sovay: (PJ Harvey: crow)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote 2018-09-12 06:42 pm (UTC)

I like your subject line so much I went to Youtube so I could listen to the song--am listening now. Nice. I like it a lot.

It's been taking turns in my head with "The Good Get Gone." I'm listening to Zeal & Ardor's Stranger Fruit (2018) right now in hopes of exorcising them both.

I think yes, never properly mourned, on one hand ... but I also think some people mourn by raging, and as a nation, that's how the United States rages. This train of thought leads me to wonder if people (and nations) would benefit from being taught to experience sorrow. I know there's teaching that goes the other direction! But how about in this direction?

I think so. Anger is an emotion you point at something. If you're going to use it at all, you use it as impetus for action. Sorrow can just exist. This country is not good at just existing. It always has to be doing something. I understand that—for the first twenty-five years of my life, I almost never cried, but I did feel intermittently like punching walls. And I have a lot of things I am angry about these days and I try to use it productively instead of just to sound righteous on the internet or screaming at myself. But grief is real and it is not interchangeable with rage and I don't think it is always the best idea to start fights with people rather than be seen crying. This begins to sound as a toxic masculinity problem as I talk through it, which is probably right. I do not think it was always so un-American to grieve.

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