IN THE STILLNESS WE CREATE

There was always something quietly thrilling about being born in the United States specifically, in New York City. 

A place that didn’t just tolerate difference but thrived on it. My roots are immigrant, my bones Italian, but my blood is New York. 

The rhythm of subways and sirens, of accents stacked like stories, of artistry born not in silence but in the roar. 

And then later, Los Angeles—sunlight instead of steel, but the same drive to “make”. A different kind of jungle, but still wild with ideas.

To be raised and later reside in two of the most progressive cities in the world—New York and L.A.—felt like a passport not just to opportunity but to innovation itself. 

Every street corner hums with it. The birthplaces of movements, mind-shifts, technologies, healing practices, musical revolutions, and cinematic dreams. People don’t just live in these cities. They arrive—from across the country, across oceans—to contribute to the cultural tide.

But lately, something subtle is shifting in the air. A dimming. A quiet pause.

I don’t say this as a complaint. I say it as a witness. A curious, creative, sometimes bewildered witness.

Earlier this year, when the fires broke out across our many LA cities —far too close to home—something in me registered more than smoke in the air.  

It was as if the illusion of safety, one I didn’t even know I still clung to, was quietly scorched. I understood in my bones that something had irrevocably shifted—not just in the land, but in me. A life chapter closed without ceremony. The world was changing, and I was being asked to meet it differently.

The world seems to be re-evaluating the United States—its spirit, its systems, even its safety. Friends from abroad hesitate to visit. Friends who once built lives here are quietly returning to Europe or elsewhere, seeking something softer, safer, more stable. 

And I, for the first time in my life, find myself feeling a strange unfamiliarity in my own land. A tremor beneath the freedom I’ve always cherished.

And yet—I am still here. Still creating. Still believing.

A large part of that resilience comes from the privilege of working closely with Norman Seeff—a true master of image, of presence, of truth. 

His art and his life stand as a living dialogue between personal experience and global upheaval. Having grown up under apartheid in South Africa, and then immersing himself in the soul-stirring chaos of the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement, and war-era America, Norman has taught me more than just how to see. 

He’s taught me how to withstand. To endure. To stay creative even when the air grows thick with fear or doubt.

The creative spirit that pulses through Norman’s work reminds me every day that art is not made in perfect conditions. It’s made in the moment between uncertainty and action.

I write this not from a place of boasting, but from deep reverence. Reverence for the places that shaped me. For the people I’ve collaborated with. For the stories that are still worth telling. For the energy that still rises in the hearts of artists, healers, inventors, and visionaries across this country who refuse to stop dreaming.

If you’re reading this and feeling confused by this moment—if you’re a creative wondering where the fire went, or how to keep the flame lit—you’re not alone. But I believe that we are standing in a kind of global stillness, a reckoning, a recalibration.

And in stillness, creativity listens more deeply.

Let us be brave enough to feel it all. Let us be generous with our compassion, and fierce in our truth-telling. Let us honor the privilege we’ve had to create here—and continue to do so, with humility and hope.

The story is still being written.

— Antoinette Peragine