exclusively with destructiveness and violence. Certainly this correlation exists. But anger can also motivate constructive and creative behavior."

He continues, "The more conflict, the more rage, the more anxiety there is, the more the inner necessity to create. We must also bear in mind that gifted individuals.. feel this inner necessity even more intensely, and in some respects experience and give voice not only to their own demons but the collective daimonic as well."

In his book, Dr. Diamond writes about painter and sculptor Niki de St. Phalle, who was able to find "a fertile outlet for her ferocious rage toward men - and the dominant masculine art establishment" - in the creative expression of violence in her work.

"Her famous 'shooting paintings' resulted from firing live ammunition at paint-filled, white-washed balloons mounted on a blank, virginal canvas.

"Thus, rather than becoming a crazed killer or vengeful victimizer of men," Dr. Diamond explains, "de St. Phalle's fury -- some of which stemmed from having been sexually abused by her father -- fostered a fecund creativity, that served her well throughout her prolific career."

Read more in my post Niki de Saint Phalle: Using Art to Express Rage.

Self esteem

One of the consequences for many children and adults, of any gender, who suffer abuse and trauma is a corrosion of their self esteem.

Halle Berry revealed in a CNN interview last year about what motivates her to support and work with an organization that helps women who escape violent homes.

Berry said she recalls being terrified that her violent father, who physically abused her mother, would turn on her, adding, "I think I've spent my adult life dealing with the sense of low self-esteem that sort of implanted in me. Somehow I felt not worthy."

She explained, "Before I'm 'Halle Berry,' I'm little Halle...a little girl growing in this environment that damaged me...I've spent my adult life trying to really heal from that."

[From article: "Halle Berry on Her Past: Traumatic Childhood 'Damaged Me' - popeater.com]

Berry commented about acting in her intense movie "Gothika" (2003): "Although physically I would feel exhausted and tired, my back would hurt, my arms would hurt and my feet would be raw from running through all the stuff, there was still something about it that felt good, like I had a cathartic experience. I got a lot of stuff out of me that was pent up in little corners of myself, so I felt good at the same time."

Judith Orloff M.D. in her book Positive Energy, says creativity is "the mother of all energies, nurturer of your most alive self. It charges up every part of you. When you're plugged in, a spontaneous combustion occurs that 'artists' don't have a monopoly on. This energy rises from your own life force and from a larger spiritual flow."

That may be one way to understand how creative expression can help heal.

Expressive arts therapy

In her article Natalie Rogers, Ph.D., is an author, artist, psychotherapist, and founder of the Person-Centered Expressive Therapy Institute. She is the daughter of Carl Rogers. Giving Life to Carl Rogers Theory of Creativity, Natalie Rogers writes that "using the expressive arts gives people a safe place to explore their shadow side...The shadow is the part we have repressed in our lives. Some people have denied their anger and rage for a lifetime."

Referring to expressive arts therapy, she says "The creative process is a life force energy. If offered in a safe, empathic, non-judgmental environment, it is a transformative process for constructive change...Using movement, sound, color and drama offer opportunities to first become aware of one's shadow, and then to explore it fully through many media."

You will find more articles on her site www.nrogers.com

Her book, The Creative Connection: Expressive Art as Healing, joins person-centered theory and the expressive arts to facilitate deep inner work.

In her article Telling without Talking: Breaking the Silence of Domestic Violence, Cathy Malchiodi writes about art therapy and notes "Art breaks the silence of domestic violence."

She explains, "Art therapy, which formally began as a field and treatment shortly after World War II, continues to be widely adopted to help battered women and children deal with their physical and emotional scars.

"Art as a healing force does not come easy for those whose lives have been controlled, are accustomed to betrayal and punishment, and have learned self-hatred."

But, she continues, "inevitably when it does, creativity and imagination restore a sense of possibility, identity, and reconnection with parts of the self that were silenced in order to survive the violence."

She adds, "While survivors often feel shame in talking about abuse, talking about their artworks is an experience of finally coming home."

Her Psychology Today profile says Cathy Malchiodi, PhD is an art therapist, visual artist, independent scholar, and author of 13 books on arts therapies, including The Art Therapy Sourcebook.

Even if you aren't an "artist" - or don't want to be identified that way - you can help improve your emotional health through creative expression: perform in a community theater play, write a memoir, take a watercolor class, or do something else to express your demons in positive ways.

Abuse & creative expression

articles sites books Healing & art .

Memoir / journaling books

Nurturing mental health : acting......

Nurturing mental health : films/filmmaking......

nurturing mental health : sites / programs......

Nurturing mental health : writing

~ ~ ~

Sites:

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The Alchemy of Art: Creative Expression and Healing

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Creative Expression and Healing by Douglas Eby Creative expression can transform our painful reactions to traumatic situations, providing renewed strength of our identity and a way to give voice to difficult feelings. Art that we create - or even made by others - can remodel our inner realities.

