There Comes a Time to Burst One's Own Bubble

I have been on an individualist bent for a hot minute, telling folks to think for themselves and question authority. But, I am a sociologist, so I gotta burst my own bubble. Some of you who know me well will probably have seen this coming. On the continuum of leftism, I have vacillated somewhere between advocating the end to centralized bureaucracies to still believing in the power of universal provision of basic human rights and goods (e.g., health care, food, shelter) by some collective group of folx who dole out these goods. It's in that generative space between anarchy and socialism that I have found a useful dreamscape to imagine a world beyond the grinding systems we endure today. The voice you have been hearing of late is very much the me who is disenchanted with some of my dreams of federal programs that make FDR’s Second Bill of Rights or his Economic Bill of Rights a reality and root out and eradicate racism at its roots. In a space where your dreams feel impossible, it can feel like a balm to retreat to yourself and recoup. Yet, I want to reclaim my own collectivist dreaming. I don’t want to just reside in this island of critique I have created. I want to weave myself back into the mundane work of dissent.

This course correction was prompted by re-watching Adam Curtis’ cult classic “HyperNormalisation.” In the film, Curtis explains how we came to our current world order by way of a set of interlocking economic, political, and cultural shifts. Of importance to Curtis was the retreat of leftist collectivist projects, specifically artists disengaging from leftist movements and embracing a dethatched, individualist radical posture:

“But no opposed the bankers. The radicals and leftwingers, who ten years before had dreamt of changing America through revolution, did nothing. They had retreated and were living in the abandoned buildings in Manhattan. The singer Patti Smith later described the mood of disillusion that had come over them: ‘I could not identify with the political movements any longer,’ she said, ‘All the manic activity in the streets. In trying to join them, I felt overwhelmed by yet another form of bureaucracy.’ What she was describing was the rise of a new powerful individualism that could not fit with the idea of collective political action. Instead, Patti Smith and many others became a new kind of individual radical who watched the decaying city with a cool detachment. They didn’t try and change it. They just experienced it….Instead, radicals across America turned to art and music as a means of expressing their criticism of society. They believed that instead of trying to change the world outside the new radicalism should try to change what was inside people’s heads and the way to do this was through self expression, not collective action.”

I think what Curtis points to in this segment is vitally important for me to hear. He is highlighting how a whole generation of artists, and here I think he is still speaking to millenials and gen z as well, just abandoned explicit social change work with their art and instead crafted their art to put on a performative display of what they were for and against. For Curtis, the artist’s retreat to their quest to change heart and minds with their art and music ceded the ground to the banks, the evangelical right, and multinational corporations to change the world in very explicit ways to turn the individualism up in our culture to 11.

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Godspeed! You Black Emperor’s (“GYBE”) first couple albums are a great example of this. They were expressly trying to counter the narrative around the millennium (2000) that we had seen an end to history, that “capitalist democracy” had given us a golden age that would never end. Consequently, they made dark, brooding instrumental music that challenged the rosey picture that we were seeing on our television newscasts. Songs like “Rockets fall on Rockets Falls” on GYBE’s 2002 album Yanqui UXO take you through the more realistic post-apocalyptic

soundscape folx around the world were living in where rockets fall, and fall, and fall and destroy families, communities, and ecosystems for our “freedom”. Hearing this record as a 16 year old, I heard an accurate representation of what it felt like to be alive in Bush’s America; an absolute horror show of religious right violence hidden under a veneer of American democracy. Yet, despite feeling seen in that record, what came of it? There was a certain expression of what we were against expressed very clearly, but where was the call to action? No, we ultimately retreated by just being content to voice our discontent in our art and accepted the horizon of possibility given to us by our political, cultural, and economic overlords. We gave up the dream and were content to feel sad about our tax dollars being used to obliterated people we had more in common with than we will ever know.

I don’t want to retreat anymore. I think what Paul Childs, Michael Brown, George Floyd, and the genocide in Gaza has taught me in the intervening years is that I cannot in good conscience fail to act. I don’t need to make the mistake the 70s era radicals did. I actually don’t ever have to “grow up” and sell out. Instead, I can do the hard, extremely unsexy work of being a nobody within larger movements seeking to create a different reality that isn’t based on brutalizing black, indigenous, and latinx bodies or murdering women and children in Gaza with bombs. I can make calls, send emails and faxes, offer mutual aid, use my platform to talk about issues and what can be done. I don’t want to be, and no white man should be, the messiah or savior of any of these movements. I can dedicate myself to the life's work of letting myself be changed by each horror show tragedy. I can let the wounding I feel with each of those tragedies push me a little more beyond my comfort zone than I was with my previous advocacy. I can let each person who dies to a horrible form of colonial, racialized violence be a call to let a little bit more of my fear and hesitancy in acting to counter our American Horror Show (TM pending) die away. I can plunge myself into that maelstrom reparative action, even while not believing it will make a difference, knowing it was better to stand for something than sit at home and pout. I can let my dissent be an accumulative exercise in gaining skills and tools that will only mature and age the more years I devote myself to this most sacred of death work.

Interestingly, GYBE ended up not wanting to retreat either in their work. After a 10 year hiatus, GYBE returned with their 2012 album “Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend,” which they noted was an explicit turn toward telling people to still have hope in a different future. You can feel that energy in the first track “Mladic,” which builds and

and builds over its nearly 20 minute play time to a characteristic GYBE crescendo that, at its peak, feels to have captured the energy of churning throng of a Parisian protest that has shut down Paris. What a way to reintroduce themselves to their listeners! It was as if they wanted to smack each and everyone of their sad boi listeners, like me, in the face and say, “Get in, Loser. We’re gonna fight for our lives.”

So, dear reader, what does all this mean for you? Well, really nothing, since I don’t tell you what to do. I will encourage you though. I will encourage you to counter your feelings of feeling small and powerless by starting somewhere with a small action to take a stand. It is totally normal to feel disenchantment with the failures of your political projects and the seeming endless array of issues to feel that we are helpless to prevent. Yet, action begets more action. Let those small actions accumulate over time and change you. I never want those feelings of disenchantment to drive us into an isolated eternal echo chamber where we aren’t doing the mutual aid, bureaucratic work, and political campaigning necessary to build another world. Yes, think for yourself and question authority, but also when a sweet ole grandma who has been practicing direct action and mutual aid her entire life tells you how you can help, just do what she asks with a smile and a nod. Don’t let the creation of your own island of critique be a worthy end in itself. No, lend a hand in the work to stop the horrors and build another world.

As always, dear reader, I am SOOOO grateful you are here. You literally believe enough in my prose to pay for a subscription to be here. You showing up for me this last month made me feel like I really matter. Thank you for seeing me. Thank you for hearing me. I hope these words inspire you to do the slow, accumulative work to never back down. I will never forget any of you. Thank, thank, thank you.

“Never give up,

Never give in,

Fight till the end”

Panopticon “Know Hope”

Be on the look out next Wednesday for the next studio notes, which will include video and photos of my recently completed weaving! It’s a real beauty which includes some Yarrow and cochineal natural dyed yarn. All the deets on that will be available on Wednesday!