the opposite of mowing down
Saturday, I drove past the protesters, honking and waving. There are still quite a few people, there are new signs to match the new indignities that we are being dragged through. Waving as you drive by takes almost no effort, yet it still felt good.
I am in the midst of packing. My house resembles the chaos of my mind, decades left out to be washed, old bills, the terry towel with a face on the hood to dry a small child. Some things you know right away that you want to keep forever. The Radiohead t-shirt from the concert at Hammersmith Odeon. The cassette tape of a voice, long extinguished. The towel with the hood.
I found some poems and songs from high school and college. I had thought they were lost forever. There was a letter from my grandmother, my father’s mother. She is lost forever, but still in my thoughts. The short version of it all is a story of someone being slowly separated from people, from family members. Seeing her elegant, early 1900s penmanship, made me cry. Will we ever know what we have lost. It’s not a question. As my phone lights up, letting me know some new article on outrageous behavior and impossibilities becoming possible, it’s clear that the page, yellowed, and the script, constructed, will never be as intrusive as the faint shining light from the phone that gives me a headache for a moment, hoping I won’t notice the slight pain. Pain from returning to reality, pain from incessant electric light.
I found some poems and songs. After so much time, there are still phrases that I remember, as if the radio started playing a song you hadn’t heard for ages, yet you remembered all the words.
Years of protesting. And working at something. Is the work worth doing, all by itself, without applause or celebration or even some dismissive comments. “Dabbling” comes to mind. Or being told that one has been doing something for a little while, when really, it’s been forever. And so easy to put aside, tuck away. One of the lines in the poems said, “a million Emily Dickinsons ignored”.
Packing up is always a little depressing.
Are we always looking for the shock, the best, the ineffable talent? Not everyone who is successful is talented. Not everyone who is talented is successful. Do we give up, poetry, protest, eating, drinking, survival, unless we have followers?
Easy to give up, in favor of the so-called rational – to focus on cleaning a house, or going to work, or chasing after “white lace” like the line from the Joni Mitchell song. And always, there will be someone, usually a man, but often a woman, who will come up with some pithy half comment, designed to make you think that for a moment they thought of you. The real you. Then you realize they never read the book, poem. Never listened to the song. Sometimes there is just silence. The vast lingering silence as a response to all emotions and suffering. Don’t bring that up, again. Whatever that might be.
Not much different from protesting. Even as the cords around us tighten, I wonder how much longer any protest will be permitted. People are on talk shows recounting their disastrous trips to this country, how they are dumping all the social media from their phones before they come here. Yet they discover that their words have already been clocked by some great machine. And questioning and imprisonment is the result, not surf’s up with the music of the Beach Boys. Closer to “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye. Life’s a cabaret, old chum – out there are the camps.
When they got you all to think AI had benefits, it was a distraction from the reality that what it is best at doing at the moment is harvesting data, like some Matrix-like pod. Meanwhile, the machines that make AI possible are poisoning wells and drinking water, sucking up energy that we don’t have to lose. Memphis, TN is an example. Look it up.
Protesting, as with art. Don’t lose focus and don’t get distracted. And if someone tells you you are dabbling, or how great it is that you’ve done something for a few weeks, years, days, hours, when it’s been forever, smile.
Another line from my found poems – “the line between us that artists can’t draw”.
What’s changed. Nothing. Everything.
When someone tells you you have too many books, or papers, remember the found poems and letters.
When someone tells you there is no point in protesting because nothing is changing, when someone says the only things worth doing are those that make money, when someone asks you to account for the productivity of all your waking hours, smile. Ignore them. They are on the side of the soulless.
All actions matter. It is inaction that is to be feared.
When someone says, we need a professional singer. No caterwauling. Wail louder. Write a song that is all sighing and screaming.
When someone wants to create, for you, for themselves – let them. All the parents, staring at their phones. Children don’t create on command, dance on command. Abuse – everywhere – in the smallest amounts. Did you miss the chance to encourage? How would you ever know?
One of my favorite writers, Jeanette Winterson, talked about making things grow. “Rewilding”. But not just of land, of the mind. To be less rigid. “That’s the danger. To become hard and unresponsive. A surface.”
The fascists want control and flattening. The witch trials all over again.
When someone wants to create for you, let them.
Growing in all small spaces is the biggest protest.
This blog is supported by viewers like you. RIP Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
