mikevarley.com

To the New Electorate

“For your consideration,” he said in a scholarly tone, “I would like to submit an anthem of understanding stirred by the memory of Carlo, the undeniable mother lover in whose line art aspires. His artifacts of romance are revered in a world where philosophers test aesthetics in second-hand dress, where DIY is darling indy yearning, where budding hearing loss is a way of life, where the Internet is a junkie’s throat itch, where we work knowing it’s not forever, hoping it’s not forever, saying it’s not forever in a world short of supporters, where the consciousness needs a leader who stands tall to the thresher, where 75,000 is Portland’s pledge, where 75,000 is nothing.”

“Where the Earth moans and people perspire, where hired armies salute the flag in accordance with their contract, where faith based movements are making a comeback, for all the wrong reasons, in all the wrong places. Where the greatest heartache remaining is the rift between the simple and the striving – where the lines have been drawn with this purpose in mind. Where inevitability is met at the drawbridge with pitchforks and books of flaming logic puzzles, where false authority works far too well, where civil rights percolations must boil or spoil, where the wooden Wheel of Destiny is guarded by shadows alone, their darkness the rite of all passages.”

“And say we should decide,” he said from the crowd’s center, “that apathy is the blonde alternative? And what if objectivity is the slow descent to compliance? What then? Then the end of peace, one more Middle East notch, then a Korea too and Havana while we’re at it and Darfur for the hell of it and Argentina for their ignorance and Brazil for the rain forests and China cause they’re different and Switzerland because what sense is it, a neutral location in a star-spangled atlas? You may think I speak in fables, but they relate through epics, and talking foxes seems more real than gleaming Trojan man-pecs. Their mandate lies on the table gift wrapped in anonymity, the human face recently judged a sign of appeasement. It’s hardly surprising he gave up his golfing when one considers his divots.”

“I had a premonition,” he said as they grabbed his arms, “of a camera trained on a camera trained on a biker’s mirrored monocle, reversing its vision and recording a world where Orwell became a mechanic. I saw ten thousand books on how to make art with nobody laughing or blushing. I saw farm-caged men with slippers on present for passing strangers. I saw the end of the world on an old roll of ticker taped in the shape of a Mobius strip. I saw women robbed of decency, men stripped of courage and children devoid of compassion.”

“But all this was seen,” he said through the window, “through the fisheye of Diligence Dome. So to the east I looked and saw…smiling faces, trained in ways to heal a stubborn world. And you are those faces and I am your framer, ’cause context is all we all need.”

Then the car turned the corner from Washington Square and I couldn’t make out anymore.

[audio:http://www.mikevarley.com/old/words/MikeVarley.com To the New Electorate.mp3]