I haven’t been playing as much as I should and part of that is that I just over-extended myself a little while ago. I had a vicious viscous cold that still has my lungs feeling kind of under-powered and during band practice last weekend I definitely strained my voice. It all comes together to make me feel a little old and broken and discouraged to boot. Our tour schedule for the spring got derailed, there’s been a couple of stumbling blocks to that as well and it just has me feeling kind of … on pause.
It’s not huge. I just feel unproductive. Even though I’ve been picking my guitar up a lot, half-written riffs are being slowly paired with half-written ideas. Something half-baked may come of it, and then it’s just a matter of shoving it back into the mental oven.
Moven.
I’m grateful to Jon Patton for texting me last night and getting me out to Acoustic Thursdays and Next Phaze last night. It’s high on my list of best open mic experiences in the city and last night was their 11 year anniversary, so I was surprised to see it suffering from the underpopulation that I feel like Teavolve has been struggling with. It was still a good time had, great songs and spoken word, but there was an off mood to the night caused by some weird internal politics, there was a lack of the REGULARS that meant you didn’t have that critical mass of JOY as people greeted one another, and that allowed non-regulars to effect the mood of the night.
Or maybe that was the whiskey. Not sure.
The featured artist – Marc Marcel – was a spoken word artist with a lot of powerful pieces that I really… I really needed to hear right then. A lot of aspects of privilege and artistry and community and the beauty of being a performer. Pain and inspiration.
Of course, I’ve looked him up now and he creates cartoons that I’m excited to delve into – and he’s a big proponent of psychedelics – which I’m NOT excited to delve into. All in all an inspiring and intriguing man.
Marc Marcell, poet. Marc Marcell, poeting.
There was a LOT to take in tonight – some of which probably says a lot more about society than, as a white male, I’m “allowed” to say.
And I get it, being “PC” can make a lot of people angry, and I’m probably not wording this well. One artist started off his poem talking about how he was worried about his kids because he saw other kids from their school skipping class all day, smoking weed at the gas station – and how with all that going on fighting over pronouns seemed like it was just petty.
As a white straight male theoretically at the top of the world’s totem pole, it’s not really… I’m going to continue to use the word “allowed”… for ME to comment on who’s fight is petty. As a black male poet (frankly also in a black male-dominated space) this guy wasn’t going to get harassed because it’s commonly accepted that he’s legit under existential threat – but I don’t think anyone really has the RIGHT to … wait, let’s talk about the semantics.
He had the “right” to judge others’ struggles, we all do – but it’s not RIGHT to judge other people’s struggles. For all that the 1% is probably almost exclusively white and male, because we’re literally the majority (for a little while longer at least) the majority of the 99% is white and male too. Which means that when we judge others’ struggles with things like sex and race, you’re painting with a really, really broad brush, and there’s an awful lot of people who struggle, and to them, their struggle’s always real.
I absolutely judge other people’s struggles. But I’m going to keep it to myself. Part of that is because socially, I’m not “allowed” to (unless I’m hanging out in a “white male” dominated space – and even THOSE might get “woke” – believe it or not!), and yes I can find that frustrating – but my need to denigrate someone else’s struggle does NOT outweigh their struggle, so – I can and WILL keep my fucking mouth shut. It doesn’t help me to hurt them. It’s not a zero sum game.
No really. It’s not.
And so I listen to his piece about parenting. It’s not the way I was brought up – it seems like the lowest-common-denominator version of parenting : it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you show up! It doesn’t matter if you give them the back of your hand or a hand up as long as you’re there to give them your hand…
But all of the above is what made the feature so powerful for me. I grew up under the “melting pot” times (a term, though I regard it warmly, apparently springs from very racist backgrounds, sigh) where we were trying to join together and believe in being “American”. The idea being that the ideal (if not the reality) – the DREAM of America is a pretty beautiful thing, but it can never work if you don’t hold that dream above whatever you’re holding over from the past – be that another national identity, your religion, your whatever. We’re stronger if we’re all one tribe. It’s probably too much to ask that we all accept said tribe as “human” – because we’re tribal critters and we probably can’t divorce ourselves from an “us vs them” mentality so we can’t all be one tribe until there’s something else sentient to fight… aliens or God or the Authority… we no longer simply pit ourselves against nature, we HAVE to have an adversary it seems…
But America isn’t in ANY danger of taking over the world in a monoculture anymore – unifying US as the U.S. (of A.) would be a great thing – but we just battle and snipe and fight – and Marc Marcell’s pieces about how he’s not “African American” because he at no time in his Life was EVER “African” – and so he defined himself as “black” but then came to the realization that he was allowing himself to define himself as EVERYONE ELSE did, simply by the colour of his skin. Listening to his journey was fascinating, and positive, and beautiful, and way more enlightening and GOOD than simply hearing someone spout pride of who or what they are – because the latter generally has simply latched onto some labels, declared for the team, bought the merch and “Liked” the page.
Less of a rant, more of a ramble.
The world’s problems ain’t being solved in my little Journal, but the world’s problems DEFINITELY aren’t getting solved by people who insist that… not only do they not understand others’ struggles, but they’re not going to try because they’ve JUDGED the struggles of others and found them… wanting.
