Day 42 of 1456

Day 42 of 1456 in trump's America.

For my own personal reasons, 2016 was the year I learned how to get up after being knocked down. I'm not going to get into the details, because I refuse to let this turn into a personal blog. This isn't about me. But I feel like there's something in that. Thinking about everything that'll be happening in the next four years (at least), and thinking about what we'll need to learn how to do to survive that time.

How many of us have ever stood up against something single-handedly? With no one else in a room of people having your back? With no one in your vicinity who's there to help? To agree with you.

There was a psychology experiment. The Asch conformity experiment. Three black lines on a white sheet of paper. All the lines are the same length, except one. All the votes are actors who are in on the test, except one person, who's the actual Joe Schmoe. When the planted participants said "All the lines are the same length" – a socially agreed upon insanity – the Normal Guy agreed with them to a shocking degree. Between 40%-60% of the time. And then when one actor was told to agree with the Normal Guy – and reality – the test subject's conformity dropped to somewhere around 5%. This is the truth of the situation: how abysmally bad most Normal Humans are at standing up for what is Right, even when violence isn't an aspect of the disagreement. This is just black lines on a white paper. Think how bad those numbers are going to be if someone gets angry when you disagree with their insanity.

We think we know loneliness. We haven't begun to experience loneliness. Think when that shifts to suspicion.

Think about every time you've felt weird. Think about every time you stuck out somewhere. Think about what that will mean now that the people who are afraid of weird are calling all the shots.

Offend the boring. Your actual life is a rebellion now. May as well lean into it.

We think we've had to fight for our spaces before. That was just bald capitalism. They didn't think our weird was making money, so they didn't support it. Think what's going to happen now that they think they might get in actual trouble for encouraging our weirdness. What will they do: stand on creative principals? Now that things are worse? Do you know many producers or stage owners who would do that?

What in the last 18 months would make you believe for a second that The Right Thing has any kind of inherent thermodynamic energy to itself that just Makes It Happen? Everyone we've put in charge to help us has let us down.

What do we do? Stamped on every day. From every direction. But we know the alternative. I always have, for my money. All the accoutrements that a Normal Life might bring me wouldn't be worth having to go golfing on Sundays. I hate everything that smells even remotely of suburbia. I've been there half my whole life.

What would we do if we gave up this weirdness? What would we look like? What would the species look like?

So what do we do when the only person who wants to see what you have to offer is yourself? There is no ovation coming. No accolades. Nobody likes you. The only option you would have would be to just do the thing anyway. Whether or not people are listening would be the extra blessing. Which I think they always were, anyway.

Sometimes doing the right thing can actually be pretty fun. But I feel like we're entering a very real time now where it's not going to be, for a while. Or if it is, it'll be harder than before. For my money it's always been hard for me to Ignore Things Going On Around Me & Just Say Fuck It. I know I'm bad at it. But I know I was worse at it before I started creating art.

So Where We Stand:

Facts are on the defensive. On their heels and playing catch-up.

Emotions are running high. Bad ones. Some of them have slogans and secret poses.

Self-expression might be all we have left for the moment. They are emotional facts. Factual emotions. They are How You Feel. If you do them right, you can't lie about them. They're revealing something about you. And something that someone else can't do. Someone else might do theirs better, of course. But not yours. Yours are yours. Even if you don't have one more person in the room to back you up on them, they're still happening. You'd be the only one trading them away. For nothing, really. To get along with people who wouldn't like you anyway. And won't once they find out. A whole nation of them. The bigger voting, running, politicking parts that count, anyway. When you get down to it, the only part you get to control is When Will They Find Out. And they will knock you down. I guarantee it. And then no one will ask you to get back up again. That's not a decision another person can ever make for you. In fact, if they love you, they're even more likely to tell you to stay down. And you'd have every reason to. No one would fault you. No one could. You're the only one who'd ever have to look yourself in the mirror. And even if you did everything you could, and this ended in four years, it would come back. Somewhere else. Years later, maybe. Maybe again in our lifetime.

But you have to remember what it felt like to See Someone Make Something. And lock yourself into that feeling when you make something. And know that you're doing one of the only things our species is really good at: Following through with really bad ideas because we fucking feel like it. Somehow we're the only life form who doesn't have self-preservation in the Top Priority Spot 24/7. Fuck if I know what our #1 spot is. I've suspected it's whatever you want it to be. But there are these ugly guts that keep making us not shut up when we really probably should. And every person before us who Couldn't Shut The Fuck Up Sometimes was the latest in a long string of those people, the shock of recognition the whole scale of human history. Join their illustrious ranks. Lose your friends. Anger your enemies. Frighten your family members. Stand against an entire country now. Every day. Watch how many times they knock you down. Watch how many times you get back up. By yourself. It will number in the hundreds. The thousands, maybe. 1,414, by my count. From today, at least.

Offend the boring. Starve. Wake up tomorrow and do it again. One man art machine.