3/52: Transcendental Weirdification

...something about frosted mini wheats being the most disappointing milk pouring experience of all breakfast cereals...

Dear Internauts,

Yes, I know, it's almost midnight. I almost didn't post and I'm only on week three. Now, I could sit here and go on about all my reasons/excuses, like how my mom came up to visit this weekend or I've been both exhausted and in a weird head space due to my meds still being out of wack or how the Pats are goin to the Super Bowl. I could do that...

In fact, I just did.

Three weeks into this new adventure and I'm still just about as lost. Gotta get these meds worked out, 'cause I can already feel the weirdo side-effects kickin' in from withdrawal. Pain and sleeplessness are one thing, but an imbalance in psychoactive pharmaceuticals can get weird. I mean, dream after dream after dream of waking up while not being able to actually wake up kinda weird. Get so tired from this cycle that the logical part of my brain fails to recognize the increasingly nonsensical nature of each new dream scheme kinda weird. Super grateful for a dream about defending mutant rights alongside the X-Men because at least that has a kind of cohesive internal logic to it kinda weird. Almost enjoy watching the AFC championship game despite never having much interest in professional sports or the ability to follow along with even the simplest of athletic proceedings kinda weird.

Switching topics now before the weird transcends the kinda.

In writing fiction, I think a lot about the roles that characters play as both representations of relatable humanity and symbolic packages of poetic truth. Recently, I've been considering the role of the antagonist, more specifically that of the VILLAIN. While many of my favorite non-heroes tend to have aspects about them which serve as grips for the intrepid story-climber, to humanize or anesthetize or synchronize, there is also something so fascinating about evil at its most vulgar, most absurd, most diabolical.

How do you create a character who is simultaneously complex and connecting while they also slaughter and mangle and assault and abuse and horrify in the creepiest, most nauseating ways? Can you portray evil in a way which is obviously evil as done by a character who isn't in their description and execution, far from the obvious? Can you make us fall in love with a villain without romanticizing the acts of their villainy?

Sure, there are layers and matters of meaning to be found in the way in which a work winds its wires through the wills of the willing audience to see and be that which they unwillingly may find entertaining. We enjoy the dark and the light in fantasy, partly, I think, because of the license of the unreal to help as process a more disciplined and constructed sense of self in relation to the other during our more real life. Surreality is intertextual.

But what of the license fiction can give to a perception of facts, such as in the case of encouraging stereotypical classifications of those with whom our most common interaction is fictitious?

While I've been privileged to grow up within a culture where those who fit many of the same basic categories of shallow classification as myself are presented with an extraordinarily broad palette of temperaments, moralities, occupations, abilities, and social requirements, only all too recently have I come to see how unusual this is. Growing up, I wanted to be a jedi (like luke, obi-wan, anakin etc...), a superhero (like batman, spider-man, angel, green arrow, cyclops, captain america, etc...), an adventure or warrior or scientist or athlete or artist or musician or actor etc...etc...etc...

I constantly saw a face like mine on the TV, at the movies, and on comics and novel covers. The leaders I was taught to look up to or respect were more often than not older versions of the kid I saw in the mirror every day. I've had so much experience with media painting white cis males like me as protagonist (or even just the most common character in a statistically misleading crowd scene), that I never had much reason to feel suspect of this narrative. It took some very patient people to explain to me the limitations of this perspective. It takes an introspective vigilance and a very purposeful, regular quest for empathy to continue to question what is presented to me as normal.

When someone expresses concern over their voice not being heard, it's not that hard for me to change the channel or keep scrolling or just accept that I don't get it, but just because I'm comfortable with the way the world works doesn't mean that the way the world works is working. If my first response to someone saying they've been hurt is to talk over them about how I'm not hurt or how at least I wasn't the one who hurt them, then all I'm doing is ignoring their pain to placate my own immature need for constant pampering.

For instance, human rights are, in a very general sense, inherent. Inalienable rights are yours as a person by nature of being a person. Far as I'm concerned, that's the only requirement. So if you are being denied any of those rights, the sympathetic perspective from me as your fellow human being is NOT to start a measured discussion over the political ramifications or the logistical requirements or the respectability issues of what it takes to make sure you are no longer denied those rights. If I see you, my fellow human being denied your rights, the only step that makes any sense both logically and ethically for me to take is to support you in making whatever changes you deem sufficient until those rights are no longer denied.

They are your rights. They belong to you. They are not mine or your parent's or your church's or your government's to dole our to you as we deem fitting or feasible. To deny them to you is to steal from you. To treat you as less than worthy of those rights is to deny your very existence. To say that your inalienable rights should be less than mine is to say that your existence matters less than mine does.

