We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Some facts about being alive are too heavy to hold in their bare form. A song, a painting, a story puts a shape around them so they can be approached instead of avoided, which is not evasion but a way of surviving the looking. You feel the grief in the music more fully than you could feel it plain, and it does not flatten you.

When something is too much to think about head on, go at it sideways through whatever art reaches you. Let it carry the weight for an hour. You will often come back able to face the thing itself.