I think for the first time ever I can say that I had a really great Martin Luther King day. Everyones had some fun on federally mandated time away from school or work, thats not what I mean (though have you ever noticed how when you get Monday off it feels more like you had two Sundays, and when you get Friday off and it feels like you had two Saturdays? Certainly the calendar has a deeper history than most of us realize, and perhaps this effect is due in part from differences in the days themselves, but Im betting that most of the sleepiness I get on Sunday night, even when I have Monday to sleep in, is just habit). Its more that when we give a day a name, a theme, an honor, and a feeling like that, we give it extra substance and information that we all live through as reality, and Id never really tapped into that before on MLK day.
Yesterday two friends of mine and I used a little bass amp to blast a message of peace, economic justice, international compassion, and the brilliant possibilities in and for human dignity across a well populated public space, hijacking some corporate resources in the process. Certainly not an original idea by any stretch of the imagination, nor indeed really a first for myself. All except the reaction we got.
See this was Martin Luther Kings day, and we had the man himself on our side thanks to the magic of internet audio downloads. We didnt say a damn thing actually, just sat their in the ass freezing cold smiling and people smiled right back, and slipped low fives and thumbs up, and stopped and stood or sat with us, smiling at each other every once in a while, nodding, but mostly just taking in what the prescription Dr. King had for us.
It was his day, what were you going to do, get pissed off about kids making trouble, or their apparent distaste for war? Maybe on most days, but you just couldnt get the energy up to do yesterday for some reason, and you always did like Dr. King We played it for hours and hours and didnt receive a single complaint, not even from the beat cops who went by occasionally. Reality had shifted under the weight of the consensus, ordered by the government, that we should respect Dr. King on that day, and we jumped all over it and maybe got into a few peoples heads.
So that gave me two ideas. One, we all go around looking for these seemingly naturally occurring shifts in consensus reality and exploit them to their fullest extents. Is there a contradiction in a government that says honor Dr. King and simultaneously advances a doctrine of war, repression, and injustice? Fraid fucking so, and contradiction is at the core of unraveling belief systems in this dualistic logic we all use, so lets pull the loose end like winch. Two, lets think of ways to try to engineer those reality circumstances more often. Trickier, I know, but Im thinking about it and Ill let you know what I come up with. See you on presidents day.
No comments:
Post a Comment