Cause song lyrics are better than words: Sweet little lies... (tell me lies... tell me, tell me lies)
So one of the first things you should know about me (as though all of you don't, already... not like my following in Austria) is that I am a fucking liar. Period. I make no bones about it. I don't know how to make a bone. Part of my job as an artist is illuminating the truth; and part of that is revealing the glow that reflects off that that truth, making ugly shadows of shit and hopelessness on perfectly comfortable furniture. I like my self so much that I defer to my own law of reason. I dictate me. I terrorize me (come on, you knew I was going for it). I definitely aristocreate me. And sometimes, I even oligarch myself.
Nice.
Anyway, all that was said to say that I fucking enjoy my own version of the truth, which allows me to be very comfortable.. And in that version of the truth, when I say I am going to do something tomorrow, I actually can lie enough to believe that shit. And then when the next day comes, I have forgotten it was me we were talking about. And then I just go. Well, I just won't do that shit. And we'll see what happens.
What happens is the one person who might read your blog, Brian, makes you feel all guilty in a happy way, like your mom would if she was actually someone else's mom who was just really good at telling you exactly what to do.
So when I say I will do a certain thing at a certain time, I will never do it any earlier that in double that time, and will very likely do something else entirely.
So I had a day full of work, and I was flowing with it. Cog in wheel shimmery beauty. Some parts of me are leader, but the fun parts just like to be in motion, doing something I know I can do and just enjoying the grease of doing it. And I got to run errands, which is lovely and mindless and helps you show off around town. I was ugs mcgee today though, efficiency mode. A leather jacket and a pair of sunglasses with a good elastic around the hait. It works.
We had this rally today down in front of the Courthouse with MoveOnPAC to stop the "nuclear option" (just talking about all this stuff makes me feel like a douche thoguh, honestly). It was smaller than expected and totally underpublicized but a truly beautiful thing. Fucking crazy tweeked-out balding, lesion-sporting, mismatched, still smoking, bad-teeth, young and also pony-tail not really working liberals in front of some statue that, at least blocked by people, looked like a giant middle finger in front of the U.S. Courthouse.
I remember vaguely learning about the filibuster in my A.P. History class (you can tell I aced that test... Got a Mr. Sismondo 4, which on him would really be a 3... and a half? He lost half his ring finger in a chain link fence. He was bald too. I wonder if he was a liberal.) . It seemed like some ridonculous piece of windbagery written into law for politicians to diddle in their windbagery. But it totally makes sense. I mean, they vote on shit all the time. They don't have time to waste days and days arguing about something that everyone else has already shut the hell up about unless they really care. Sometimes they are douches and care about dumb shit. But if it is important enough for them to act a public ass for a while about, and enough people elected that public ass, then we gotta listen.
And that was your bean-bag chair PSA.
But anyway, it just seems so random to me, because we are living in distinctly random times. I don't remember the world being this vivid in a Terry Gilliam kind of way when I was younger. That's probably a function of being really young. Like the 80s seem fairly fuzzy to me. They were fuzzy to a lot of people. Although, it seems like for a good population of the country, they were very harshly lit indeed. The 90s though even seemed like... crisper to a point of understanding, but still somewhat protected from anything real.
And now, rather than feeling real, feels like a mostly severed dangling fingertip on the body of reality. It entirely lacks decorum, these days. They are beautiful like tears in a titty bar. Things have no respect for each other. Are not in respect to each other. They exist in intersecting dimensions. It's fukkin crazy dog.
But today was really graet in that, sometimes life is a little kind, kind of way. I mean, but only a little. She is not going to lose her credibility over your loud-mouth ass.
