“A choice confronts us”: Reinventing the Radical

 

A choice confronts us. Shall we, as we feel our foundations shaking, withdraw in anxiety and panic? Frightened by the loss of our familiar mooring places, shall we become paralyzed and cover our inactions with apathy? If we do those things, we will have surrendered our chance to participate in the formation of the future. We will have forfeited the distinctive characteristic of human beings­–namely, to influence our evolution through our own awareness…Or shall we seize the courage necessary to preserve our sensitivity, awareness, and responsibility in the fact of radical change?     -- Rollo May

 

I am not a political activist. That’s a strange thing forme to say. Beginning in the 7^th grade (when I organized a sit-in at my school to fight for the right to show belly buttons), I have forged an identity based largely on fighting injustice, poverty, deceit in government, the extinction of wildlife, global warming, the WTO, and the World Bank: you name it– I fought it. I’ve regularly consumed hours per week or more researching political topics. I have often taken it upon myself to “educate” my friends (and sometimes other unwilling recipients) of my passions. Some friends call me before each election to inquire of my voting plans. Last year I started an internet list serve called “12 Angry Women” for women in my community to–in part–rant. Much of my artwork has been donated to social causes that I believe in, and societal issues have often inspired topics of my work. Yet, something has been happening to me recently. I am not a political activist anymore—not in the way that I used to identify myself as one—but I still feel like a radical.

Growing up in the post-Vietnam War era in a country shamed and broken—but not owning its mistakes—has produced a generation of revolutionaries, reactionaries, venture capitalists, complainers, and whiners. We’ve ridden the waves of powerful movements like the Civil Rights Movement, Second and Third Wave Feminism, and Punk Rock. I’ve been living in the so-called “postmodern age” where optimism is often treated as naïve and un-hip by underground movements, which has in turn been co-opted and swallowed by the consumer machine. The mindset is evidenced on television shows, magazines, music lyrics, radio talk shows, in the voices of my students, and the conversations with friends. The negativity and rebelliousness worked for awhile. Movements were formed. Art was radical. The punk rock ethos of rebellion against maxi-culture was a brilliant, self-protective, balanced reaction that produced greatness.

I am now, as my young friend recently blurted out at a show we attended, an “aging rocker” (gawd). When I spend time with my other aging rocker friends, I notice how often I must wade through oceans of negativity and unresolved bitterness. I listen to reminiscences—stories of wounded families, a society that doesn’t relate, dreams that have never come to fruition, all often told in a bitter, defensive stance. These stories morph into acid-tongued critiques of yuppies, rich people, meat eaters, SUV drivers, pop culture, corporate monopolies, toxic food, global warming, and etc. I started to notice little distinction between the old sad stories of unrequited youth and lost opportunities, and the relentless criticism of the world.

I started to take a critical look at the popular sound bytes seen on lawns, bumper stickers, pins, blogs, and magazine headlines, all coming from like-minded people–peers of my generation and/or people of my sub-culture. What I noticed largely was opposition: No this;Fight that; Down with (fill in the blank), Put an End To, Stop, Defeat,Rage Against. I thought of my own anger, my own unrequited dreams, and those of my friends, and I wondered if angry people are not only angry at the war, the state of affairs in general, but also screaming at unresolved personal disappointments and violations. Nearly every person in my life who fights for justice has something in their past they haven’t dealt with, including me. Maybe, at the core, all that ranting at injustice in the world comes from injustice done to each of us, lashed outward. Not to say that the topics chosen for fight are not noble. But is the fight clearly understood and seen, and is it vibrating from a deeper core? Perhaps, the individual fight is also a wrestling match with the hangover of postmodern thinking. Maybe we are fighting feedback loops. Whatever. My observation is that the fight—with the negativity and nihilistic overtones—is not resonating constructively any longer, and, in fact, it is contributing to the problems.

I conducted an experiment.¹ I spent three weeks simply observing how I went about my days. I kept a journal and found that my few leisure hours were spent voraciously eating news while spewing up anger, yelling at my radio, talking to the newsstand. When I entered the kitchen to cook, or the bedroom to get ready for bed, I immediately turned on NPR. When I awoke to the radio alarm, I left it on and went hazily to the computer to read the news, multi-tasking. Hours and days were taken up reading media, educating myself on events, thinking, talking (largely to folks of like mind), and writing letters. When I met with friends, I would name some screwed up thing I heard that day. I noted the energy eaten up by all the news and my frustration at the world. I started to realize that I didn’t recognize my heart. I am a composer, and I wasn’t writing as much music as I had before the war. I observed feelings of being uncomfortable to spend time on me while we were at war, and the world was in chaos. Perhaps, subconsciously, I felt responsible for it in some way. American guilt? I definitely felt that I had a role to play in changing it. I felt that I couldn’t sleepwalk through this time. I had a duty as a person living in America to participate in changing—as best I could—the injustice of what members of my country were perpetrating.

Part II of my experiment began with a cold turkey news diet. It was incredibly difficult for me not to turn on the radio or read the favorite political blogs and newspapers (I don’t have a TV). I felt very uneasy, like I was kicking a habit. I had time and silence that I didn’t know what to do with at first. I felt edgy. I doubted the whole experiment, but remained faithful to it. I started writing music. I started drawing a comic. I read novels. I went to yoga classes. I noticed feelings of guilt that crept in for so much time spent on me. I spent time with friends. I woke up and stretched and ate nutritious breakfasts and other meals. I slowed down considerably. I sincerely felt good inside. I smiled more. I felt kinder toward my students, my friends, and the world. I felt gentle. I liked it. I recognized me, and not feeling attached and holding myself responsible for the world. At the end of the third week, I realized that I started a process of recovering from a postmodern hangover.