Reposted from last month on my LJ:
I'm not a great reader. Not anymore. Not since my depression shredded my attention span and the internet hoovered up the scraps and smoked them as a joint. I like TV though. And I like comics. I can read comics. And I like Transmet. If you like Transmet, you knew I was going to say that, because of the style of this post. Fucking Spider and Ellis are in my head, and they want me to write like this. And it feels good to do what they tell me. It makes me feel awesome.
I like Transmet and I read it a lot, for pretty much exactly the same reason I watch The West Wing over and over again. Because they're not about politics, they're about writing. An idiot I once knew told me that all musicians get boring when they start singing about being a rock star. He was completely wrong, of course; that's when they get interesting. That's why Billy Joel fucking rocks. And occasionally, you get that privelige with TV writers and comic writers. They sit down and they write about what they know. About the beast and the keyboard. About playing God and being tired. About the sex and the drugs that you never, ever get. About cadence, and floating opposites and latinate reversals and repetition and the endless shadow-boxing with your own ego. And the truth, and how to swing it so it doesn't chop your head off.
It's not an accident they're both about writing AND politics. On the streets of DC - a town where, for some reason, hope never dies - they write their truth on the streets, bore it into the concrete and the marble, the words of great men with even better script writers. And on a minor street off the mall, it says "Those who write history in words often forget history is MADE with words". Not all political entities are writers. But almost all wirters are political. We cling to it, because we recognise the bullshit, and the beast. Especially these days, when politicians tell stories, each inventing their own fairytale where they are the hero, six-foot-six of VIn Diesel-shaped tungsten with a dagger pointed at the heart of whatever you hate the most.
Tony Abbot wernt on TV tonight and told a story with big red arrows, invading Australia. Your country, he said, was under threat from Big Red Arrows. From Iraq and Iran and other bad places. What he means is he wants to put children in prison camps where there's no running water and no UN oversight because it gives him an erection the size of Kirribilli House - and he thinks it will also give him the House. The marthon running and the sex jokes didn't make everyone swoon for him enough, he wasn't everyone's favourite Action Hero, so he decided to get some bad guys to blow up while he's covered in Baby Oil and saying "Yippee-Kai-Yay". There weren't any real bad guys so he found some starving people with funny faces and no rights and cast them instead.
Transmet can sometimes be seen as being too over the top, too grand guignol to get at the truth. And sometimes, it's nothing but the truth, pure truth, wisdom from the goddamn mountain. There are people out there who will kill anyone they can to make you vote for them, and jerk off at the very thought of it. Beware of them. Do not accept their candy, or their lies.
But know this: they do fear the truth. Speak it, write it, tell it. In whatever form that takes. Because good writing makes people feel awesome, and no longer afraid. And when they're not afraid, they're much harder to fuck with.
No comments:
Post a Comment