this gives me hope...
Nov. 4th, 2004 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
falcongrrlThis is one of those emails that was given to me by a friend, who got it from a friend, who got it from the writer himself, Matt Freeman, a NY playwright. (see http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/voiceweb/v_freeman2.htm) Apologies to Matt, who, if this email is to be believed, never intended for his words to be made public. However, I couldn't sit on this and not post it. It inspired me, so maybe it will inspire others.
3:13 am, 11/03/04
Frankly, I'm a little drunk. But bear with me.
To all my friends who are faced with a little newfound disappointment:
So maybe you were resolved early that getting rid of President Bush was an insurmountable obstacle. That the world is ugly and the people are sad, as Wallace Stevens said. Or maybe you had hope that this time, the devil would get his due. Of course, there are still legal battles and struggles to come. But I would just like to say, as much for my own benefit as anyone's, that all is not lost. Sure, I know that's something we hear and always believe in the way we believe that the grass is greener and other nonsense. But I guess for me, and because you're my friends and I want to say this to people who will forgive my more sentimental moments, I'll say it anyway. And I'll say that disappointment is natural, but disenfranchisement is deadly.
Are there people who are led easily by 60-second ads and images of soldiers? Are there really evangelical Christians that believe in a God who forgot his own proverb about the eye of a needle? Are there those of us that act with inadequate passion, with distant cynicism, with a sense of overriding distaste for the very country that we are struggling to idealize? Of course.
And so our young country grinds up another few bitter pills and learns another young nation's lesson. It falls to the Big Lie. It engages in hypocrisy that it cannot see from behind its delicate but thickening glass. It moves further from liberty and lurches like a rough beast into the sad, uncertain future; guns drawn, doors locked, fervently disapproving books published.
And so we think: "What can we do to change this?" We think: "Was this our best effort? Are we kicked in the guts by the very people who we are trying to reach out to?" We wonder if they want us to move to Europe, if they pray for the coasts to drift off to the Atlantic and the Pacific. We mourn the death of good sense, the simplest virtue, and we wonder if anyone, in years, has cracked a history book since the 8th grade.
What do we do? We keep it up. We are on the right side of history. The passion of the retrogressive comes from exactly what we fear: their fear. They are coming out in thousands before they wash off to sea and take their place in imaginary heaven. They are praying on their knees that they are protecting the unborn, spreading freedom, keeping the America they knew, before Nixon was deposed, protected by a mask with no eyes and no mouth. They are shuffling out their final and most vain effort to shift us all backwards, to make us all feel outside of this country, to lay claim to a dying vision of a childlike nation that can never, ever be innocent again.
We love to muse about innocence; but innocence got me bussed to a pro-life rally through a church group in grade school; innocence trusts authority as a parent; innocence is a virgin that doesn't know how much better it is to make love than keep himself or herself outside of nature. But as even the shortest history shows, the history of a single life, we see the bold pleasure of learning and growing; even as we kick and scream against taking our medicine and eating the food we will soon indulge in greedily as we pass twenty-one.
History moves forward. It is not cyclical. It is a straight line. And that line is going up, straight up, to the sky and goes so high that it cannot be seen from the past. Four years of post tragedy blindness will not undo the future 5o years of new government, good and bad, new children, good and bad, new ideas, inventions, artists and growths that we will find so beautiful it will blind us like it blinded them before we, too, move on. Without Shakespeare there could be no Beckett. Without Woody Guthrie there is no Bob Dylan. Without Vietnam there would be no Bob Dylan, without the second World War no Beckett. No Kings, no Shakespeare. No fascism, no Brecht. No oppression, no marches. Without a dragon you will never find a hero.
And so our "great oppressors" are unhappy carpetbaggers whom have all read "The Prince." And they have plowed the media into ignoring our rallies and making old folk anthems quaint. So those in power represent transforming fear into a mandate for willful gain. That is their function: to make us better fighters.
I am writing this before the race is declared, it's entirely possible what I'm writing will prove just a desperate plea for nothing. That this time, the good guys will win and the world will appear a little saner.
If that doesn't happen (as of this writing it may not) that does not mean that the world will never be sane. If our favorite misspeaking comedy routine of a King does wind up with another few judges to try to keep from filibuster, that doesn't mean things like spiritual growth, equality and world peace are the lessening ideals of our former hippie parents. That just means that we cannot live in a world of ironic distance and a vision (promoted by our least favorite leaders) of a world that we can never change, no matter how hard we fight and no matter how much we do. We will change tactics, we will write new songs, we will march in new and unavoidable ways, we will build from our new grassroots in ways that simply can't be stomped into the earth and called too green. We will write new buzz words, create new parties and dance around on the bones, someday, of the very men who had four years of glory. Because when they are at the end of their lives, they will look out on our world, wondering if they thought it was any use trying to keep us from inevitably growing into its greatest protectors and finest arbiters.
