Our Monsters, Ourselves

A number of people hopping on God’s internet to speak of a recently deceased Southern Baptist justice from Texas named Paul Pressler plus a story about a church organization in Texas changing it’s arrangment with an abusive pastor who served as 45’s “spiritual advisor” plus footage of 45 trying to kiss a college student on stage at a Turning Points USA event plus the fact of an online smear campaign launched against a friend of mine plus a visit to an amazing bookstore in Cincinnati has me thinking about monsters, the need for monsters, and the burning hot compulsion among many to monsterize someone(s).

But first and relatedly, the image above is from Household Books. It’s something of a communal effort, but it’s owned by Bobby Minelli who curates objects and events in the direction of the vibe above. He has a deep affection for horror and sci-fi and poetry and all the things. Just look at that sleeping—or possibly ruminating—beastie. Look at the color. The frame. The curtain. The blue velvet. Can you imagine wandering and lingering and passing time with friends there.

I can.

The evening there was a sort of homecoming. I got to find out what Bobby’s up to, but I also got to situate his witness within a great cloud of witnesses of friends in attendance who I’ve come to know across the centuries. That includes Ric and Karen and Sabina Hordinski. That’s Ric’s guitar behind me. Y’all know about Ric? He played a couple of songs before introducing me (including “Circle of Quiet”). Find out more about his awesomeness here. By our calculations, I’ve been tuning in to what Ric’s setting down for over thirty years.

And yes, that’s the album cover of The Replacements’ All Shook Down (1990). Do you spy a style here? A habit of attentiveness? A mood? I did and do too. The photographic image is the labor of Michael Wilson. He was there too! You really need to look him up (click the link a couple sentences back). Seeing Michael and Marilyn Wilson and the Hordinskis got me realizing how very formed I am by the scenius they share. They’re a part of my mental furniture. Their creative witness is an emotional refuge to me (in my heart and in my mind) even when we aren’t in one another’s presence. Do y’all have people like that in your lives? I hope you do.

Perhaps we’re all born into particular infrastructures of bad ideas and…art is how we start working our way out of them and into better ones. Maybe art is how we build and sustain and inherit alternative ways of being in the world. Spaces in which to breathe and dream and conduct our energies differently. When I think of Maurice Sendak and Household Books and my Cincinnati scenius, I don’t feel less weird. I feel vindicated in my weirdness. I want this for everyone.

I don’t know how to make anyone do anything, but…I do have poems and pop culture references I place before myself and others in the hope that curiosity might preempt reactivity…making room for illumination…dramatizing our inner situations with color and stories and silliness sometimes. These are my resources for accessing what our shadows might have to show us.

Consider the journey Peter Gabriel takes us in a song called “Darkness.” Be warned. It’s quiet and then very loud and then quiet again and on and on. I find it soothing and instructive and encouraging. *deep breath* I demonize when I don’t know what to do with my despair. I need art to not demonize.

And almost lastly, some of you might already know C.P. Cavafy’s “Waiting for the Barbarians.” Until just the other day, I did not. Please don’t read the next paragraph without reading it. Don’t pass by the creative task Cavafy has passed on to us.

Wasn’t that something? I was not expecting that ending.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?

Those people were a kind of solution.

There’s a prolonged mental rutting concerning other people’s wrongdoing that’s a welcome distraction from trying to envision—and act upon—the next right thing in my own life. The next brave move. If you’re like me, projection is sometimes a thing.

I feel righteously poked at by Cavafy and his barbarians and my monsters. Maybe you do too.

And…that’s about it from me apart from one thing.

If you didn’t make it to Cincinnati and you won’t make it to Lexington, but you want one (or all) of these efforts signed and/or with a note, I am currently capable of supplying them for a fee we can discuss via e-mail. If you want the red one, I will insist on revising a place or two within the text by hand and offering a few words of repentance.

Thanks for letting me into your lives remotely, everybody.