This blog ends where it began: over a meal of Chinese food at the Wonderful House restaurant of Trinidad, Colorado. It is mid-afternoon on the Thursday after the election. It is late enough after the lunch hour for the place to be almost empty, but still early enough to choose from the lunch specials. It is afternoon but outside the sun looks like it's already setting. There is only one stream of music playing to the empty restaurant today: the soft tinkling of 'easy listening' piano is soothing. I turn off the ringer of my phone, and let myself get swept away by the cheesy, wordless version of Elton John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" I read the local paper: obituaries, business' ads, comics, local and state election results. The paper is two sheets thick-- hardly a newspaper at all. I search for my horoscope; my soup arrives.
Embrace the mystical? I close the paper and open a news app on my phone: tear gas in Oakland. Protests outside Trump properties nationwide. I slurp my soup and go back to just listening to the music: it is not unpleasant, but now a melody I hardly recognize. The piano-- all of the instruments-- are synthetic, fabricated. Back to the news feed: I see a sign in a photograph taken at a protest that reads "Impeach White Supremacy." I want to understand more about the mission of the protests, but the mainstream media fails to provide such context. Is it a march against the Electoral College? Or that the election itself was "rigged," as the President-elect said it was going to be? Or is it the general rage-- the popular rage-- against the changing of the country?
I finish my soup. At the Wonderful House, they bring you a small dish of duck sauce with your soup, and the duck sauce has a dollop of hot mustard in it. I've never seen this practice before, but found a little drip of duck sauce and hot mustard along with the egg drop soup was a whole different combination of wild, familiar flavors. I sipped my tea and read more news. I switched over to Facebook. Three different parents-- people I knew, from very different contexts-- were reporting traumatic experiences regarding their children's questions about the President-elect's coming immigration policies: were the non-white students in their classrooms going to get to stay in this country? One friend of mine, whose support for Clinton had been jolly and positive, had been posting rabidly since the election results became known: she feared for the safety of her adopted daughter, who was not born in the United States. She spoke this fear, inside of a text box on Facebook, and a procession of likes and comments drew attention to her concern. Can you feel the hate tonight, I think to myself. Others reposted photographs of racial violence-- what we once called hate crimes-- from communities across the country. Were they real photographs, like the minivan with the back window smashed in, still sporting both a Bernie and Hillary sticker on the bumper? Were the spray-painted swastikas PhotoShop manipulations, or depictions of actual events? I stuck my pinky in the glob of yellow-brown hot mustard, and put some on my tongue: this might be what privilege tastes like, or at least some metaphor.
I was privileged to be able to afford lunch, privileged to have a roof over my head, and a brain smart enough to be able to at least produce this blog. I launched this project as an effort to provide my own commentary on the Presidential election, not solely because I thought it was rigged for Hillary, but because I became so outraged about America's horrific choice that I had to use my voice, for better or worse. Whether this blog will be buried and unread in years to come or not may depend on search engine algorithms, federal government censorship, and public interest, or a lack thereof: it has been a lark, a project that attempted daily deadlines and mostly succeeded. I never expected to be making record-album-based collage or writing about Curt Weldon-- who deserves a special shout-out, for not only making another appearance in the media, beyond the Delaware County Daily Times opinion piece discussed in a previous post here, but for using that media attention to discuss the nefarious actions of the FBI days before he would lose his re-election bid. Perhaps it's ego-maniacal for me to believe this blog had anything to do with Curt's re-appearance on a television network in Philadelphia, but I appreciate how he helped me understand his side of the story, and how the FBI's fucking with Hillary Clinton days before the election is not unlike what happened to him (sadly, after half an hour of searching, I cannot find a link to this story to provide here). In Trump's America, each of us needs to speak up, to find new ways to use our existing voices. This blog has been an experiment in that, and a short one. I challenge you to make your own, and make it better than this. The election of 2016 could be pinned on the mainstream media and their despicable antics and collusion, but the concept behind the need for a media is the educated citizenry-- that is, the knowledgeable voter. This was the last election of its kind, in that regard, because our Facebook and Twitter feeds will only continue to compound our thoughts and opinions into a yearning for facts. The President-elect's open self-contradictions during the campaign confirm (for me, at least) that people didn't vote for what he said, but who he was-- through his behavior, his Twitter, his image. I do not believe the American people will ever again tolerate the charade that was the election of 2016. I hope I'm right, and I hope your blog-- or feed, or channel, or whatever-- has something to do with it.
I eat the rest of my lunch and the easy listening music continues on. A couple come in, but they're only here for takeout. After placing their order they sit in chairs by the door and wait for their food. They do not talk to each other. One of the waiters moves back and forth from the kitchen, gathering placemats and dishes and silverware for the dinner crowd, or whoever else comes in until then. One of the owner's children, a boy of six or seven, is playing a game with himself, of sneaking around the empty restaurant, trying not to be spotted by his father, the man preparing the place settings at the empty booths and tables. As I finish my lunch, I catch the boy's eye as he crouches along the wall nearby, having fun seeking if he can go unspotted. The easy listening music drones on in the empty afternoon restaurant, and tensions are not high, except for one of us, who dashes among the chairs and booths, down the hallway to the restrooms, to the kitchen, and back again.