Let them serve their function. We'll serve ours.
All the best and my apologies for just rambling at you.
-Matt
3:13 am, 11/03/04
Frankly, I'm a little drunk. But bear with me.
To all my friends who are faced with a little newfound disappointment:
So maybe you were resolved early that getting rid of President Bush was an insurmountable obstacle. That the world is ugly and the people are sad, as Wallace Stevens said. Or maybe you had hope that this time, the devil would get his due. Of course, there are still legal battles and struggles to come. But I would just like to say, as much for my own benefit as anyone's, that all is not lost. Sure, I know that's something we hear and always believe in the way we believe that the grass is greener and other nonsense. But I guess for me, and because you're my friends and I want to say this to people who will forgive my more sentimental moments, I'll say it anyway. And I'll say that disappointment is natural, but disenfranchisement is deadly.
Are there people who are led easily by 60-second ads and images of soldiers? Are there really evangelical Christians that believe in a God who forgot his own proverb about the eye of a needle? Are there those of us that act with inadequate passion, with distant cynicism, with a sense of overriding distaste for the very country that we are struggling to idealize? Of course.
And so our young country grinds up another few bitter pills and learns another young nation's lesson. It falls to the Big Lie. It engages in hypocrisy that it cannot see from behind its delicate but thickening glass. It moves further from liberty and lurches like a rough beast into the sad, uncertain future; guns drawn, doors locked, fervently disapproving books published.
And so we think: "What can we do to change this?" We think: "Was this our best effort? Are we kicked in the guts by the very people who we are trying to reach out to?" We wonder if they want us to move to Europe, if they pray for the coasts to drift off to the Atlantic and the Pacific. We mourn the death of good sense, the simplest virtue, and we wonder if anyone, in years, has cracked a history book since the 8th grade.
What do we do? We keep it up. We are on the right side of history. The passion of the retrogressive comes from exactly what we fear: their fear. They are coming out in thousands before they wash off to sea and take their place in imaginary heaven. They are praying on their knees that they are protecting the unborn, spreading freedom, keeping the America they knew, before Nixon was deposed, protected by a mask with no eyes and no mouth. They are shuffling out their final and most vain effort to shift us all backwards, to make us all feel outside of this country, to lay claim to a dying vision of a childlike nation that can never, ever be innocent again.
We love to muse about innocence; but innocence got me bussed to a pro-life rally through a church group in grade school; innocence trusts authority as a parent; innocence is a virgin that doesn't know how much better it is to make love than keep himself or herself outside of nature. But as even the shortest history shows, the history of a single life, we see the bold pleasure of learning and growing; even as we kick and scream against taking our medicine and eating the food we will soon indulge in greedily as we pass twenty-one.
History moves forward. It is not cyclical. It is a straight line. And that line is going up, straight up, to the sky and goes so high that it cannot be seen from the past. Four years of post tragedy blindness will not undo the future 5o years of new government, good and bad, new children, good and bad, new ideas, inventions, artists and growths that we will find so beautiful it will blind us like it blinded them before we, too, move on. Without Shakespeare there could be no Beckett. Without Woody Guthrie there is no Bob Dylan. Without Vietnam there would be no Bob Dylan, without the second World War no Beckett. No Kings, no Shakespeare. No fascism, no Brecht. No oppression, no marches. Without a dragon you will never find a hero.
And so our "great oppressors" are unhappy carpetbaggers whom have all read "The Prince." And they have plowed the media into ignoring our rallies and making old folk anthems quaint. So those in power represent transforming fear into a mandate for willful gain. That is their function: to make us better fighters.
I am writing this before the race is declared, it's entirely possible what I'm writing will prove just a desperate plea for nothing. That this time, the good guys will win and the world will appear a little saner.
If that doesn't happen (as of this writing it may not) that does not mean that the world will never be sane. If our favorite misspeaking comedy routine of a King does wind up with another few judges to try to keep from filibuster, that doesn't mean things like spiritual growth, equality and world peace are the lessening ideals of our former hippie parents. That just means that we cannot live in a world of ironic distance and a vision (promoted by our least favorite leaders) of a world that we can never change, no matter how hard we fight and no matter how much we do. We will change tactics, we will write new songs, we will march in new and unavoidable ways, we will build from our new grassroots in ways that simply can't be stomped into the earth and called too green. We will write new buzz words, create new parties and dance around on the bones, someday, of the very men who had four years of glory. Because when they are at the end of their lives, they will look out on our world, wondering if they thought it was any use trying to keep us from inevitably growing into its greatest protectors and finest arbiters.
Let them serve their function. We'll serve ours.
All the best and my apologies for just rambling at you.
-Matt
