A Massive Bob
How To Be a Person for Monday, September 30th, 2024
A pendulum is a weight called a bob suspended from a pivot so it can swing freely. In Math there is a simple gravity pendulum that swings without friction. This is so nerds can measure things like amplitude and bob’s trajectory. In real life there are other forces affecting the period of oscillation, like gravitational pull and friction.
The pendulum is within us and without. A starving man overeats and is soon vomiting. A suicidal person gets a terminal cancer diagnosis. You fall head over heels in love but soon the head and the heels find their rightful places.
Does the stomach learn? Is the depressive impatient for their death bed? Do we ever stop looking for love?
Story dictates a massive bob. The greater the distance between adversity and victory the more satisfied the audience. When we tell a story to a friend we consider the beginning, middle and end, we exaggerate and we punctuate. We use expression and our voice and our hands to add the friction. Whether we are actors or not we are wired up to perform.
Everyone has to know how to talk these days. Be it an interview, a podcast, a Lunch & Learn, a Tedx or a keynote. We all have an audience to serve. We are always on. Now we say things like The best version of ourselves and Very online because the camera is ever-present.
The pendulum is political and social. Strong man politics is on the rise. The world is ending. Again. You can worry — but how will that help? Besides, fear impacts judgement. When faced with adversity the greatest revenge is to make art from the misery. We need more artists not less. Bob is swinging towards peak art.
In authoritarian regimes the artists are the first to go. Stalin required art meet certain criteria. Hitler controlled artists because he knew they threaten a dictatorship. Art creates new pathways for subversion. It gives kids ideas.
And it’s happening today. In 2017 the Trump administration wanted to cut spending to the National Endowment for the Arts. 180 kms south of Mar-a-Lago, in 2015 the Cuban artist El Sexto spent ten months in prison for his anti-Castro art. PEN America has reported book banning in America has tripled last year.
Dogs gonna to bark. Haters gonna hate. And bob’s gonna swing. It’s up to the artists to remind us there is utility in the friction. T’was always thus.