...Time The Bastards Fell!

All our narrative work is about enlarging the social imagination.

For years I have been saying, “Culture moves before politics.” But right now I think culture is moving in, under, and around politics. 

I was interviewing the genius visual/performance artist and Dead Pioneers punk band leader Gregg Deal yesterday and I asked him, “What do artists need to be doing right now?” 

A Gregg Deal painting from his "End of Silence” survey show quoting Stiff Little Fingers “Suspect Device”!!!

Visit GreggDeal.com

“I am not under the impression that anybody is pulling back,” Gregg said. “In fact, I think that there's better art being created this time around than there was in 2016.” 

I think he’s right. 

I mean, it’s always the right time for a roaring Indigenous-led punk rock band with a bold frontman, some of the most compelling rebel images since It Takes A Nation of Millions, not to mention the music! — blazing ass riffs over loud lyrics on #LandBack, Pretendians, racial capitalism, and the toxic manosphere — but especially right fucking now.

What I am seeing is that we’re as bold these days as we’ve ever been. I know I haven’t felt this creatively alive in a long time.

They’re trying to force us to accept their world. But we have never stopped creating the world that we want. 

Right now we’ve seen the memeification of Toni Morrison’s famous 2004 quote (read her whole piece here for full effect):

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” 

Over the past two decades, we’ve made huge strides in advancing our narratives and building cultural power. We’ve seen millions in the streets for immigrants, for economic justice, for climate justice, for Black Lives. Never forget! We’ve got civilizations to heal.

And that is why they’re coming at us with everything. 

But as the ground shifts, we will find crevices and advantages when and where we are strategic. Please remind yourself of this every day you open your media feed. It’s a long guerilla war and most of it won’t be appearing on the front page of the New York Times.

One of the things we did today is to relaunch a new website today at jeffchang.net. Come visit! It’s a personal anthology covering the past two decades or so. But it’s also part of a collective testament to all the great things we’ve all been doing, including building theory and tools for cultural and narrative strategy. 

If you’ve been looking for ways to get creative and meet this moment in your own ways, the Strategy tab of the new website offers essential source materials, toolkits, and more. Specifically, we include the Cultural New Deal and the Butterfly Lab For Immigrant Narrative Strategy reports and toolkits.

Take them. They’re ours.

Toni wrote,

“Forcing a nation to use force is easy when the citizenry is rife with discontent, experiencing feelings of a powerlessness that can be easily soothed by violence. And when the political discourse is shredded by an unreason and hatred so deep that vulgar abuse seems normal, disaffection rules. Our debates, for the most part, are examples unworthy of a playground: name-calling, verbal slaps, gossip, giggles, all while the swings and slides of governance remain empty.”

But she also concluded,

“Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.”

Remember…

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They can’t stop us. We are waves, we are swarms, we are seeds.

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Also in heavy rotates this week:

• Lazarus Soundtrack - Kamasi Washington and Floating Points, whuuuuuuuut?!!!! Plus Bonobo + more for the hell of it.

And leaving you with these…