I took a little field trip + George's Podcast
The Sternal Journal
A place to try to keep doing things
Hello again, Sternal Journalists,
Today, I visited a friend at a place that has always been friendly to me, the comedy theater Dynasty Typewriter.
From sunrise to sunset (probably just as I write this) the small but mighty staff of DT literally lifted up the names of black people killed by police by placing them, one at a time, on the theater's marquis.
Once each name was typeset above the theater's entrance (using what I would describe as a cumbersome pole with a finicky suction cup at the end), a staff member read some words about that person's life, and then some words about their death. Then a moment of silence was observed, and (thanks to the sucky finicky cumbersome pole) that name came down to make room for another name and another story.
It was a small thing. Only 5-10 people were there while I was. And I'm sure everyone involved in the effort would agree that, in the grand scheme of the world right now and the issue at hand, it was a small effort.
But the thing that felt notable to me about it and the reason it feels worth relaying is that it was a new thing. It was a new way for me to see the same information. It didn't reframe the Black Lives Matter movement in any way that made me have profound realization. It was just a new way to interact with it.
With the caveat that nothing is cool right now and nobody is good, it was a cool-but-another-word, good-but-that's-the-wrong-way-to-say-it way to add to the cultural shift we are all trying to enact right now.
And it reminded me that, yes, we should absolutely all still be donating and protesting (in whatever way is safe) and calling elected officials and educating each other and ourselves and posting on instagram, but we should also be interacting with or creating new ways to process and fight.
The fatigue will come sooner for some than others, so those who still have the energy should keep creating those small, new different things. The more ways we have to remember these people, and the more various ways we have to be reminded of the injustice that is still occurring against black people (even within the past 24 hours), the harder it will be for individual fatigue to turn into societal fatigue.
Anyway, going there today made me think those things, and again, I thought maybe they would be useful to share. And speaking of small, different things, if anyone has an anti-racism book burning a hole in their online shopping cart, I have budget to match one more purchase with a donation to Black Lives Matter. Thanks to the three people who already took me up on it!
And I have a recommendation for you:
Have You Heard George's Podcast?: Most of the time, a great podcast is just a pretty good thing. The medium is still too young for people to be cranking out magnum opuses left and right. But this podcast by British writer and performer George The Poet is an exception. I would put the third episode up against any greatest episode of television or short story.
He fuses music and fiction with current events to create not just genre-defying but medium-defying tales about his corners of British culture and sociology. It's fucking impressive. But don't take my word for it. Watch George's acceptance speech he gave when the podcast won a Peabody a few days ago.
Okay, that's all for now.
Love,
Julian