16 Comments

Thank you for this, once again made me smile after a day of a few tears. Thank you ❤️

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I was outside, enjoying myself by a creek with my cat and a friend when I read this. Would you have yelled at me?

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Likely not, as I mostly don't. It wasn't a yell really, more a firm comment, and I did say sorry to them a few minutes later. Scary Wizard!

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Thank you for saying what you mean! May a cascade of saying-what-we-mean end this age of deadening denial. Capital has already foreclosed so much, we may as well do and say what’s real, in/to spite

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Hah. Love that meme!! I told a group of LBNL engineers “you gotta stop circle jerking each other and start listening before designing more crap that doesn’t work for real people” in Cali a month ago, and they were less offended than when I outed myself as an ecological socialist. That’s when I shot all credibility 🙄

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Lost credibility with some, gained it with others probs

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Adam McGrath just won Te Manu Taki Ahurea o te Tau / Best Folk Artist at the Tūīs (Aotearoa music awards)

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Thats awesome. I used to be an angry hippy... this book changed me...

I think I already linked you...

https://buildingabetterworldbook.com/

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So many great thoughts here. It struck me that you quote the same line from Bo Burnham which I have listened to on repeat probably hundreds of times, and then the fact that Bo actually did some pretty ugly stuff in real life and then thinking about the weirdness of people who can express certain incredibly powerful ideas in such a perfect way but then still be shitty in other ways, and how normal and weird that is.

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I feel like Inside is Bo reckoning with his former sins to some extent

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That might very much be the case. I do find him still insular in the sense that he has chosen to grow by gazing within but not by making amends with those he hurt. It’s a very white way to grow.

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Also, after he dropped out of the public eye for his standup after being overwhelmed by panic attacks, he went on to play a difficult role in the movie Promising Young Woman, and made the movie Eighth Grade: it's a retelling of what it was like to grow up when he did, except that the protagonist is a teenage girl. I see both of these as attempts to make amends with the arseholery of his youngly-famous former self.

That's the story as I know it, anyway, but I'm a big Bo fan, and you may be talking about something else. I find him genuinely self-reflective to an eviscerating degree-- I think fundamentally it's the honesty of his work that's redemptive.

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I have a lot of really conflicting thoughts on this, and reaching far beyond Bo as a person. It’s something that happens a lot with a certain type of creative, intelligent, sharp person who engages with their humanness in a specific way. I strongly suffered through this with Louis CK who I thought was one of those people who could just slice through bullshit and point out the ugly spots in himself and others, but then it turns out that yeah, he CAN do that, but pointing out ugly spots is not the same as removing them… Same for, say, Jon Stewart who poses as this ‘speaking truth to power’ person and that, much like being a Wizard, just begins to carry a sort of responsibility - you cannot speak truth to power on all subjects but one. It breaks the spell. Same with Jonathan Pie in England, who broke my heart badly with the same trick - I speak clear-eyed truth relentlessly…. until I find a massive elephant in the room and dance around it like it isn’t there. I tried to ignore that one missing piece and enjoy the rest but the rest is somehow rendered completely meaningless. It is very sad.

Anyway I don’t want to malign Bo because I think he is brilliant and he surely grows as we all do and his insight is both poetic and sharp. But there is also a meanness to him that I think is not entirely for laughs. Like in that same song when he’s singing ‘get your fucking hands up……’ and then at one point shouts at the audience, along the lines of ‘I SAID GET THEM UPP!!’ in a very mean tone, I can’t listen to that part. It’s weird that I have listened to one part of the song on repeat for days and weeks and assiduously avoided another part of that same song. But that playing with relationships and power and influence, playing with your own discomfort and the discomfort of others, there’s a great intelligence there but also a meanness. That’s how it reads to me at least.

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Yes. I see what you mean.

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Thank you. You’ve galvanised me into action.

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