Cultivated strangenesses are one thing. Uncultivated strangenesses are another thing; perhaps more authentic, but more unpredictable, less controlled? On days like this one where I spend most of my time silent and in slow thought, it can take me a full fifteen or twenty seconds into an exchange for me to get used to the pace of conversation with another person.
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I finally got around to watching the video of the confrontation between the Yale professor and the student. This is not a social issue that I understand fully. I generally want to side with those that are testifying to an injustice that’s been done to them. But the student in that video is not speaking from a place of strength, and I don’t believe that the student activism I am seeing from Yale is building strength. Of course, the moment that we are in (or were in before the attacks in Paris) is a high water for student activism on the national level, but life is complex enough for similar looking demonstrations of force in Missouri and in Connecticut to lead me to opposite conclusions.
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I performed on Friday, and since then have felt more myself and more like an artist than in a while. There’s a horrific stasis that sets in when you let yourself rest in the place of knowing what your next steps are, but not yet taking them.