On Whimsy
a manifesto about being a silly little guy who is full of love & building 0.0001% of communism
[december 2022]
(from GAY magazine, july 1970.)
i think a lot about optimism.
it's hard — sometimes nearly impossible! — to be optimistic about the future given the state of the present. countries all over the world are backsliding into fascism; capitalism is, you know, crushing us all; the pandemic is entering its third year and people have stopped caring; etc. we're all aware of the inescapable reality of our society. i don't need to go on and on about it; it'd just get depressing, and that's very far from the point of this little manifesto. it's just the baseline i'm working from, here. things suck.
things suck, so we have to imagine them better. we have to find joy where we can. i'm a strong believer in kindness and goodness and love — not strictly romantic love, but a more general kind of love for everything around us. i don't believe in god, but i think living with love for each other is kind of the same thing as god, when it comes down to it (or, at least, what god should be, when not used as an excuse for various forms of hate and violence).
i don't believe in destiny or fate or any kind of higher-power-given purpose to life, but equally, i do 100% believe that the reason for being alive is to be kind to each other, love each other, find beauty in the world, and let yourself be whimsical.
it's a choice you have to make actively, i think; it is, after all, much easier to get bitter and cynical about the world, and i'm not going to pretend i don't fall into that trap with some frequency. i used to be very cynical, and used to try to convince myself that selfishness was the only way to live — capitalism is an every-person-for-themselves sort of system in a lot of ways, and when you're someone who's never had a lot of money or resources, it's really easy to be swayed by capitalist propaganda that the only way to rise up is to push others down along the way.
maybe that's true. maybe you can only be a billionaire if you hurt everybody under you to get there, but in my opinion, that makes the whole thing null and void — there is no point in having wealth or power if that's the only way to get it. (looking at you, bezos/musk/etc.) there's just no point! it's baffling that anybody would want to live such a hollow existence. there's so much to love in the world and infinite beauty, and our time here is so limited. spending that time focused on making life great for yourself and hell for everyone else around you is worse than useless.
so i believe in a life full of love. i believe in kindness. i believe that, when all of their basic needs are accounted for, people are generally good, and that nobody is born evil. i believe we can take care of each other. i've got a rule for myself that whenever i see something (a piece of art, an outfit, etc) and have an gut instinct negative reaction to it, i have to pick out something i really like about it, too. i can almost always find something i love in it. i believe in finding love wherever i can.
see beauty in everything!!! find something to like about everything!!! be kind to others and in the process figure out how to be kind to yourself as well!!!!
if it's a leaf you can eat it
(late-game spoilers for disco elysium follow. you can skip to the next header if you'd like to avoid those!)
disco elysium is a game about... a lot of things, really, but we're not talking about all of that right now. right now, i'm focusing on a couple of small moments, most of which have to do with a character called the insulindian phasmid.
the phasmid is a cryptid who has existed for hundreds or thousands of years, and has lived through four forms of government and multiple failed revolutions. your player character is the first person who has spoken to the phasmid and gotten proof of her existence. she's a 9-foot tall stick bug who camouflages in tall seaside reeds and collects small objects stolen from people (a passport, an armored helmet, a rifle scope) to play with.
she's a thousand years old, and her answer to the question "why bother existing? what's the point?" is "sometimes you'll find a leaf you can eat."
"yum yum."
when i first played the game i glossed over this bit as just something a little silly, but i keep coming back to it. the phasmid is aware of all the intricacies of the world — she talks, too, about the approaching apocalypse, and being able to speak to all the other creatures of the earth. she's infinitely wise and miraculous, and she says beautiful things — and she believes in enjoying the universe and being a little bit silly.
(there's another character you find slightly before the phasmid, a human who has spent several decades alone, thinking about the world and its failures and growing angry and bitter. he studies the world so ferociously he never has time to actually enjoy it. i think he's a good foil to the phasmid — you can think so deeply about everything around you that you end up hating it, or you can have compassion for things wildly different than you & find joy in eating a tasty leaf.)
it's important to be a little weird. a little silly. a bit of a jester. a funny little guy.
i collect weird little objects that fill me with inexplicable fondness — an antique clown doll i found in the bottom of a barrel in an antique store; a teeny-tiny clayfellows figurine holding an even tinier mug; playing cards i find on the sidewalk sometimes that i believe, improbably, will someday add up to a full deck; a menorah shaped like a dinosaur. my best friend has a collection of dolls, and i once helped him bundle them all in doll-sized winter clothes and take them to the roof during a snowstorm to take pictures of them playing in the snow. i wear long skirts just because i like spinning in them and feeling them swish around my legs.
