So my editor wants me to write about the debates, but I think there is enough analysis out there to tell you how to think about it that you don’t need my additional input. Suffice it to say that Marianne Williamson offers a much unneeded dose of the supranatural into American politics that I could not help but love.
Today’s little essay, fart, whatever you want to call it, I want to pull apart the idea of writing this to begin with. I’ve gone through quite a little debate both internally and with my editor about whether or not giving myself to the world should be done in this essay format, or whether I should be making videos instead. I hesitate in committing myself to this format, as it seems that, by and large, people no longer read. The trend of the television seems to have gone full circle and eclipsed all former media moons of our orbit, only for itself to become eclipsed in these interconnected times.
Our attention constantly diverts, something external constantly pulls at the reigns of our focus that our will becomes diminished beyond recognition, beyond control. So what size fool am I to put my words in such a static, stagnant form as writing? No editing magic to keep you intrigued, no score to tell you how to feel, only the words and the effort of internal manifestation they conjure.
Like incantations of old, these words have the power to create entirely new realms and realities, they offer the magic to unlock unknown doorways in the palace of our mental landscape, for when we read, we hear the words of another in our own voice. We translate the speech as written to us through the filter of our mind and understanding, we create the tonality and flow and rhythm largely in our head. Now I hear some of us recoiling at this idea, saying that the author creates these things to take you on the journey, and that is partially true, but even the most exact and precise author with mastery of language’s technical skills, a poet in meter and verse, depends on the reader doing at least an iota of the work.
This is not the case with the camera and film. We hear the words in the voice of the speaker, we see the world through the lens of the director, we learn how to feel from the score, but we do not internalize it as with do with a book. The work has been done for us. The information generally stops at a more superficial level in our minds, it does not tap into the depths of our being as the with written word. Yet we live in deeply superficial times, we have created an infinite amount of distraction to hide us away from these depths. We always like to touch the bottom of the pool, not trusting our ability to swim.
And so the written word dies off. It is too slow for today’s hectic pace, too meandering a form to quickly intake. Reading requires effort, because as an active practice, as opposed to the passivity of watching a video or film, we must make the effort of work to take in the form. I cannot just let a book happen to me before my eyes. Instead I must happen to it. I must pick it up, scroll through it, finish it.
A film finishes despite my attention, it moves on regardless of my participation. The dance of reading requires two partners, and more and more often, more and more of us just want to stand along the wall of the nightclub, watching the dance happen, but not taking part. When we watch two people dance, we see them connect on a deeper level with one another beyond words, connect on a nearly spiritual level transcendent of judgement, space, and time. So too when we read, except now we can dance purely in our minds with anyone beyond those limits of geography and time. Today I waltz with Lewis Carrol, tomorrow it might be Lao Tzu. Last week I had coffee with Patti Smith, and then went to work on the shoulder of Albert Speer. The world and lives of all of these minds open themselves to me, and I give myself up to them with pleasure.
That’s why I’ve chosen to write. Sure, if I made a video on YouTube, I’d increase my following tenfold. Yet our relationship would be absent the intimacy I seek. You would see my face and make some critiques based on my gestures and appearance. You will internalize things about me without knowing it, and my content would not so stick to your psyche as I seek. My message would become polluted by myself. This way we avoid that. Some of you know me, but to most this is just a voice in the web. Good. Let me be nothing more than an amalgamation of essays, a series of posts that together create a shadow. When you read me, you cannot know my timbre and pitch, so you hear only yourself, with my words in your head.
What a nefarious power. Maybe it is a good thing we give it up, maybe it is good we have abandoned the collar to which we have been leashed for so long.
Yet do we seem more free, more liberated?
These are impossible questions to answer, fun games to carry us through life.
Fit a heap o’ shite I spik.
Late-night post-script: It’s funny that this is the p.s., because the title–which is the very first thing I wrote–tells the punchline and ties the entire thing together. I suppose I must thank my subconscious.
Regarding the power of the pen, the sword, and the camera. Following my theme of the liberal international order following the second world war, the adage came to be proven true beyond measure or doubt: the pen is mightier than the sword. In comparison to the rest of history going back to time immemorial, there has never reigned a time of peace such as this, probably before we were even apes in the trees. By the firm establishment of centuries of work beginning in the Enlightenment with creation of republics such as in the Netherlands and America and ending with the creation of the United Nations where nearly the entire world –an assembly of delegates unparalleled in time– send their representatives to maintain peace in the world.
