A quiet bellow

I quit on Houellebecq for some weeks now. Last time I visited my good friend in Portugal (the one who says that maybe it would be better to think a little bit, just a little bit…), I was reading the dystopic novel “Submission” with the same kind of both repulse and attraction that I, at times of increased sense of loss, get from sects and true crime documentaries involving indoctrination, grooming or any other way of mental abduction. This man’s home constitutes not only a tiny refugee for my dramatic short passages in Lisbon, but also a generous library for friends and family who are lucky enough to find more of what’s feeding their thoughts in his very personal organization of books all over four walls. I didn’t take much time to choose two more novels of the controversial French writer to take away, but it took me what feels like ages to go through the first one. I was distractedly flicking through the second borrowed book in the tube when I noticed my growing nausea while doing so, so I decided not to keep up with what had became an exhausting self-imposed duty. I don’t really care where the misanthropic approach to most characters comes from, whether the author is a misogynistic pig himself or a brilliant literary magnifying glass of already existing depressive thought patterns and possible tenebrous outcomes for contemporary western societies. I just knew I'd had enough of that in my life.

The obsession for the degradation of body and spirit, however, had taken over my then reduced capacity for production and intellectual fruition, I confess, so that a few more weeks wandered through the mediocre results of useless algorithms until a greater impulse for the survival of my own spirit finally guided me, albeit somewhat serendipitously, to a slightly more oriented search to its core. It was because of that very same idea of escaping literal and mind prisons that I stumbled again in the proliferous author Ursula K. Le Guin, this time into “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. It was precisely this friend of mine who had recommended her work to me, almost two years ago, when suggesting another story of hers during early rehearsals of my artist residence at the backyard (“Direction of the Road”, also included in the anthology that I have now hastened to acquire). That story elaborated multi-species co-existence from the point of view of an oak tree, it inspired a cabaret that we developed then, among plants and animals, together with a couple more artists at a great physical distance from each other. But after that I  haven‘t read anything more of her. Now I have not been able to explore more than a few tales of this anthology yet: the truth is that most of them appear to be of a more fantastic than philosophical nature, her earlier work doesn‘t seem to feel as oneiric as those readings; the purely sci-fi literature has never been an appealing genre enough for me in general, let alone in phases of lesser creative vigour. But the peculiarity of the voices and actions addressed in the ones I have read so far has already given me much more to breathe and expand than the sum of all the other readings, comments and viewings of recent months, all of them reflecting what we are, have been or might become as a society, country or continent if we continue to interact with our communities’ members, other species and the planet the way we still do.

It is now in the opposite direction to this tradition that I am trying to face yesterday’s undeniable legitimization of hatred and inequality through the election of 12 fascists and 8 business fanatics as parliamentarians in Portugal. Alongside this reality, these results also pointed out the provisional end of the already announced institutional fall of the worshippers of the Roman apostolic catholic church, which, at least, could be a reason to rejoice if we did not have to take into consideration, decimals aside (probably fueled by the fear induced by daily prime-time polls), an ever more evident systemic abstention - this one very revealing of a grassroots illiteracy and of a mental age of 14 that never fails to soothe the consciences of many dilettante anarchists. It is already some time now that I think they should also somehow be called to account for the current circumstances in such a young democracy, those who have ceased to express anything other than superficial incompatibility or absence… but maybe I am simply losing the ability to converse with anyone making moral intransigence, usually inconsistent, their banner. I don't know yet if this reflects more the causes of my ongoing isolation or its consequences, but perhaps the time has come for me to give up on mostly denouncing injustice and to dedicate myself wholeheartedly to carve out equally arduous but more fruitful paths that might take future generations in a hitherto untrodden destination. My experience tells me that it goes along solidarity, education and creativity, not rage or laxity.

Whether racism, greed or enduring patriarchal roots, such blockages to the guarantee of the most basic human rights have never ceased to destroy universal growth. All in all, I am profoundly exhausted of all the non sense i.e. outrageous worldwide civilizational regressions. For now, I just want to keep on walking away from fruitless polarized confrontations and self-righteous monochromatic bubbles; I need to learn better how to take existence itself as a day-to-day creation of non virtual actions in progress for saner eco-systems.

In "The Day Before the Revolution", Ursula K. Le Guin (1974)