i know the world is often bad. it isn't naivety to imagine it better; it's a choice. apathy is how capitalism and fascism and hatred thrive. but the world is full of wonder — full of leaves you can put in your mouth, yum yum.
in the same conversation with the insulindian phasmid, when you're saying goodbye, you have a choice to tell her "of all the creatures i've met, you are the kindest." at the start of the game, your player character wakes up without any memory of who he is or what the world is like; he's effectively only been alive for a week-and-change, and in that time he learns about an apocalyptic force devouring the world, he gets shot twice by mercenaries, he sees evidence of brutal war and poverty that has left most of his generation traumatized and parentless. and even with all of that, you can choose to make kindness the most important thing. you can see a miracle and call it kind.
at another point in the game, you can take a moment out of your murder investigation to paint a phrase on a blank wall. one of the options is, in giant red letters: SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IS GOING TO HAPPEN.
there's a billion little moments like this in the game. you can convince a shopkeeper to let her daughter come inside from the cold instead of standing outside to advertise their store. you can see a girl who looks cold sitting on the ice, and give her your hat. you can get an angry, slur-yelling twelve year old to open up to you about his abusive dad, and maybe even get the kid out of there so he can't be hurt anymore. you can sing karaoke and dedicate the song to your partner. you can help some 20-something-year-olds set up a dance club in an old church. you can call into your partner's favorite radio station and get him some merch. most of these things don't even have any real benefit for your character — you don't have to do any of them to beat the game. you don't have to be kind, but you can make the choice: to wake up, a blank slate, and be gentle with the world around you.
(of course, all of these choices are optional, and you can do horrible things, too; the game is, in the end, about a cop, and doesn't ignore how shitty cops are. still, the kind options stand out to me.)
disco elysium was created by a small team of estonian communists (who shouted out marx and engels in their game awards victory speech), and the game takes place in a city/country that had a successful communist revolution, briefly, and then was swiftly beaten down by an international force that's still got its guns aimed over the city decades later. it also makes reference to the bubbling unrest in the city, and a coming movement called "le retour" or "the return", and a figure called "girl child revolution" (who's meant to herald the communist revolution, and may or may not also be the girl who gave the player character the paintbrush to put that phrase on the wall). your character can gain a thought project in the game about communism, with the goal to "build 0.0001% of communism". i think that's important context for all of this. my optimism and belief in love go hand in hand with my communism. i think communism is at its best and most functional when it's rooted in love for one another, and i think that kind of system is the only real way forward for society. the optimism of disco elysium feels hand-in-hand with my own.
disco elysium wants to believe in a better future. disco elysium says something beautiful is going to happen, despite the horrors of the past and the present. disco elysium says you can be optimistic and be a little bit silly and help people, and it will make the world 0.0001% better, and that's more than nothing.
tumblr user constellatedlove: "don’t be scared to live lovingly. compliment your friends on the little things and cheer for live bands in small cafes and leave tips when you can. tell the person you saw that you really like their shirt and write cards and letters to the people you love. make playlists for people and don’t be afraid to express your appreciation for others. life is so much better when you live it with love."
there's an interview with jewish antifascist musician ezra furman where she talks about her belief in the coming of a messianic age. i don't believe in the same kind of utopia she does, but i do wholeheartedly believe that being able to imagine a better world is vital to survival.
///
EF: Let me say something that surely not everyone agrees with. I believe in the coming of a messianic age. There’s an insidious temptation to say: “This is how it’s always been. This is how it’s always gonna be.” The oppression of the poor and oppression in general and money controlling everything, state-sponsored murder, that kind of stuff. People stop short of saying “That’s how it should be.” But it kind of doesn’t matter if you say it should or shouldn’t be that way if you say that that’s the way it always was and always will be.
JG: That’s kind of the idea of capitalist realism, that people have been so immersed in capitalism they can no longer envision a coherent alternative.
EF: Messianism is really extreme in terms of what we can imagine: a world without war or oppression or poverty. A world where evil holds no currency and is laughed at. It matters a lot for me to yearn for that actively. And I do. I do it every day. I pray. Messianism is something that even a lot of people who are into Judaism are shy about. But it matters to me to insist that the world could be perfected. It gets you working on it.
///
EF: I do relate when people talk about hope as a cruel practice. I know what they mean. I wouldn’t tell anyone who feels disgusted by the idea of hope that they have to feel it. But you’ve got to do something. I think I’m doing anti-despair work. I first put that into words when my band and I played a concert the night after the 2016 presidential election. And that’s the first time I said, “This band is an anti-despair machine.”
