The Unintentional Revolutionary

Why does it so often seem that the most revolutionary actions come in the form of nose-thumbing conventional taste? The argument runs that everything is connected to everything else and so the ripple caused by one stinky person refusing to wear a corporate product under their arms is surely at its core just as revolutionary an act as beheading Lloyd Blankfein would be. Maybe even more so. I’ve written on this website before about pushing back, hard, against The Liberal Project, something that’s difficult to discuss without sounding like a Pound broadcast from Ravenna circa 1941. But with all these very earnest political actions and discussions taking place, it’s important to remember that not all effects are created by intentional causes. And so we take a moment to examine accidental revolutionary acts. Specifically from my childhood.

1. The time that I grew a beard when I was 16 because I sucked at shaving and kept cutting myself – “How is a beard Revolutionary?” you might ask. Well, anyone who has read Iron John knows that in facial hair there is a sexual energy that is so powerful it may disturb your mother (seriously, Robert Bly says this, look it up). Teachers couldn’t look me in the eye. It looked like a cheap drama club prop hanging on my face. Adults, specifically people between the ages of 60 and 90 who are from small Midwestern towns, don’t like beards. They hide scars from sabre fights, signs of disease, and alter the general appearance in such a way that local authorities may have trouble picking out the features of a wanted man’s face. Add all of this to the phenomenon of anything even slightly out of the ordinary being a REALLY BIG DEAL in high school, and you had a revolutionary on your hands. If I had to rank the gravity my teenage beard according to the Upton Uxbridge Underwood standards, I would have scored it a 17.

2. The time I got a rock stuck in my ear – Again, you’re wondering how revolutionary that can be. But when you’re physically unable to follow a Nun’s instructions because you can’t hear her speak, the situation can potentially escalate to such a point that the so called “brutal” actions of the NYPD would seem like coddling in comparison. Also I was 5-years-old and in tears. The plaintive wail of a child is where all revolutions begin.

3. I thought I had to keep a dream journal for a class – but I didn’t. I’m not sure what the disconnect there was. Regardless, I complained in class that I could only remember like 1% of my dreams, and so was having trouble accumulating enough dream experience to record. The silence that followed was heavy. That silence is often the response to the plaintive wail of the child mentioned above. It’s the fecund womb in which a truly revolutionary person analyzes their relationship to power. Or in which a teenager is mortified. Or in which society examines itself. A lot of things happen in that silent womb.

4. I made a joke about Burning Man – I called it ‘Burning Person’. I’m sure this has been done before, sincerely. And unfortunately. What began as a Mad Max-esque  gun-and-fire show  in the desert has blossomed into something that I can’t critique without Burners, or whatever they call themselves, getting really really emotional. And although the joke I made contained both critique and praise for the direction that the festival has taken, it was taken as me placing my ideological flag down in a certain soil. A soil, while not as fecund as the silent womb in which we confront society’s, failures to address the needs of the plaintive wail of the child with the rock stuck in his ear, still amazingly amenable to human settlement. Let’s call this soil: “me scoring points in a gender studies class.”

That all being said, whatever comes out of Occupy Wall Street will be interesting. The things that happen accidentally will be just as, if not more, interesting and noteworthy  as every placard request being fulfilled. Like prayers to a living god.