Embrace the mystical? I close the paper and open a news app on my phone: tear gas in Oakland. Protests outside Trump properties nationwide. I slurp my soup and go back to just listening to the music: it is not unpleasant, but now a melody I hardly recognize. The piano-- all of the instruments-- are synthetic, fabricated. Back to the news feed: I see a sign in a photograph taken at a protest that reads "Impeach White Supremacy." I want to understand more about the mission of the protests, but the mainstream media fails to provide such context. Is it a march against the Electoral College? Or that the election itself was "rigged," as the President-elect said it was going to be? Or is it the general rage-- the popular rage-- against the changing of the country?
I finish my soup. At the Wonderful House, they bring you a small dish of duck sauce with your soup, and the duck sauce has a dollop of hot mustard in it. I've never seen this practice before, but found a little drip of duck sauce and hot mustard along with the egg drop soup was a whole different combination of wild, familiar flavors. I sipped my tea and read more news. I switched over to Facebook. Three different parents-- people I knew, from very different contexts-- were reporting traumatic experiences regarding their children's questions about the President-elect's coming immigration policies: were the non-white students in their classrooms going to get to stay in this country? One friend of mine, whose support for Clinton had been jolly and positive, had been posting rabidly since the election results became known: she feared for the safety of her adopted daughter, who was not born in the United States. She spoke this fear, inside of a text box on Facebook, and a procession of likes and comments drew attention to her concern. Can you feel the hate tonight, I think to myself. Others reposted photographs of racial violence-- what we once called hate crimes-- from communities across the country. Were they real photographs, like the minivan with the back window smashed in, still sporting both a Bernie and Hillary sticker on the bumper? Were the spray-painted swastikas PhotoShop manipulations, or depictions of actual events? I stuck my pinky in the glob of yellow-brown hot mustard, and put some on my tongue: this might be what privilege tastes like, or at least some metaphor.
I was privileged to be able to afford lunch, privileged to have a roof over my head, and a brain smart enough to be able to at least produce this blog. I launched this project as an effort to provide my own commentary on the Presidential election, not solely because I thought it was rigged for Hillary, but because I became so outraged about America's horrific choice that I had to use my voice, for better or worse. Whether this blog will be buried and unread in years to come or not may depend on search engine algorithms, federal government censorship, and public interest, or a lack thereof: it has been a lark, a project that attempted daily deadlines and mostly succeeded. I never expected to be making record-album-based collage or writing about Curt Weldon-- who deserves a special shout-out, for not only making another appearance in the media, beyond the Delaware County Daily Times opinion piece discussed in a previous post here, but for using that media attention to discuss the nefarious actions of the FBI days before he would lose his re-election bid. Perhaps it's ego-maniacal for me to believe this blog had anything to do with Curt's re-appearance on a television network in Philadelphia, but I appreciate how he helped me understand his side of the story, and how the FBI's fucking with Hillary Clinton days before the election is not unlike what happened to him (sadly, after half an hour of searching, I cannot find a link to this story to provide here). In Trump's America, each of us needs to speak up, to find new ways to use our existing voices. This blog has been an experiment in that, and a short one. I challenge you to make your own, and make it better than this. The election of 2016 could be pinned on the mainstream media and their despicable antics and collusion, but the concept behind the need for a media is the educated citizenry-- that is, the knowledgeable voter. This was the last election of its kind, in that regard, because our Facebook and Twitter feeds will only continue to compound our thoughts and opinions into a yearning for facts. The President-elect's open self-contradictions during the campaign confirm (for me, at least) that people didn't vote for what he said, but who he was-- through his behavior, his Twitter, his image. I do not believe the American people will ever again tolerate the charade that was the election of 2016. I hope I'm right, and I hope your blog-- or feed, or channel, or whatever-- has something to do with it.
I eat the rest of my lunch and the easy listening music continues on. A couple come in, but they're only here for takeout. After placing their order they sit in chairs by the door and wait for their food. They do not talk to each other. One of the waiters moves back and forth from the kitchen, gathering placemats and dishes and silverware for the dinner crowd, or whoever else comes in until then. One of the owner's children, a boy of six or seven, is playing a game with himself, of sneaking around the empty restaurant, trying not to be spotted by his father, the man preparing the place settings at the empty booths and tables. As I finish my lunch, I catch the boy's eye as he crouches along the wall nearby, having fun seeking if he can go unspotted. The easy listening music drones on in the empty afternoon restaurant, and tensions are not high, except for one of us, who dashes among the chairs and booths, down the hallway to the restrooms, to the kitchen, and back again.
I empty my plate into a small cardboard box, unable to finish the heap of fried rice, vegetables, and Schezuan beef. The couple by the door are handed their food in brown paper bags and leave the restaurant. The small paper fortune looms back at me, its gender-specific pronoun resonating through the empty restaurant as loudly as any synthetic piano music. The election was over and its effects were just beginning to be felt, in America and worldwide: foreign and domestic policy could change, dramatically. But the issue of behavior-- of mirrors-- of image-- these have dominated this election cycle, more than any policy. The United States elected its first pure-bred celebrity (Reagan doesn't count; he was a Governor), one whose persona was riddled with the edgiest beliefs and statements. America elected what Kris Kristofferson called "a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction," someone whose behavior we are expected now to intentionally and expressedly overlook-- for the safety and security of our country and the future of the republic. The results of the Electoral College have set into office an image, a set of behaviors, something shown to us in a mirror-- and while this would have been true no matter who won, the scarier scenario of the two candidates has come to be. A couple was coming in to the Wonderful House as I was leaving. I held the door for them and they said 'thank you' before I walked outside, and into the dry, late afternoon sunshine of the high desert.
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This blog was a temporary project. For more politics, music, and art, check out my regular blog here. For YouTube channels, go here and here. For my website, go here. Drop me a line here.