The Jewish tradition has called despair the greatest sin. There’s a lot of really understandable reasons you would feel despair, or like despair is the sensible reaction to our situation. But some of us need fuel to avoid that. Some of us can’t survive it. Probably the reason people are squeamish about messianic talk or utopia talk is because it seems to suggest that someone else will come solve all the problems and we don’t need to work on them. You just have to understand that that’s not the point. The point is to situate ourselves from a position of: This world is wrong, something is wrong.
gerard way, talking about my chemical romance's album danger days: We want to be the band thats dancing when the bomb goes off. The message being: the world is fucked, but dont lose hope. The albums key concept, he says, is: Keep running. Dont ever stop. Youve got to keep running to stay free.
i found this on tumblr user z0v's blog, but i can't figure out if they're the original source or not. if anyone knows, please let me know!
![]()
more from disco elysium:
YOU — "But what if you don't believe there *is* a future?"
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST — "Then you don't believe in the historic role of the proletariat, which means you also reject the basis of historical materialism."
ECHO MAKER — "It means you're not a communist, in other words."
YOU — "Okay, but what if you *know* there isn't going to be a future?"
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST — "I'm not sure I get what you're driving at. Of course there will be a future, even if the form it takes might appear unrecognizable. That's the spiral of progress."
"I guess you could say we believe it *because it's impossible*." He looks at the scattered matchboxes on the ground. "It's our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain... like this..."
VOLITION [Easy: Success] — No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive.
YOU — "What do you see?"
JOYCE MESSIER — "Great bodies of water, forest-covered surfaces... clusters of light where the cities lie. You've seen the montage, we all have — this world is enough," she concludes.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Legendary: Success] — It *must* be. This is the greatest and kindness arrangement the atoms had in them.
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
But that was last night. This morning
the sun is coming alive in the kitchen.
You've gone to get us gas station coffee
and there is so much life all over the place.
from Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón
The Conditional by Ada Limón
Say tomorrow doesn't come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun's a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl's eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon's a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt's plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen's a cow's corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn't matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you'd still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.
from tumblr user radicalgraff, spotted in clackamas, oregon:
from tumblr user pilgrimattinkercreek1974
2023
- COLLECT PHYSICAL MEDIA
- SAVE RECEIPTS AS ROOM DECOR
- READ AND REREAD AND REREAD AND REREAD
- LOSE YOUR PHONE
- ORANGE
- LOSE AMBITION
- KILL THE SHAME MAN
- DANCE IN THE KITCHEN
- WINE AND ESSAYS
- BUSES ARE ALIVE
tumblr user pointnclick:
Unironically waiting for the bus in the rain rn. Real ones know ✌️🌧️🚌☔
[added some time later]
I've been here for over an hour soaking wet and pathetic and a truck driving by fully stopped in the street and reversed into the parking lot behind me. This older gentleman got it and came up to me and said "can I give you a gift?" And I asked "what's that?" And he gave me an umbrella from his truck and left. Now I'm dryer. The world is full of kindness and beauty btw. If you even care. Message to all my sopping wet sweeties
tumblr user hyrude:
is the world really such a terrible place? yesterday i asked if oat milk was extra and the barista said yes so i said ok just regular milk then and when she gave me my chai latte she whispered “i used oat milk ;)” doesnt that make u want to live another day?
///
here is my life philosophy: next week there might be someone ahead of you in line at the store who’s short a quarter and you have a quarter and you can give it to them. if you weren’t there, they’d have to put something back. the week after that you could be getting lunch and the waiter might ask if you want some pancakes someone else ordered and never picked up. you could find someone’s lost cat. you could watch someone’s bag while they go to the restroom. there are so many ways you are going to touch other people’s lives and they are going to touch yours and there’s no way to know when it’s going to happen. so you have to keep living!!! i wouldn’t want to die knowing that tomorrow the barista will give me free oat milk just to be nice.
everything everywhere all at once (2022)
"you think i'm weak, don't you? all those years ago, when we first fell in love, your father would say my heart was too soft. maybe he was right.
you tell me that it's a cruel world, and we're all just running around in circles. i know that. i've been on this earth just as many days as you.
when i choose to see the good side of things, i'm not being naive. it's strategic and necessary. it's how i've learned to survive through everything.
i know you see yourself as a fighter. i see myself as one too. this is how i fight."
