Poets are summoned to a stronger imagination of language and humanity in a time of new and radical Weathers. White House Inc. is the last gasp of the dying Confederacy, but its spectacle is dangerous and addictive so hold onto your mind. Fascism loves distraction. Keep the world safe for poetry. Open the book of love and resistance. Don’t tarry! (Anne Waldman, Resist Much, obey little)
Speak and Spell, 1 of 100 projects from Digital Archaeology
“White House Memo: Trump Rejects 100-Day Test, Yet Seeks an A” (Day 95)
I accept and hereby complete my parallel digital 100-Day Test, #100hardtruths-#fakenews. Unlike my partner in crime, I seek no rank nor grade nor accrual of followers. I have counted right along side him, but I hope more as mattering than tabulating. For this is not a game, although it has become for me a very much needed daily practice with a 100 count. In my version of the test, I am accountable for the value of and values within what I have built and shared herein.
I reject 45’s methods, logics, beliefs, and linked actions that have been spread and benefited by the #fakenews, while acknowledging that in so doing, I too have shared in. I accept that I am complicit and accountable for my role therein. I would like to learn how to not participate-and-collaborate. I seek to grasp how to take part in digital defiance without collusion.
pic.twitter.com/CGHc07iOgk
With this last collection of collections above and below, this final accounting of accountings, I testify to the magnificent swell of our jubilant voices and poetic defiance held herein, to the value of our technological archeology and journalistic integrity, the “expansion of consciousness, empathy, and insight,” and to the ever more desperate need for our “stronger imagination of language and humanity.”
After the first 100 days, I pledge to heed the poets’ call:
Working with others, I will “open the book of love and resistance” by taking this at last complete digital primer on digital media literacy into the world thereby connecting it to other people and other primers.
In community, I will “spout pure water again and again and drown his lies” in the many forms that #100hardtruths-#fakenews embraces and engages: education, activism, history, science, technology, conversation, and art.
See More:
Resist much, obey little: Inaugural poems to the resistance, edited by Michael Boughn & Kent Johnson
One response to “#100, speak and spell, teach and tell, count and swell”
Lisa Hirschfield
This was a formidable committment, and I appreciate the way you wrestled with that (and your resistance to it) within the project. You didn’t “make it look easy.” And now it stands as a formidable accomplishment. For me the ultimate lesson is to wear my humanity and vulnerability on my sleeve–and resist the fear of doing so–so that I might encourage others to do the same. That too is a formidable committment to make, and one I will continue to wrestle mightily with. But it’s so necessary. No time for hiding now.
Comments
One response to “#100, speak and spell, teach and tell, count and swell”
This was a formidable committment, and I appreciate the way you wrestled with that (and your resistance to it) within the project. You didn’t “make it look easy.” And now it stands as a formidable accomplishment. For me the ultimate lesson is to wear my humanity and vulnerability on my sleeve–and resist the fear of doing so–so that I might encourage others to do the same. That too is a formidable committment to make, and one I will continue to wrestle mightily with. But it’s so necessary. No time for hiding now.