Domestic Left #9: Ruled By Fear
My very first memory is of gathering with a lot of other people during a tornado, in the laundry room in the basement of an apartment building. I must have been around one year old, as tornado season in Kansas tends to run April through June, and my parents only lived in Meadowbrook Apartments (incidentally, the center of Google Earth) for one year before purchasing a house.
Tornado sirens were a regular feature of growing up in Kansas, and the basement in our first house — especially the corner of it deemed to be the safest place to huddle during tornado warnings — was itself a little frightening. When we moved into a larger house with a semi-finished basement, I insisted on storing my Lego collection (at that age, my most prized possession, I guess) in the basement. Hurrying back home upon seeing one or more funnel clouds in the distance was not an uncommon experience.
Eventually I became enough of a “real Kansan” that upon hearing the sirens, my instinct was to go outside to look for the funnels, not rush to the basement. Even after more than two decades of living in the East, it turns out I still have this instinct — almost two years ago I was in Iowa for work and as some of my co-workers tracked whether the funnel clouds had touched down yet on their phones or inquired whether the bar we were in had a basement, I went out in the street and saw the most amazing and terrifying green sky.
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Another childhood memory that has stuck with me is the filming of The Day After in my hometown of Lawrence, when I was nine or so. In the course of filming, the crew made up sections of downtown to look like it had been covered in ash from a nuclear hit on nearby Kansas City, and they set up a tent city by the river. I’ve still never seen the film — seeing a few sets was enough. Some kids I got to know in junior high, who had attended a different elementary school, apparently had bit parts as, well, a classroom full of children dying.
I can’t really say how growing up with an intense awareness of the possibility of nuclear annihilation shaped me. I don’t remember feeling fear, exactly, or even anxiety, but I would definitely notice the “fallout shelter” signs in various buildings, and memorize where they were. You know, just in case. I don’t think we were subjected to the “hide under your desk” drills that people had to do in the 50s, but, as silly as those seem to us today, I guess it would have at least given me a sense that adults (beyond just my parents, and the people who wrote the mailings they got from the Union of Concerned Scientists) were aware of the possibility and had some kind of plan to deal with it.
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During a moment of listlessness a few weeks ago, I looked over at my guitar — which I hadn’t played in weeks if not months — and thought “I should play.” But I just couldn’t motivate myself to get out of bed. After some moments (and some introspection), I realized that what I was feeling was fear.
I’ve played less and less over the past few years. There were a few months in early 2019 when I made a paltry attempt to regularly practice a defined list of my own songs, and an even paltrier attempt to research places in Pittsburgh that might let me play them in front of other people. Otherwise, though, most of my playing has been of the “pick up the guitar and bang out a few songs” variety, often after a beer or two. As a (predictable) result, my playing had gotten sloppier, my singing even worse, and I had lost the calluses on the fingers of my left hand, thereby making playing for more than 10-15 minutes at a time somewhat painful. I found myself forgetting lyrics more often than not (I used to pride myself on knowing all seven verses of “Tangled Up in Blue” by heart, but recently I’d been transposing lines by accident, or occasionally skipping entire verses).
I’ve long ago come to terms with the fact that I’m never going to be a successful musician — even of the “plays occasionally in local coffeehouses” variety. But still, it’s difficult to pick up an instrument I’ve played for over 30 years and feel clumsy and awkward and that feeling is probably what I was fearing.
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Fear, like other negative emotions, has a purpose. It motivates us to avoid — or at least take seriously — things that are dangerous.
With all due respect to FDR, though, I think that fearing “fear itself” ... actually might be one of our problems. In February of 2019, I spent most of a week in a mid-sized rust-belt manufacturing town working with a large union local that was preparing for a strike. No matter what anyone says, the possibility of going on strike is frightening for almost everyone involved. The fear was palpable and, for the most part, unacknowledged (at least, no one admitted to being afraid themselves). Instead there was a lot of free-floating masculinity.
In this particular case, everything worked out in the end, for the most part — they pulled off a successful nine-day strike, ultimately won a decent contract, and maintained and maybe even strengthened the unity in the shop. Because there was a good local union with good leadership who helped people push through their fear into unifying and positive action.
As part of my job I get to moderate “discussion” on the UE Facebook page, which includes dealing with a fair number of Trumpian comments. I can’t help but thinking that the most troll-like among these folks, some of them members of that very same local, are driven by some fear (most likely losing their well-paid manufacturing job, but I’m sure there are others) that they are refusing to acknowledge, because men don’t show, or even acknowledge, fear.
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The last few weeks have been challenging for me on a number of levels, but one practice that has helped has been actually picking up my guitar every day and practicing a defined list of songs. My singing has improved, my calluses are back, and I can once again nail all seven verses of “Tangled Up in Blue.”
One of my mentors in the labor movement and on the left, Chris Townsend, recently published a “Letter to the Socialists, Old and New.” If you are interested in such things, and it hasn’t come across your inbox or social media yet, it is definitely worth a read — it’s quick and direct.
Somewhat longer is a major new UE publication we put out last week, called Them and Us Unionism, more or less laying out how our approach to unionism is based in a critique of capitalism. It’s a 24-page booklet, so a bit longer, but it’s also got pictures and drawings and a killer cartoon by UE cartoonist Fred Wright.
Back to playlists in this issue! Here are some of the cover songs I’ve been practicing. A perceptive observer might be able to pick out a number of pairs in the list, which will perhaps be the basis for some mildly amusing stage patter should I ever perform in public again. We shall see about that, I guess.