So, if you happen to we happen to see somebody maybe post something or hold up a sign or wear a t-shirt that declares that their existence does matter, the only justifiable response is to carry that refrain and be proud of and happy for them for that statement. It's not a time to be offended as if they said anything about your existence not mattering, 'cause nobody said that. It's not a time to get up in their face and discourage them from believing that their existence does matter. It's not a time to equate a statement of basic human ideology with some sort of hate crime.

The belief that one's life matters is a belief that should be celebrated, encouraged, and lived out with all the strength you can muster. The belief that every life matters is not a tool for shouting down someone else's belief that their life (as part of every life) does matter. In case we need still yet another reminder, if an enormous movement of people feel the need to bring up that a specific group of lives matter, there's probably something going down on an enormous scale to make that reminder necessary. If at any point we find in our society that anyone's life is being treated like it does not matter or if they are being denied rights as if there existence is not of the same caliber as our own, then the problem is NOT that they're making too much of a fuss about it and it is NOT that they picked the wrong time to bring it up or the wrong method to face it and it is certainly NOT that everything was so much better or simpler or greater at some time or place in the past when we didn't have to think about it. The problem is simply that they are not being treated justly.

If there is injustice anywhere, it is an affront to justice everywhere.

I don't support a policy of policing the world in some giant fascist occupation whenever we get a hankering to go fix a leaky pipeline. I don't support a policy of killing our fellow human beings under the license of war or democracy or liberty. AND I don't support a policy of locking our doors and shutting our gates and closing our eyes to the needs and disparities in the world either. I don't support the kind of nationalism that forgets that we are all people and the blood which binds us is far thicker than some water or some line on a map between us. I don't support the greed and arrogance which declares any nation to be first if it means that any person is pushed to last.

Because, honestly, I'm just a twenty-six year old writer trying to live in this world, and I really do believe that Jewel was correct when she sang, "In the end, only kindness matters."

But fuck politics, right? It's all a big circus. You don't need me to tell ya how to live. I'm just supposed to sing songs and fail at adulthood then write some run-on sentences about it for you few folks to read if you get bored. What do I know?

Well...

The other night, I saw the movie Split. I think it's one of my favorite, if not my favorite Shyamalan movies now, with the performances of the leads, McAvoy and Joy, being phenomenal and unique. Now, I can completely understand and will not try and argue with anyone who sees this film as just one more example of a movie painting someone suffering under mental illness as evil, as the monster. It's definitely the most plain message of the film that the character most obviously dealing with mental illness is, yes, the villain of the piece, and is, yes, monstrous, and is, yes, a monstrous villain due to the nature of their illness. However—and I will attempt not to spoil anything while being completely real with you here—I think the true beauty of the film is found in its portrayal of how its leads both deal with the trauma of their past. They've both been through a lot, and though the essential conceit of the film is to paint the way in which McAvoy's Kevin has neurologically dealt with trauma to be something akin to a supernatural evil, it would be dismissive of both the performance, the script, and mental illness as a whole to say that the dark sides of his character are all that there is to the character. The other lead character, Casey, is a far more subtle example of the kind of internal strength blossomed out of pain by which the mind learns to persevere, and I feel it is in this contrast that a brilliant study of human potential and, ultimately, hope shines through. Based on the trailer or even on your perspective after watching the film, I would not necessarily fault you for believing this to be a scapegoating of the mentally ill via some absurdly sensationalist, adrenaline-junkie-esque vilification of a dubious diagnosis. However, as with my perspective on most story-telling media, I'd prefer to give all this hard work and talent the benefit of the doubt and believe Split to be a celebration and reaffirmation of our ability to continue finding reasons to keep living and to keep hoping, despite incomprehensible anguish and mistreatment (especially early on in life by those we're supposed to be able to trust). No matter your lot, in sickness and health, in safety and danger, you can keep taking one step after the next and find even a little corner of light in the dark.*

No matter how trapped you may feel from bars within or without, there is, deeper still, an infinity of possibilities.

Yours in transcendent weirdness,
Odist Abettor

p.s.- played at an open mic in rhode island the other night. gotta get out there and play some more. get back into the scene. this is a music blog after all, right? but what would you have me right about, how radio hip hop and pop have the stupidest lyrics and the same beat for every song? nah, that would prob be too divisive...

*If, as likely, I didn't make it clear enough—this isn't me saying you should go see this film. What I got out of it is just as likely plenty of folks won't. There are already far too many films where a character with mental illness is painted as a monster either because of or in heavy relation to that illness. This kind of harmful stereotyping shows up in society and its sickening. Also, this is a horror film with a lot of freaky, disturbing stuff in this movie. It's not for me to say what you should or shouldn't see, and this isn't a movie review blog. If anything, this is simply my attempt to explain something i found very affirming in a time when much of life was very disheartening.