The Sausage of Discord
My new position does not allow for my free and open expression of ideas. My previous job had a much greater allowance, since it was much farther away from my social network. My social network is centered in Bemidji, Minnesota, but branches out to every corner of the globe. At any given moment I am connected to Colombia, and Colorado, and California and a thousand other places. My friend list is 1,500 people and unlike most people, I actually know all of those people. More often than not we have interacted in the real world, to some degree. But now are so very far apart. In Thailand and Japan and Scotland and just all over the place. When I pull the points of this network taught, towards me, I hug the very planet. In all the wonder and thanks I can muster.
My phone is broken in at least a dozen different ways. I don’t want to bother my aunt about it and it has gotten bad out there. Even the “protective” case is disintegrating. Feeling the device is foreign and broken, like running your tongue over a missing tooth, unable to escape the novelty. The memory of what is missing. I only have two functional pair of pants that I’m rotating around among the general laundry. My office looks like a grenade went off in here and/or that the scene of the blast was then subjected to sustained hurricane force winds for a period of days. And then some lunatic came in to set up their miniatures all over the place.
So I can’t really feel free to express myself and honestly haven’t for some time. So instead of constructive ways of addressing the problem I’ve gone to these erratic and exaggerated extremes. Forming a cult. Broadcasting secret plays. Publishing unread manifestos. But none of these outlets have gained me anything. Financially, emotionally, or professionally. They are throwing the baggage out of the cargo door in flight, just trying to get a few more feet towards that unknown runway, gaining a little bit of lift from every pallet of unread programs pitched overboard. When one brings their art to the commons they should be prepared to receive the criticism and scrutiny of the meanest generation. But more importantly they should be prepared to not be seen at all. The falling of unobserved trees in a thereby silent woods.
So what is one supposed to do, with these issues of expression? Was the function of learning and developing my voice as an artist merely to end being led into the cattle pen of professionalism? What worth is the cautious voice of the timid author, too afraid of cuts, layoffs, and any excuse to trim payroll to speak up? But perhaps none of us are able to speak up anymore, and are all just a voice in the chorus of white noise into which we are subsumed. How to uplift voices above the drone of the 24 hour scroll cycle? How to realize the ultimate goals of postmodernist cosmopolitanism before we are all ground into the sausage of discord?
How I wish it was possible to transcend these absurd obstacles. Why is it so hard to overcome broken theory? How is it that some ideas take root so deeply and so quickly, while others struggle in the wind perpetual, spinning up and away from any chance of success? Why is the sum total of humanities history, knowledge, and belief unable to get me an affordable flying car, by now? Why have we not cured all cancers, at least? With all of these trillions of dollars floating around out there? Have none of you read about the microplastics?
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