tumblr user tallahasseemp3:
i don’t think humans are inherently bad i just don’t. once i posted about how i can’t ever get poached eggs right and someone took time out of their day to send me tips on how to make them. they used their finite time on this planet to teach me how to poach an egg with no motivation other than helping a stranger have a better breakfast and if that isn’t proof humanity is worth saving i don’t know what is
a twitter thread on new years eve, 2021, by john darnielle of the mountain goats:
so I was washing potatoes last night when I got excited
it was just one of those moments, you know. I was getting dinner together and I looked at the ingredients coming together on the counter
and I thought to myself, and said aloud, "Hell yes, I have three potatoes"
living with me means having to develop a robust tolerance for hearing a guy occasionally cry out aloud: saying, for example, "Hell yes, I have three potatoes"
but over and above my everyday state of excitement about the ten trillion small things that ease the path a little -- colors, shades, sounds, flavors, sensations, moods, fleeting thoughts, moments of transcendence when you're very lucky --
I had one of those moments of gratitude to have food. and not just the food but a counter to prep it on and a stove for cooking
but it wasn't just the food and the kitchen and the comforts of home, either
it was me standing at the stove in a house where I'm safe. got here on my own two feet. had a lot of help. plenty of points where I wouldn't have bet on the outcome. now I have three potatoes, you know?
here's the thing
some of you reading this are in houses where you're not safe all the time, and I know it
some of you are day-to-day with any of a thousand different troubles and on any given day you feel like you might buckle
maybe you've felt like that a lot of times over the past couple years. A lot of people have. some people have felt that way who'd had some preparation, and some people have found themselves navigating scary, unfamiliar straits
but if you're reading this right now you managed to make it work. maybe it doesn't feel like it worked all that well, maybe you feel like you're coasting across the goal line with no fuel at all left in the tank,
but here you are
here you are.
having found some way to nourish yourself through it.
look at the calendar, look at the clock. you sustained yourself through this. maybe you got sick, maybe it was real bad. maybe some things got better and maybe they got worse. but give yourself the gift of a long look in the mirror
look at the person hard, uncertain times, in days of sickness everywhere, will see another year
that's the person who will do it again, and to that person, over and over, I say, loud enough for the neighbors to hear,
Hell yes, hell yes, hell yes, hell yes, hell yes
from all of us here at Mountain Goats Central Command a thank you for seeing us through 2021. it was so good to see you in the flesh again. stay safe. trust yourselves. we will see one another through to safer times
this year's New Year's Eve thread is dedicated to that one guy who's mad about people wishing one another happy new year: may he never know why people actually do it
and may the rest of us, collectively, defiantly, never forget it /thread
from 17776 by jon bois:
Nine: They sent them off to a factory for women to do it.
Mimi: Naturally.
Nine: They had to literally sew the program into the board, strand by strand. Two of them would sit opposite from one another and check each other’s work. If you made even one error out of countless thousands upon thousands – if you mistakenly looped even a single zero instead of a one – the entire thing was ruined. The steadiness of hand it required, the artistry, the unreasonable attention to detail it took, I can’t even begin to imagine. What no one quite understood at the time is that everything makes an imprint, however atomic or faint it might be.
Mimi: Mhmm, I’ve seen documentaries. Except it stuck with y’all because -
Nine: Right, because they shot us in space shortly thereafter. There was nothing out here to erode it. So, you know, fast-forward thousands of years, I wake up, and I have nothing to do but sort through these mountains upon mountains of imprints that are all over me. In a sense, I got to “hear” what people were saying while they were around me, or at least, the collection of parts that became me. They talked about a lot of things. A lot about their children. A lot of telling each other they were taking a lunch break. That’s something I came to understand very early on: people love lunch. They interrupt everything they’re doing just for lunch.
Mimi: I can’t blame ‘em. Making you sounds like it’s hard work.
Nine: Yeah. I sort of think of them as my godparents, all of those people who built me. The researchers at Ames, the technicians at Cape Kennedy, those women in the factory. All that time, all those threads, weaving through something that must have been far too confusing to enjoy.
Mimi: I think that's love.
Nine: I know that’s love. They didn’t know what I’d be or who I’d be, but they loved me. If you read human history up to the year 1868, you’d never imagine that people were just a hundred years from launching me into space with all these sophisticated instruments and experiments. I feel like I wasn’t “supposed” to happen that soon, that it should have taken hundreds more years to figure out something like me and send me into the cosmos. I have about as much onboard memory as a dishwasher, maybe a little more. And they had to sew it by hand even to get that much. It feels like they shouldn’t have been able to do it.
Mimi: That’s how much they loved you, isn’t it? That’s how badly they wanted to bring you into the universe.
Nine: It is. I think about them a lot. I remember them all. Some made it to today, a lot of them didn’t. They’ll always be a part of me.
