“This mess we’re in”
I was going to write something about the first few days of the new Republican administration, but the general pointless stupidity is already even worse than could have been reasonably forecast.
They are ham-handedly going after absolutely anything progress-related, from shutting down existing DOJ civil rights cases to slashing all NIH funding. Given how many wingnuts a place like the Pentagon is already getting stocked with, the mediocre quality of the administration’s nominees in general, and the initial Chicago raid that never happened (thank goodness!) a “dictatorship” was not launched on day one.
Yes, terrible and unconscionable things are already happening, and yes they want to launch a dynasty, but if their rambling figurehead even makes it to the midterms, their rickety bureaucracy might not. Chris Rufo will surely end up sooner rather than later as a temporary head of OMB, or the Ambassador to Monaco.
Don’t get me wrong, with ICE raids unfortunately now commenced, things look very bleak for the vulnerable in this Country. I’m certainly not burying my head in the sand, but whatever time we all have, or do not have, left cannot be spent in ambient misery because a number of ghouls who have never known actual love were narrowly elected to “govern” us from within the shaky auspices of a highly unstable and incoherent coalition.
The Democratic Party messaging pre-election was that electing these people would be an existential crisis. Now the official tone seems to be “how can we politely cooperate” with the crisis?
If we do nothing else, let’s call them out on this. If Chuck Schumer thinks he’s in a country club, and doesn’t want to get too hot under the collar with the other members, it’s time to disabuse him of this notion publicly. May a primary challenger arise!
2.
But we’re leaving all that utter mishegoss aside for the remainder of this essay, and speaking about that which brings joy. Joy, like individual expression and refusal, is kryptonite to this particularly egregious and stupid iteration of American Fascism we are trapped within for the moment.
We were watching the 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this week, and the quite talented Jelly Roll, in all his face-tatted glory, was absolutely falling out during every single production number, and not since Carole King completely flipped her wig when Aretha came out to perform “A Natural Woman” on the Kennedy Center Awards, has this level of enthusiastic joy been displayed at an awards show.
Cher, Kool and the Gang, Dionne Warwick, it didn’t matter which performance, he was there for it. No one there was more openly present or having more fun. His reactions enhanced the show the way laugh tracks were once supposed to.
We should all find ways to be this present to joy from time to time.
We can and should seek out these experiences of joy as much as possible in the course of a lifetime, as much as we look for ways to be of service or more fully aware of what’s going on in the world at large. The quite rightly oft-quoted Mary Oliver Poem “Wild Geese,” speaks to this aptly. The view from the cross doesn’t really mitigate the obvious pain of attachment to it, and others need the wood.
3.
This is the time of year I often turn to 70’s Funkadelic—perhaps because in the cold, the warm sound and richly multilayered aesthetic of “Maggot Mouth” or “Cosmic Slop” makes my blood pump a little faster, and the absurdist bent of the lyrics is irresistible.
I also highly recommend the B52’s when the weather is punishing and the stupid people have the keys to the bus. Whether you put on their self-titled first album, the concept album “Mesopotamia,” or their last studio release, the unfortunately less-noticed “Funplex,” you get very pithy lyrics, unique arrangements and truly skilled and also cockeyed harmonies from Kate and Cindy. The below song is from a completely different album—they’ve rarely disappointed.
Plus, how topical! I guess the Republican president has been yelling at Denmark on the phone recently about how he wants to be given Greenland. Perhaps one single lesson can be learned from him, which is not to get too hung up on the dictates of reality.
If you’ve never heard the comic blues masterpiece “Little Red Negligee,” by Katie Webster, now is the time to check it out. It’s on Spotify and YouTube.
4.
The best comedy outlines, elucidates and gets at how absurd it is to be a person. The recent “One Hundred Beavers” excels at this. It’s as if Roseanne Roseannadanna’s most notable quip was made into a full length feature, because reel to reel, for the hapless protagonist, “It’s always something.”
At some point I will devote an entire essay to Naomi Ekperigin’s Netflix special from a few years back, but whether you spend some time watching her work, or the always brilliant work of Wanda Sykes, Leanne Morgan or John Mulaney, their level of comedy never fails to make you wonder how incredible timing, delivery and the capacity to notice the world can sometimes so felicitously commingle within one person. Bo Burnham’s “Inside” also both fully evokes and also completely transcends its subject matter, and is still darkly funny.
There’s a reason the foolish always try to ban books—reading is inherently liberatory. I’m starting to see people with books in their hands again while out and about, and it is glorious. Books don’t track your reading activity and almost any book you might want to read can be inter-library loaned. Volunteers in the town I grew up in will deliver bags of them to anyone who lives there and can’t easily access the library.
And there are also, of course, Independent Bookstores. During the ongoing hideous wild fires in Los Angeles, Octavia’s Bookshop (named after the essential Octavia Butler) in Altadena became a hub of relief supplies for local residents. A natural pivot for a place that was already a community resource.
My late Mother worked in a bookstore for many years, and when she passed a number of my cousin’s friends in town were surprised, and I think perhaps a little jealous, to learn that the gentle, quietly incisive book guide they’d relied on for years was her actual Aunt. Helping people find themselves in narrative is powerful.
Wherever we can find joy, or even just a transitory moment of peace or simple contentment is a place where we can rebuild our strength physically, mentally and spiritually, and as Anand Giridharadas recently noted, that empty suit currently besmirching the Presidency left his golden toilet behind, to come down that damn escalator, an entire decade ago in 2015. He has noisily demanded our fealty and attention since, and he deserves neither.
We are called to pay attention to what’s going on with this nihilistic circus only to the extent that it tells us where our concrete actions of refusal are currently needed, or whose concrete actions of refusal we can support from afar, and beyond that, we still need to live our lives in such a way that keeps our hope alive that we can survive this, and if not, that we did not spend more than a decade of our already short lives wallowing in fruitless despair. We cannot just doom scroll and softly moan like we don’t still have intelligence, spine and whatever limbs we might possess to counter this onslaught of reactionary slop.
We have to live our lives with enough joy and purpose that in their fullness they are worth fighting for. Regardless of the times, to quote Lieber and Stoller’s “Is That All There Is,” “Let’s keep dancing…”