We all know they only work so-so, but the principle alone is an amazing thing, and principles guide us into the futures they promote. The United States was founded on the promise of freedom and liberty and then operated as a slave republic for the first century. Yet look at us now. Last night a black woman serving as a senator took a former VP to task over his support of racist policies on television for all the world to see. The promise becomes fulfilled.
Yet therein lies the problem, because we all know it doesn’t. Morals are complicated, time-bound things that require nuance and understanding in handling. Since the advent of the television, this required patience has slipped from us. It of course radically changed politics to the point of lunacy of utter fraud, all beginning with the famous 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate. One need only to have watched any modern presidential debate to see the mockery that passes as political discourse.
The internet has only speed us up exponentially. With Vine, Snapchat, Instastories, Tik-Tok, our attention slips away from us entirely. Our patience for artistic language and comfort with its use becoming an obsolete art, in the same way that a piano once lived in every home and most members had a sense how to play. Then came the radio, so creation of music became changed from an effort to a switch. Instantly, without a second of work done on the listeners part, a world of music poured in their ears far beyond any ability of theirs to create, without trying they became swept away. Learning the playing of a musical instrument became an artistic choice, rather than the required skill to scratch that deep human need for story and universal connection.
So the camera beats the pen, and we are all the dumber for it. The issue of race in post-Civil Rights movement America is complicated, and currently extremely sensitive, exacerbated by cynical power machinations of forces wishing to sow chaos and dissent (looking at you Mitch). Harris used the deepest shame of America, only recently being brought to light for discussion, in a calculated takedown that would earn her the most screen grabbing moment of the night. The sight of her staring Biden down on the stage, taking him to task, was the culmination of 50 years of the utter acceptance of the camera as the medium of America. Now violence rises, people feel fear unnecessarily and do not trust what they see around them due to what they see from the screens.
Thanks to us all now being raised comfortably passive, the camera has beaten the pen, and now the sword unsheaths to beat the camera.
Like a game of paper, scissors, rock, going round and round, video culture will lead to war and then war will lead understanding and patience, which I believe symbolized in the pen. The word, writing. It forces us to sit down, to think something through, and to come and truly inhabit the head of another as if it were our own. Herein lies empathy, and in empathy we will find our only salvation.
I wish I could stop here, but let’s be real.
We will grow bored and three generations will pass, as they have since WWII, and we shall all go to war once again. They’ve been testing us throughout the age of tv on how to sell a war. They goofed with Vietnam, still haven’t figured how to sell it quite yet. We’re getting close though, there’s a growing deeper itch, now what’s that about something going on in Iran?
Final comment (sorry for the crazy long PS). These images of war are what remind us all of the real upfront cost. Thanks to the internet, I’ve sat around a table as bombs have fallen in the streets of Iraq, I have shadowed a Syrian sniper playing tag with ISIS opposition in Aleppo. As a child seeing 9/11 and only what has come since, there’s a numbness to the suffering we watch. We are realists to our core, stripped of humanist illusions thanks to our bearing human witness to any limits online. We see the best and the worst, we grow numb. That’s why the next war will come. Time wipes out memory, more and more of the population will grow numb, and we turn off to it all before long. I hope I’m wrong, but I am a genius and rarely so, it’s a pity, I know.
No wonder there’s a growing call for spiritualism in our life, that connection to all things in/and/of this universe around us, and to realize that we are just a part of the whole, a speck in a mote in the eye of poor cat in a twister, spinning around and around our black hole. We long to remember our connection to that great web of the whole, beyond the lens of the merely human and lame, to the transcendent and galactic and godly, that just so happens to operate on the same laws as guide the operations within us. Maybe that’s why Marianne made her way to the stage, and nobody could help but watch in freak rapt attention.
See, I got around to talking about the debate.
Editor’s corner: Where do I even begin. I will keep this short because, well look above and you can see why, but I want to address the first section and then the PS separately. I think that the writing speaks for itself, the imagery, the texture, the richness, written word has such captivating powers but alas I am speaking to people who are reading so to some degree you must agree. On to the PS: removing the cynics glasses that our writer sees the world through, I can’t help but see the connection between the pen, sword and funnily the camera. To ends things on a lighter but still Marianne Williamson way I leave you with these words from her:
“It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”