It got cloudy just in time for me to get down to this rally, bring my boss her business cards (while people were taking their turn at the milk crate, she was giving an interview with Regional News Network, glad those press calls I made to the Times panned out), and get pulled into signing people up on our mailing list. And people were standing about, clumped and talking, agreeing in spasms of irritated comradarie, sharing candy, taking pictures. And everyone is sharing bits of news and wondering where a "speaker" might be, or what was actually going to "happen" at this rally. And a bleached blonde, would be Ken doll gay activist type takes over the milk crate (thank god) and starts screaming the chants. Who are these people who start chants and marches and rallies. They are the people who start the waves. And know when to engage the "slow clap." I am always impressed by these people. Their irritating persistence, and their shamelessly beautiful embrace with power and simultaneous generosity. The phrases were definitely a bit too fuckin' long and involved to really get going... rhyming Santorum with decorum (notice how it became my word-of-the-day-like insertion above) and really spiraling away from anything with a groove. But still, energy wes there. And then the two milk crates became a sounding board for screamers. My boss, of course, unable to be heard (she's a little bosslady, she should be able to scream) but getting a couple of good chants in for her inspired leader nomination clip. My favorite was the passion that I could hear creeping up from people's collars. The confusion in intention, the seizures of sincerity. The awkward pauses, and trying to accurately decide which phrases to cheer or hiss at ("boo- I mean... wooo-ooo!") as people sputtered out the cleverest renditions of their inarticulable feelings. My personal favorite was the movie-version old man (who I later found out was Frank McCourt... and no posts about him, I haven't read any of his books and I don't care about anyone's opinions on them) with his I was born in Brooklyn, raised in Ireland sap story, that was so textbook and Jimmy-Stewart-genuine at the same time, who said something like, "John Ashcroft was so afraid of Justice that he covered up it's tit. But Janet Jackson showed it to us again." Now that's a fucking rally. Good times. And a little gummy canding from a boyish-looking aging liberal. In the 60s, there blatantly would have been acid in that candy. And would had had a great time, blowing off the rest of my evening... and then freaking out 3 hours into the trip with all my guilt, and then debating on going to my meeting while frying my face off. And then coming up with outrageous lies about why I was not there later (once I realized there was no way I could ever feign normality again in that state). So it's a good thing it's not the 60s.
It's 2005. And time feels so raw. Fat plops of rain started to drop at 3 minutes of 6, when the rally was scheduled to be over. We packed up posters and petitions rapidly, and people with legs and sinage began to scatter for the subways.
What I wanted to say about the chanting, is that awkwardness about it is so interesting. The time where we go from people standing together, to all of us trying to say something at once. All of us deciding to harmonize. The boundary you break with your keen sense of the stupid. Felling stupid for something, and having that be important because other people are stupid about it too. And more importantly, doing that for attention. For the two cameras and all of the windbag judges and clerks who aren't in that courthouse listening to you and shivering in shame or fear. Doing it for our own attention. So we know that other people are willing to look stupid over stuff. That we are all stupid over stuff we think is important. Stupid little stuff. And the harmony of stupid little stuff.
The official word fo the day today was detritus. A recent repeat I might add, and don't think I didn't notice you word-of-the-day fuckers. Stupid little things. The shit that crumbles off rocks... which are always crumbling.
And then I got a photo op while clearing away signs. I guess there were 4 black people at the rally (one bald liberal was asking me, where are all the people of color? I didn't accurately know. But I can take a message for them.) and I was the one with the most posters of my hand. So I got some internet photographer jacking off behind his camera so I would take a picture. (Don't photographers always sound like they are jerkin it, or trying to get you to give them head when they are taking pictures. "All right. Hold it there. Now raise that up. Higher. Higher. Great. Greaaaaat. That's good. One more. Let me see that. Good. Gooooooood. That's great. That's great. Ooooooh. Beautiful! Yes. Okay. Thanks." And then they are off to take pictures of someone else, while you're still trying to get their web address, or at least a phone number). I'll let you know if any of them turn up. Of course they all want to take pictures of me on my Ugs McGee day, with poofpoof humidity hair. Never on a day when I am wearing a cute hat. As again, I am painfully aware that I am being looked at while representing something. I didn't make that damn sign. I was literally clearing it away. I had a look at it. It's a good one for posterity. I am glad he got some "candids" for yearbook. So that later when I am a revolutionary, they religious right can talk about my days of working with the extremist leftist liberals" and my totally non-revolutionary but effective band-aid organization. It felt good to be looked at being good. Caught being good. Like those elementary school programs with stickers and swizzles... or what were they? Razzles. Razzles. I remember now. We were all little razzle-piggies. But yeah. It was weird. The photographs were so fake, and yet, the image represented will make a statement. And thus that photographer was just a writer creator like me. And I was just a word. And soon I will be part of a story. Many stories. All of them will be as true as the people telling them. All of them starting with my lie. Hee Hee.
evilgeniusaccidentally.
posted by DesTheRay @ 4:51 AM
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