This isn’t an essay about music, but it does have a soundtrack. Two songs are playing in my head concurrently, Brave Combo’s “Do Something Different” and Big Black’s cover of Cheap Trick’s “He’s a Whore.” One commands, “Never ever ever do what's proper again / Understand everyone crystal-clear” while the other is an admission, “I'll do anything for money / (He's a whore) With the things you like to eat... .”
Brave Combo’s song points in what I think of as a more hopeful direction. The other song I came to know by way of Big Black speaks more to the more-or-less of what we’ve all been making (and what we’ve all been made) out of our collective past. Marked down in the microscopic line drawn by a virus starts for us an approach to a rift we can use to make better than we have been of what we have and of what lacking we might learn to enjoy.
As the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, those of us standing somewhere along the progressive spectrum of American political perspectives looked at the situation with existential dread for what this disease might do if unchecked and unaddressed while also holding out a degree of hope that it might prompt some thoughtful and useful collective pause. Nonetheless, we have the great inertia of “progress” and the systems of our global economy and political ideologies which means the great ship America runs up against the rocks and doesn’t want to stop until all that mass in motion gets countered with an equal and opposing force.
Part of what got my thinking started was a post by my friend and fellow Wichita State graduate Lael Ewy, who wrote,
“My suspicion is that we'll learn nothing from the current crisis, just like we learned nothing from the economic downturn of 2008; nothing from the War on Terror; and are busily unlearning the lessons of Vietnam, WW2, and the Great Depression.
“Those in power remain in power, and while somewhat inconvenienced, are largely not impacted. There is no widespread call for the kind of structural economic changes that will let us thrive after the next pandemic – not even a call for the basic changes to the healthcare system that will let us survive the next one.” (Facebook post from May 11, 2020)
Another part prompting this present writing was the thread of comments started after my San Antonio friend Ruthifer Jones shared the New York Times article “White House Blocks C.D.C Guidance Over Economic and Religious Concerns” with her initial question of why are we not rising up to take back control from an administration that is arguably corrupt and working counter to the interests of the citizens of the United States (Facebook post from May 10, 2020, 9:40 a.m.)?
The future arrives when we look elsewhere just as well as it arrives where we look, some hairline crack just after now, and now – where we’re situated in some mix of isolation, anxiousness, and nostalgia – appears reducible to two perspectives, that either we’re killing everyone or we’re killing every economy (which just goes to show we’re lazy and/or lacking imagination). Now is where the crack starts to widen, and we get to decide some things about our relationship to the break. I’m of the opinion that it’s time to break it wide open, look deep at what’s at the bottom of the trench, and see where the world stitches or melts back together again, but that’s not the authorized perspective.
The authorized perspective would say that most everything was fine, that the problems will be fixed if we all just get back to work and get on with living, buying, fucking, and dying. There’s a powerful portion of the world that would benefit from a return to the normal idea of what was great, and there’s another portion of the world that will buy that line along with all the durable goods and luxuries that keep the rest of the world doing all the things we do, but who and what gets done doesn’t get most folks beyond positions of slavery, indentured servitude, prostitution, or pimpdom.
While there are certain niceties and luxuries to my personal life, I’ve been living hand-to-mouth for the better part of 30 years, and I’m in good company with my club consumption membership level, hanging out in the squeezed margins lounge. More than likely, you’re right there with me, and more than likely you’re also thinking life was supposed to be something better than what you’re waking up to in the middle of the night or as you pour some coffee on your counter when you pour your first morning cup.
Personally, I’d like to see the following:
Everyone with at least enough to be living lives vs. the not-quite-enough that keeps people suffering through their daily quota of dying;
Enough to be understood as that which supports the enjoyment of life, which in turn spurs creativity, discovery, innovation, productivity, and social progress;
Worth to be defined relative to the communities our living supports vs the economies we feed; and
Success to be reached through our actions in service to the good of all and such that our actions harmonize our works with the systems that support sustainability, health, and freedom vs old models of accumulation, valuations, and reserves.
Where we’ve been says there’s only so much, that it can’t go around, it will spread too thin, and there isn’t any good surplus except surplus labor. Where we’ve been says everything must be just in time, that the supply chains must be efficient, that you’ll have it tomorrow. Where we’ve been tells us our lives are the material products of our consumption, that we are what we consume (and we’re greater if we consume more), and the new features we just announced will make everything amazing, easy, and good.
And now we’re in the place where we can say so many things, where we can spew so many thoughtless ideas, and we can be liked and loved and heard and called out, all of which leads to the manifest action of sitting on our sofas and toilets, tweeting things less meaningful than a mateless male bird’s racket of yearning. Now we say all these things – post, comment, fact check, and forget – in the cloudy space booked by others and proclaimed and exclaimed as proprietary and owned media. Maybe some conscious is raised up from our collective near-coma, but 99 percent of us are falling back into the national sleepwalk and the other percent is pocketing the toll money we didn’t think we were paying.
I’m not saying don’t open up (though maybe it’s that’s the best choice). I’m not saying leave the house, either (though that may be a good choice, too). I’m just saying I’d rather open some new doors and find a step or two to take all of us higher rather than walking into a big box where the lights are going out and the doors are being chained from the outside. It may be that opening up starts with some words (at least thought) like asking, “What happens if we open this door? What happens if we step into this crack?” It doesn’t go anyplace without actually doing it, without putting a hand on the door and making it move or getting down into whatever is below the hard and glossy surface to mix some vision into what was unseen or overstepped. Maybe we can disappear into some better kind of life, quit fucking around with what hasn’t been working for a mighty long time, and leave behind the tired ideas and the misguided ideologues who would rather lead everyone to a slow and numb slaughter.
Mark Hiebert is many things, most of which are done from fabulous San Antonio, Texas. You can find him digitally at hiebertphotography.com, hiebertstock.com, meadowoodisaband.com, markhiebert.com, and wherever you may decide to look.