Why Write?

Why write? 

People aren’t cut out for reading. They’re incapable of joining the dots, except for the few destined for the madhouse. It’s tedious. Everyone’s talking politics, they call it. Sounds more like gossip to me. It’s crowding out articulate voices with animal noises and photoshopped faces.

You can’t teach about genocide via a movie. Movies are exterior. Suffering is interior. You can’t do justice to a genocide by focusing on the perpetrators and leaving the victims silent. Then you are perpetuating it. JoJo Rabbit is a tragically mistaken work. It provides little but a sympathetic Nazi and anti-Semitic ear worm taunts. I once wrote a poem using the n-word. Born from a life experience where it was embedded and recollected in the poem. I spent years editing and footnoting all trying to make it work, until finally I realized it was inherently flawed. I guess Hollywood rewards people who put entertainment and their artistic egos above morality. Most famous artists are unwise. Except about building their careers.

Perhaps because their audience is unwise. A lie can never become a truth. No matter how hard you work on it. It’s tedious writing this. I’ve sworn off writing about genocide. I think the survivors who said no art would ever do justice to the holocaust were right. But the genie is out of the bottle and the holocaust becomes mere aesthetics. It’s tedious having to remind people about this. My heart’s not in it. I’ve broken my mind too many times banging on the same wall. Do I really have to break it again? I promised myself not again.

But, I don’t know, I guess I think that as a privileged person I have a responsibility to defend victims. And so do you. So why are you silent?

 

©Malachi Doyle 2022.