Lighthouses. And pirates.
A friend landed in Munich Wednesday morning, heard about the U.S election result from a dude in line for border control. The dude was thankful, because a result the other way would have "been the end of society as we know it". (For readers who, like me, think we need an end to society as we know it, this is not that argument. Another day, my friends).
I want to know - truly - how that man came to the opinion that Kamala Harris as president represented the end of society as he knew it. And what he values about the society he currently lives in. It is, after all, harder for the brain to deal with incomplete information than incorrect. The refrain I keep hearing is 'explain it to me, because I don't understand'.
In 2016, I worked at Housing Works, and we put on a watch party in the bookshop for the election result. The mood soured pretty quickly. The following morning, the grief and distress was palpable, a strange pall over the city that reminded me of the dampening effect of three feet of snow. The city rallied, and events popped up for healing, reflection, rejuvenation. I went uptown with Danny, for a conversational event that featured Maria Popova. At the end, we were all asked to stand and sing together, but after an evening of lamentation, I did not feel like singing. In a community dinner - that I later called a mourning dinner - I met Allison, who is the closest thing to a fairy godmother that I've ever known. From these shared moments, and bit by bit, we eased our hearts. We found solace.
Maria Popova stands up again to offer us a shining light, reminding us how essential art is in such times. Her writing features the image of a lighthouse, a beacon for all. Popova talks about the ways that artists are society's outsiders - and the great works that have been created in the phase shifts of global turmoil. Though this isn't the exact thing I'd look to measure on coming out of this storm, it's worth reading.
It brings to mind another great solace: Our Flag Means Death (thank you, Therese, for a hearty recommendation). In it, in a moment of despair and almost certain doom, two captains have turned to the brandy. One laments his fast approaching death, saying that he promised to be a lighthouse for his family. The other says, the thing about lighthouses is that they're to be avoided and not many people think of them that way. They turn to each other and say, in unison, 'we need to be a lighthouse', and save their, and their crew's, arses.
Our Flag Means Death has become an important touchstone for me. It exposes the emptiness of extreme power and riches. It ridicules the notion of doing things like everyone else does them. It highlights the contortions we can go through if our love is unrequited, or co-dependent, or anxiously-attached. It suggests that the norm is 'everyone in various degrees of fucking one another over'. But more than that, it celebrates friendship. It forgives inexperience and ineptitude. It demonstrates the transformative effects of love freely given, and the elixir of compersion. It upholds gender as a fluid spectrum. Difference is supported with a 'people positive management style'. And, pirates. It is an exquisite philosophy, in the silliest of wrappings.
On a call today - whose weekly agenda is to collectively interrogate ideas - seven of us speculated about what might happen now. What possible futures lie ahead? The lone non-leftist (affiliation undeclared) person, who was knowledgeable and erudite, made the point that the fear expressed on the call about the liberty of our bodies and the choices we can now make is the fear that seventy-one million people have been feeling since 2008 (with that short let up 2016-2020). I think there's a risk to assuming that all of those people had the same motivation, and to cast them as a singular group, because it further entrenches an idea of a 'them'. And, I can't help but wonder about the severity and degree of the infringements on liberty - reproductive rights next to freedom of speech, say... Still, I think we probably all know what it is like to act from a dread place. No good can come of it, whatever your political affiliations.
I leave you with just this. How can you move your own decision making and action from a fear-rooted place, to one that assumes abundance and is founded on hope? When you figure it out, tell me.