Days of Future Past
Last December, I started binge watching historical dramas on Netflix. I had just ended my binge watching of a collection of documentaries: Noam Chomsky’s American Requiem, Werner Herzog’s Into The Inferno, all episodes of CNN’s The Sixties, The Seventies and The Eighties. Herzog’s foray into the physical and spiritual meanings of volcanoes to cloistered societies carried its own kind of creepy prescience. Who knew how much North Koreans had identified with their volcano and Kim Jong-il and later, Kim Jong-un? Who knew the levels of performed ecstasy by North Koreans of the 'goodness' of their leader? The Seventies was as crazy a decade as the Sixties, socially and politically. In a word: Lit. AF. Then I watched a series called Medici. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. I watched another trashy and thoroughly entertaining period drama called Versailles. Netflix only had one season of it (where is Season 2 Netflix?!?). Still, not satiated, I moved on to The Tudors and The Borgias. The Tudors was ridiculous, so I immediately broke up with that series. Maybe its lead actor, Jonathan Rhys Myers simply made my eye teeth itch. The Borgias, situated in the 15th century chronicling the family drama of Pope Alexander VI and the political intrigue of the Vatican and Italian City-States was compelling to watch.
Let me just say that I found them all vastly comforting.
By January, I realized my obsessive binge watching of documentaries and historical white people through the centuries was an effort to grasp for deeper explanations of the 2016 election. I was searching for something. I was searching for an alternative narrative. I was looking for a why behind the motives of oligarchs that remain invisible to me. I was scouring the past in order to find a path, maybe answers too, in order to face the world to come. The current reality is alternative to values that I hold dear.
The Tudors, the Borgias, the Medicis, the Bourbons —- these families—- in these messy and ridiculous made for TV or streaming dramas really helped me see how the rich and powerful think in dynasties, not decades, not election cycles. There was no right or left paradigm, no rust belt voters.
When I wasn’t watching trash, entertaining, historically inaccurate at times dramas, I was listening to Revolutions podcast, revisiting what I missed when I first studied the French Revolution. During the winter recess, unburdened with grading student essays, I listened, riveted by Mike Duncan’s meticulous accounting of the events that lead to end of the French monarchy and Bourbon dynasty.
I’m learning how to stretch my imagination beyond decades and think in centuries. Since the installation of the Trump presidency, what divides us has crystalized. But on a spiritual, maybe metaphysical level, the battle for the soul of the American experiment centers on narrative: who has the most authority to tell the truth of our story? And further: can we reconcile the truth of our dark history to imagine and manifest an inclusive future? Or will this government for the people, by the people, perish from the earth?
I started watching Game of Thrones in February to fill a void. I read somewhere he gathered inspiration from a French novel about the War of the Roses. For me at least, the series, until let’s say its recently concluded 7th season, operated as metaphors and allegories do to rationalize why bad things happen to good people, and that Justice, is fickle, hard to achieve, and isn’t everlasting.
The arc of moral universe is long. Chaos is a ladder. Maybe there’s a space program.
I’m watching the 2005 reboot of Battlestar Galatica now.
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Things I Wrote...
In January, I wrote a piece for Man Repeller tracing in brief, the history of women’s protests in advance of the Women’s March.
I hung out with inimitable Jessica Valenti, and chopped it up about what we could possibly do next.
I saw Get Out a bunch of times in March and wrote about that and other black movies while were in the in-between upside down between Obama and Trump eras.
In April, I got to fulfill a life long ambition of seeing the high jinx shenanigans of the Harlem GlobeTrotters and their star lady point guard, Ace Jackson.
In June, I wrote a about the meaning of the verdict in the police shooting of Sylville Smith. I also got to hang out with the totally rad women of Girl Friday and talked about the universal fuckshittery of the GOP effort to murder everyone by health care reform.
In August, I wrote about Milwaukee’s riot during the Long Hot Summer of 1967.
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Recommended Reading
Currently reading Carol Anderson’s White Rage and re-reading Octavia Butler’s canon, but specifically, Parable of The Sower.
Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah’s profile of white supremacist terrorism and Dylann Roof is the best out here in the game.
Rahawa Haile’s exquisite essay on hiking the Appalachian Trail alone.
Isaac Fitzgerald’s really lovely essay about the power of Hold Steady songs.
From the vault, someone in my social media feeds was super kind enough to share this 1970 article from Susan Sontag on fascism.
The best Game of Thrones recaps in the game live here.
A good list of places to donate to help the victims of Hurricane Harvey.