All we have is the gesture. As an average citizen, a not-born-rich, not particularly athletic, not super intelligent, not well trained, DEFINITELY NOT LUCKY, average human being, I’ll never have my artwork in the Louvre, and I’ll never be on the NYT Bestseller list, and I’ll never be on the cover of the Rolling Stone, (although I was, once, on the cover of the local paper, back when “blogging” was a new thing for most people. They sent a photographer to the house and took pictures of me in front of my computer, and said “This guy writes funny stuff,” and then said, but for REAL stories that actually matter…)
But I’ve still got the gesture. I can write my funny stories and draw my monsters and make my little books. None of it is “Soup Can” important or “Stephen King” popular or even particularly interesting to most folks. But it’s mine. I made it. And I keep on making those little gestures… And now I have five or six boxes and big old plastic tubes of paintings and drawings sitting in the garage, and I have close to a hundred full journals and notebooks in the closet, and six or seven thousand posts spread across a dozen social media sites (or more---I lost count after “A LOT” because I’m not very good at numbers.) And I have dozens of zines and hundreds of handmade postcards floating around in the postal system, who knows how many items on various PRINT ON DEMAND sites, and seven or eight books available for people to not buy or look at available through various online stores (and there’s SOON TO BE ONE MORE! I’ve finished my first draft of SOMAT(IC) magazine, and will let THE PEOPLE know when it’s ready for consumption…)
I’m just one guy who bothers to make a gesture. Now imagine (it isn’t hard to do) that EVERYONE---or at least the interesting people---turned off their cat videos or put down their game controllers or paused that reality t.v. episode for just a few hours and made a gesture of their own. Wrote a letter (on paper) to someone or drew a picture or wrote a little post about how they are feeling. Not copy and paste, not sharing someone else’s post, but actually made their own gesture and shared it with the world. I honestly think everyone should make things: take photos, write poems, paint postcards, share stories… There are a lot of people, and not very many of them are happy with the way the world turns at the moment. (I’ve been spitting blood lately: mass shootings, places destroyed by natural disasters, rich orange dickheads not caring even a tiny bit, and even U.N. votes to ban the death penalty for blasphemy, adultery, and same sex relations BEING VOTED AGAINST BY THE FUCKING U.S.A.!?!?!? What goddam century is this? Who is the U.S. representative to the U.N., and can we beat the shit out of him if we see him in a parking lot? Don’t get me started.) Where was I??? Right, making a gesture…
We’ve got the gesture, which doesn’t seem like much, but a WHOLE BUNCH of gestures (like a million drops of water) can become a tidal wave. There’s power in the little gesture---and part of that POWER is in the fact that a single gesture doesn’t SEEM like much by itself. BUT IT IS. IT IS MUCH. In the face of the void, it’s quite a lot. Against EMPTINESS, it’s something…which is a whole lot better than NOTHING. (Sorry Ray Johnson, although not really, because I bet your NOTHINGS were really SOMETHINGS…)
We’ve got the gesture, and I suggest we use it.
---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Grand Hoohaa of The P.E.W.)
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://ilosttheplotafewmilesback.blogspot.com/
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