To Stay or Go
Pain-med-induced ramblings post-election
What a week.
I’ve intentionally not shared my writing for months now, focusing on building up my confidence by working more privately on some new projects and finding a more consistent creative practice.
One of these projects is a book. I’ll share more about it quite soon — but in a way, it asks a question I’ve been asking myself for a while now: should I stay or should I go?
Call it a fight or flight response, but I’ve seen this question be asked on a bigger scale pretty repeatedly any time I open an app this past week.
As I read these posts, the song Here It Comes from Lempicka has been stuck in my head.
(I’m once again frustrated that this show closed early — just imagine hearing the lyrics “To gangs of vicious men, Why should ugliness win again? But if they win again…” in a theatre right now!)
This song follows Lempicka on the precipice of WWII, wondering if she’ll stay or leave: “Will I stay? Will I run?”
I’ve seen some other fans of the show share these lyrics this week:
“Is this the endgame of perfection?
No ideals here just destruction
This is not a revolution
“Destroy the past
Destroy convention
Anything that hinders our ascension
Revolution
“The world spins
Who lives, who dies
How will we know
Can we know
What to do to survive
When everything shatters
What matters
You and I” I don’t have any hot takes you’ve not already read 12 versions of about this election.
Should you stay and fight, or should you run? It’s up to you.
I know community will be more important than ever in these times. But I’ve also watched myself change, and not really for the better, as my community has turned over and changed these last few years.
I don’t have any answers to share. I have more thoughts on this topic (which hey - maybe they’ll make the book & you can read them). But I’m trying not to judge any reactions to what’s ahead of us - I still want to meet people where they are as best I can.
But I have found that coming back to art, and music, and theatre, and writing has been so necessary for me this year.
I can’t begin to explain how important it’s been to have this song to ruminate on this week. Every section applies in different and chilling ways. It’s helped me process so many of my thoughts.
For many years, my organizing work was very in my head. And those lessons have been so important and so formative to how I know how to survive in times like these.
But creativity is helping me connect back to my heart.
The last line of Here It Comes is: “But tonight…tonight we’re still free.”
The inauguration isn’t until January. There is work that can be done before then, but there is also an opportunity to rest, regroup, and connect — with yourself and people around you. “tonight, we’re still free.”
PS — I waited to write this until I was on a lower dose of pain meds, but I’m still on some. So there’s a chance this rambling is nonsensical, in which case - I blame the meds? Maybe I’ll have some more answers or conclusions once I’m fully off of them.
I basically tripped my way into the ER at 10-level nerve pain so, truly, what a week to be on pain meds. For a few days I wondered if this was all actually a pain-med-induced dream, but then I remembered hearing Chappell Roan’s new country song on SNL & realized I couldn’t have dreamt that up. So alas, this has all been real.
I’ll be posting again soon about my work on my book and my plans for consistently sharing on Substack moving forward — so look for that hopefully by the end of this month! (As long as I can stay out of the ER!)
The lyrics for Here It Comes can be found here.