Keep the Devil Down In The Hole
The Audacity of Hope
I was really lost on what to write about this week until I scrolled to a quote that grabbed me by the lapels. I wish I could say I was reading Tolstoy, the new Rooney, honestly anything but what I was reading— twitter (don’t correct me I don’t care if it’s X now. What do you do on X? You tweet, because it’s twitter). Jack Antonoff, frontman of Bleachers, and probably the most powerful and influential producer in pop music at the moment, tweeted a quote from writer and musician Nick Cave from when he was on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Someone wrote to Cave saying they were feeling empty and more cynical than ever, and they did not want to pass this on to their small son. What should they do, and does Cave still have faith in people? The entire question and response is in the clip above, a portion of Cave’s response is below:
“Unlike cynicism hopefulness is hard earned, makes demands upon us and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time we come to find that this is so.” —Nick Cave
Depending on who you ask I’m pretty optimistic for a cynic or I’m pretty pessimistic for an optimist, but this quote gave me permission, if only for a moment, to affirm other people are worth believing in. Being hopeful right now is not for the faint of heart. There was a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden this week that was more breathtakingly vile than I thought it would be. I won’t post that vitriol here, Google is at your disposal. Trump and his campaign were well aware what their rally would be compared to and they held it anyway. It will be remembered as a modern-day white nationalist rally, but instead of white sheets people proudly wore red MAGA hats, unafraid to show their faces.
Democratic and institutional norms are at stake. I’ve seen more photos and videos this year of people sobbing over their dead children’s bodies and tiny body bags lining roads than I should see in a lifetime. Pregnant women are dying in hospitals from preventable conditions because doctors are afraid to treat them out of fear of prosecution due to the change in abortions laws. I could go on. And on and on and on. If you’re looking for reasons to be cynical they’re not difficult to find.
I named this blog “jump the turnstile” as opposed to “Fresh Hell” or “Satan’s Armpit” or some other snarky name to remind myself as much as other people to remain hopeful. Optimism is rarely framed as a strong, warrior-like quality, but the reason I love these words from Cave is the truth of them. Ceding to cynicism is easy. Remaining hopeful and open-hearted takes courage and nerve and a hell of a lot of strength, especially when there are a litany of reasons to despair. The mainstream narrative is to be hopeful and idealistic is to be weak, soft, and stupid. Any advocacy for a sense of collectivism, for empathy for others is for losers. Cutting corners and cheating makes you smart and stepping on the necks of those who have fewer protections is a sign of strength, a twisted sense of toughness. I refuse to relent to the right wing politicans’s craven opportunism. I refuse I refuse I refuse.
I heard there were some baseball games. I hope everyone had fun. People can say what they want about LA and LA sports fans, but they have self-respect which is a lot more than I can say for many supposedly “great” sports fandoms.
When you have a tiny person to take care of and it’s Halloween, dressing them up as various pieces of produce or characters or critters makes it a bit easier to keep the devil down in the hole. I dressed my tiny person in 3 different costumes and they attended at least 5 Halloween parties this week. At the one in our building they got up on stage while the magician was performing and threw their arms in the air believing the applause was for them. It was funny until they wouldn’t leave the stage.
NYC does nothing by halves, Halloween especially. The Upper East Side looked like the set of “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” The Upper West Side was shut down for one gigantic neighborhood Halloween block party. The village is famously terrifying, and Brooklyn is just morbid. I don’t know how much money people in Brooklyn spend on fake blood but it looked like there was a blood bank heist. Don’t get me started on the various fake bodies/body parts. Downtown they have the Halloween parade every year where hundreds of the best professional dancers in the world perform “Thriller” as they march down 6th avenue with the Empire State Building in the background, and every time I see it I think “I f***ing love New York.”
I was a VERY good girl and had a 2 week streak buying NO lipstick and only broke it for the Sephora Sale. I bought Pat McGrath in Nude Venus. This week I’ve been wearing Pat McGrath in Omi, and I guess everyone else has too because it seems to be sold out everywhere. I’ve also been wearing Vibe by Laura Mercier.
I hope everyone has a great weekend if they can. And I hope you vote, whether it’s early or on election day. In these times there isn’t really such a thing as not voting, so I hope you go to the polls and properly cast your vote, and I hope for all of our sakes that vote is for Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz.