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ArtistA red rose grows from a landscape of a field of debris in shape yet consists of a field of diamonds gold, and silver finery in various forms of ruin. The luxuries of life that is to meet the certainty of ruin, the abyss replete with the absurdity of centering materialism above humanity, the ethos of extraction through dissonant screams cloaked as cheers. May beds of finely crafted trinkets comfort our nights.
Allow me a trifle, and let me show you who we are.
This land of opulence & righteous causes. We have never met a veneer another’s ego couldn’t condemn or applaud.
The crossroad is ours. Ed & Ben aren’t leaders so much as symptoms of our loss.
What might that be?
Our arrogance. Our self-aggrandizement, our ostentatious opulence masquerading as love, as friendships.
Purses made, paychecks pledged to worthy causes. Yet no warmth, only strokes for your ego’s aggrandizement. Being on the right side of history. Tell me how much of that feeds the belly of a starving baby? Oh, I forgot you donated so much to that one cause.
Free Palestine, rooted in love. Yet no clicks in demonstrating reconciliation, no offers to share a stage for healing, for brotherly love.
Shall we keep pretending those walls are holding something worth guarding?
Yet you could have before? Making a point? Leading by example?
Sure, cover is run. Let us all retreat to our castles and fly banners of how much we did. How much we gave. Then let us also see it isn’t about how much you did, but how much you could have done. Allow me to dispel the illusion: by all accounts, it isn’t nearly enough.
Allow me to be the first to say: I too do not escape this indictment.
The same delusions that allow one to mistake ostentatious opulence for a duty to warmth. I deeply wished it wasn’t the case that an ego fooled one into believing catching that purse was a worthy endgame. Tree farming is noble; let’s not feed an ego some lineage of nobility.
In this land of well-fed egos, I still believe we could change. Let me be the first to own our collective failure. I suppose I have always played a different game. Now let us pay that piper, for that payday draws near. Our castles, our clinging to our walls, have brought us to the threshold of immense collective pain.
How could you take a stage without a payday? Perform for free—who is that inane? Let us both be right; that way we can get our strokes. We can perform empathy, then both be heroes?
Yet as we withdraw, as we cling to our pet causes, we only empower the least capable to drag us into immense suffering. Would we feed our egos at the cost of communities of reciprocity? Could we imagine relinquishing our fiefs, or are we too fixated on being godfather, on a sweet notion of fragile control? Defending our actions instead of being willing to fail at something bigger.
Let me be the first to take the blame. I was playing by a different set of rules I never explained. Believe me, ignore me. Just know no one is out to get you but our collective negligence. We're under a spell of paranoia. Your wealth and righteousness mean little not only to me, but to you as well.
1ov3
Aaron
