Art in a time of crisis
Gruesome Details
I started writing a manifesto, much to the chagrin of my husband. (This is not the manifesto.) But, despite his fears for my overall mental health, I think this is a good thing. I am a woman in motion.
Before Trump was elected again, I said to my therapist I could not conceptualize of my life beyond November 5 without knowledge of who would be at the top of the pyramid of power. If Harris won, I would continue to focus on standup, create the short I wrote, and finally write the play about Elizabeth Holmes that has been brewing in the back of my mind for a year. If Trump won, I told her, my life would be over. I would need to reconfigure everything. I would need to become an activist, not an artist.
Full offense to me of a week ago: I was wrong and stupid.
Surviving the oncoming years will mean transmuting ourselves. My art can be my activism. I can bring joy to resistance. And, indeed, I must. Because I cannot think of my life as “over” but enriched by a clear and ever-important purpose. I have always separated my art (funny, stupid, with quantity leading to some sort of quality) from my ever-evolving political thought (serious, important to get right). But we live in stupid times, and my art and activism must finally converge into a single, clarified point.
Improv Everywhere was psychological warfare carried out on the populace to promote Snapple, a mid-tier beverage. But we can use the same tactics to take down the power that seeks to oppress us. It is hard not to look stupid if you are arresting a mime. It is hard not to look stupid when arresting an enormous group of people who have started telling jokes about their mother through bullhorns. Arresting us comedians makes you the joke.
As I’ve said frequently since 2015, we cannot choose the time in which we are born. We can only choose our response to it. I will choose, in the coming years, to converge all of my selves. I need to bring my entirety to the work of standing arm-in-arm with the global working class to topple the systems that have trapped us.
This work, by its very nature, will need to be done offline. We need to recommit ourselves to creating reality together. We need to enter the streets and remember, collectively, that we are real and strong.
I feel very ardently that disruptive action in the future must be funny and also deeply annoying. Break out the ukeleles and the steampunk bicycles, it is time to bother some people in power.