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By Wilderness Sarchild

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The Hunting Ground
The Invisible War
I Am Evidence
Audrie & Daisy

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We drink rosé in the dark and talk about ghost forests
out in Oregon where they discovered how an orphan
tsunami formed from a genocide of trees-salt water
flooding the cedar roots. Such simultaneous death
is like awaiting nukes in the modern day where each voice
becomes a husk and we slowly become inanimate,
vegetal statues and ponder how we ever evolved
a stomach. It is a delicate process
to make all our organs sing together like faucets,
each a body of moving water, leveling off under a Shanghai
moon. We like our women starving, I tell you in the dark,
and we are sitting across from each other while the street noise
from the city blows us into a late evening hum.
You don't understand and so I tell you to watch five women
eat for a week and see how they mourn their tomatoes,
that they are intent on dis-appearing (who could blame them)
that many women are training ourselves to run and become so light
that we refuse gravity, refuse you, that when you fuck us,
we are not even there, we have found a way out of our bodies.

The tsunami's salt water dehydrated the cedars.
The orphan found its mother in a Cascadian fault.
The trees went hungry for weeks, took their time to die,
all watching each other lose their bark and limbs,
become bare and slim. What a radical fairy you will be
when your food coma becomes the haphazard
Titanian light. What visions we have when our energies
are re-nourished after a long spell of a pressed organ.
In A Midsummer's Night Dream, Hermia defies her father
and says: I do not know by what power I am made bold.
But of course she does. It is the presence of the Amazonian
Queen, Hippolyta, sitting big in the quadrant of a kingdom,
making dinner for all the women she loves.
At a bar in Santa Barbara called The Press Room,
a woman I know tells me that she once managed not to eat
for five days. We were drinking in a dark not unlike this one,
the kind that cannot make figures of pride or shame.

There is Muddy Waters in the floods with Bach,
Sarah Vaughn and Verdi on a float. There is a small utopia
in the form of a raft, bobbing down a small canal in the left
hemisphere of a brain. There is a canal in Berlin.
There is a heart and heartbreak busting new geographies,
making a novel planet of all of us and a portraitist
painting commissions of the wealthy Quebecois
in a Montreal loft, the snows in soft collision
with the community gardens outside, sterile
like the smile of the family with their severe warmth.
Oil paintings take years to dry and I want to weep into them,
a longevity built on chemical tears of water, potassium,
a pleasuring glucose making a home in the nerves
of your face. Infants cannot weep. Your infant is the first
executioner who you kiss. Openly. Who you bathe like
a clock impersonating your adulthood, like a pile of dead asters
interrogating you from the window. Asta is the name
of a dog from an old detective serial called Nick and Nora
where they drank endless martinis and flirted with guns.
There are guns in the snowbank and in the classroom,
in the casinos and someone's car, in the firesafe
of a wealthy man. When men rage, they want to take
everyone with them. We mistake vigils for vigilantes.
Sometimes I throw so many clothes around my room-
piles of silk coats and tulle skirts. They begin to take the shape
of people. I wake up in the night and they look like
flat bodies evacuated out of the fabric,
an army of ballerinas gone missing.

At Jeepney's in the East Village, Phillip and I
bite caramel chunks through plastic straws
and she tells me about the phone app
where browsing through virtual worlds,
she discovers their key mantra.

They hate her high pitched Filipino voice,
her slender frame, that wicked black coif
like an ocean wave resting in mid curl.

They hate her new pronoun.
Her custom navy suit. Her gym and banker beau.
Her job selling million dollar real estate.
Her mother, who she hasn't seen in three years.

They hate her contradictions striking the furniture
as she moves into a restaurant like a matchstick.

She shows me the phone. Those words,
appearing in headless profiles of abs and pelvic
bones bursting from their frames:

No Black. No Asian. No Femme.
No Black. No Asian. No Femme.
No Black. No Asian. No Femme.

A rose is a rose is a rose.
We order another glass of champagne
or maybe it was a sidecar.

I cry a little into a banana leaf.
I don't know why this stuff still kills me
to be a couple of brown femmes spitting
with laughter at their own repulsion
projected flagrantly on the white screen.

What does it mean to be undesirable.
An answer the internet cannot give.

Dear Phillip, I do not know.
Dear Phillip, each of your utterances
is a plow through my weary, weary heart.
Dear Phillip, what was that thing
we mistook for a liberation.

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We drink rosé in the dark and talk about ghost forests out in Oregon where they discovered how an orphan tsunami formed from a genocide of trees-salt water flooding the cedar roots. Such simultaneous death is like awaiting nukes in the modern day where each voice becomes a husk and we slowly become inanimate, vegetal statues and ponder how we ever evolved a stomach.

