From an older blog, on the hard day when the reality of a spectacular arsehole having to occupy so much space was announced.
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Today I have very thin skin. I feel tired, and worn down, and unsure on my feet. Fighting words dry in my mouth before they become sound. And I am not sure I am truly seeing with my eyes.
I know it sounds like a tired refrain. Democracy is broken. Fuelled by globalised capitalism. That is made fat through popular culture. I know I have said it a million times myself. And that when we carelessly place our power into the distanced mechanical hand of structures that have outgrown its own novel imaginings, we’re fucked. But so much of our work rests on this illusion. Peer accountability between states to keep to their fucking promises. Empowered by the size of things that its number of people can churn out to be circulated in another imaginary sphere of bytes of currency. The experts simply churn ideas. Intangible points of view that stir up the greedy flames of hope. Or is it hopeful flames of greed. The same animal maybe. And working for the act of choosing to become more meaningful. Putting conditions. Feeding the same propaganda of representational decision-making so more and more will participate in this machine. Working to put some of “our” people in there. Digging deeper and deeper to make more solid this crazy idea that it would work somehow for the most invisible, the hyper visible.
It’s broken. Been for awhile, but we have invested so much we see the light in hairline cracks. And I can’t think of an alternative. Which makes me wish I was better at global history. Learn some lessons from what almost worked, and what fucked it up. What I have is the now. And an acute sense of awareness that everything could actually change in a frame. I mean, even the climate changed in half a lifetime. The entire ecosystem, the age of trees, of slow shifting planets – is visible in its change. So everything is in this constant surreal state of precarity. This chair, this dark night, this quiet, this proximity to a screen, to the network. This knowledge that it’s a different kind of war, a diffused and hysterically nodular war, and that that web is growing. Like the inevitable slow rise of flood water. And the first to be swallowed are the dissonant, the queer, the broken. And this space that we have again invested so much to hold the bonds of our solidarity, is becoming a discourse manipulator’s wet dream. That you can shift the tide of conviction, of fear, with this careful dropping of packaged ideas. Advertisement 3.0.
We cannot do our politics on social media alone. We have to break the illusion of forging connection that is mostly about a mirror to ourselves. Because relationships take attention, and a willingness of risking boredom, for trust to emerge from vulnerability. And the only real thing that is in our power right now, is forging this connection. To see, beyond the puppets, gods and structures. Beyond the story. Because familiar plot lines must always be suspected. And we need some new fucking narratives. Because this one is shit.
This one feeds the stupid idea of divine identity from lines on land drawn through the grudging morning-after of war. This one makes you solid by decimating the other. This one makes you trace the root of your discontent to meet the other’s. This one blindfolds you with the seduction of too many meaningless choices of things to put in your mouth (so you can’t speak). This one fucks with your head, and messes with your skin, and makes you walk around the world like you are the centre of everything so you don’t have to do anything. This one gives space for the most eloquent liar, the most beautiful face, the most distanced through meaningless adoration, to congregate and rule. This one is shit.
We need some new fucking narratives.
– 10th-Nov-2016 12:44 am
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