Vin Brocki: Blogging

There’s a strange rhythm to these days that almost feels like some minor-key melody stuck in your head — you can’t quite shake it, but it won’t resolve. In the streets of the Twin Cities right now, that dissonance isn’t just in the news; it’s in the air and in the beat of daily life. The chaos — protests, confrontations with federal agents, tear gas drifting down cold Minneapolis avenues — is heavy and unrelenting.

I suppose age changes how chaos sounds. When you’ve lived long enough, the noise no longer feels new — it feels familiar. I remember other moments when the country felt like it was coming apart at the seams: different headlines, different slogans, different faces in power, but the same underlying tension humming beneath it all. Back then, I thought each rupture was unprecedented, that surely this was the breaking point. Now I hear it more like a recurring theme, returning in altered keys, shaped by new instruments and new generations, but never entirely gone.

What time has given me — beyond the creakier joints and slower mornings — is the ability to sit inside the dissonance without needing it to resolve immediately. Creativity doesn’t come despite the chaos; it comes through it. I’ve learned that unrest has always been a companion to art, not its enemy. The songs that last, the words that endure, the images that linger — they were rarely born in comfort. They came from moments like this, when certainty cracked and people were forced to imagine something different, even if they didn’t yet know what it would look like.

I no longer expect harmony to arrive quickly, or cleanly. Instead, I look for small signs that the music is still being written: a conversation that didn’t have to happen but did, a crowd that refused to disappear, a younger voice carrying an old truth forward in a new way. That’s where optimism lives for me now — not in grand resolutions, but in the quiet persistence of expression. As long as people keep creating, keep responding, keep shaping meaning out of the noise, the song isn’t over.

Vin Brocki, Erie, PA, USA

January 14, 2026