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In 2020 we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the publication of William Styron's Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness with this online exhibit, and with the accompanying virtual panel discussion on creativity and mental illness. The October panel also coincides with Mental Illness Awareness Week, National Depression Screening Day, and Depression Awareness Month, and recognizes the heightened threat of such illnesses this year in particular, when so many are suffering during these unprecedented times.

This small selection of materials from the extensive papers of Styron himself, as well as the work of other writers, artists, and activists--including Duke students--shows a range of creative responses to mental illness, trauma, and even the burden of everyday stresses, as documented in the Rubenstein Library's collections.

This online exhibition was curated by Sara Seten Berghausen with the assistance of Meg Brown, Rachel Ingold, Amy McDonald, with thanks also to Yoon Kim, Hope Ketcham Geeting, Holly Ackerman, Michael Daul, and Aaron Welborn, and to the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation for its support.

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In 2020 we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the publication of William Styron's Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness with this online exhibit, and with the accompanying virtual panel discussion on creativity and mental illness.

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Erin Gallagher created a hashtag network visualization of every use of #metoo over a 31-hour period in 2017.

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Extraordinary network graph of #MeToo shows a massive online movement, demonstrating the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and assault.

The Me Too movement was started more than 10 years ago by Tarana Burke, but the above tweet by Alyssa Milano on October 15 set off the hashtag #MeToo and activated a global cascade of personal stories from women and some men discussing their experiences of sexual harassment and/or assault.

I started capturing #MeToo tweets on October 16 and collected tweets over a period of 31 hours. The network froze my computer several times just trying to make preliminary visualizations. I've never seen a network so dense before. I thought I made a mistake and re-checked my work several times to be sure it wasn't an error. I also consulted with a few friends who work with gephi. Formations like this are apparently rare but possible.

This graph of 24,722 #MeToo tweets contains 25,218 nodes, 16,183 edges and 10,709 communities. I have never seen a hashtag network with so many communities before. The dense areas filled with what looks like white dots are tens of thousands of small groups of people connecting in the #MeToo hashtag. There are too many groups for me to color each one but I tried to color enough of them to show that those are not white dots randomly floating around in this network.

This is just a sample of #MeToo tweets, the hashtag spread around the world with over 1 million tweets in 48 hours and over 12 million posts, comments and reactions on Facebook in less than 24 hours.
If you like what I do, please consider supporting my work on Patreon
The Telegraph published additional statistics of the #MeToo hashtag. 30% of people who tweeted the hashtag were men and most of the traffic came from retweets of people boosting other people's stories.

Word cloud of other hashtags associated with #MeToo:

LoQueSigue_ made an animated map of #MeToo activity around the world:

The Spanish version of #MeToo also went viral in Spanish language social media. I collected 21,852 #YoTambien tweets from October 16 to October 18. The following #YoTambien network graph contains 17,006 nodes, 15,040 edges and 4,685 communities.

A Pictoline infographic from October 17 (see below) went viral, so the Pictoline account dominates the conversation of the Spanish hashtag. The rest of the conversation happening under #YoTambien is similarly dense and multi-color indicating a large, organic conversation spread among many people on Twitter.

Here's the Pictoline tweet shown in the above graph. The tweet says:

It's not only Harvey Weinstein
It's doesn't only happen in Hollywood
It doesn't only happen to a few women

The #MeToo & #YoTambien hashtags resonated with Spanish speakers. It wasn't the first time a hashtag about sexual assault exploded in Spanish language social media; a similar trend went viral in 2016. #MiPrimerAcoso (my first assault) also caused a massive cascade of personal stories from women about their first experience being sexually harassed or assaulted. LoQueSigue_ created this interactive map of 19,607 #MiPrimerAcoso tweets from April 24 to 26, 2016.

The #MeToo trend spread to many other languages and countries:

Tarana Burke initiated the Me Too movement over 10 years ago. She tweeted a 2014 video of her speaking in Philadelphia at the March Against Rape Culture, here is the text:

"Me Too is a movement to, among other things, radicalize the notion of mass healing. As a community we create a lot of space for fighting and pushing back but not enough for connecting and healing. It's a long and varied process for everyone and each and every one of us has a different entry point on to the journey to heal from our experiences. But the one thing that we have in common is the ability at some point in our journey to reach back and create an entry point for another woman. Some of us start by telling our stories. For those who are ready and able, standing up and saying 'Me Too' can be a deeply cathartic experience." - Tarana Burke

If you like what I do, please consider supporting my work on Patreon

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Extraordinary network graph of #MeToo shows a massive online movement, demonstrating the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and assault. The Me Too movement was started more than 10 years ago by Tarana Burke, but the above tweet by Alyssa Milano on October 15 set off the hashtag #MeToo and activated a global cascade of personal stories from women and some men discussing their experiences of sexual harassment and/or assault.