The Lonely Crowd

Are u someone who chronically marches to the beat of a different drummer (it's called in the DSM "Marching to the Feet of a Different Drummer Syndrome")? Have you, in fact, made a profession out of it to the extent that you experience a sinking feeling in even the most harmless of marches, say a march in support of poetry? Is it something like Orpheus turning his head? You watch your soul falling into the nothingness of assembly. Yes humans are social animals but does that mean they require these self-congratulatory rituals in which u preach to the choir? There have always been marches. There was the famed NRA Day parade which brought workers of all persuasions together during the depression. There were all the marches on Washington against racism and then the war in Vietnam. Now that the divisions are even more pronounced and outcry more angry, there’s an urgency to these expressions of discontent that’s also mixed with implacability. No MAGA Republican will be persuaded by facts. No judicial proceeding will offer proof of malfeasance. Yet what if everyone were like u! What if everyone refused to protest? Remember that Twilight Zone where Shelley Berman played the malcontent who gets his wish that the whole world be like him ("The Mind and the Matter," #63, 5/12/61)? Think about it?

read the review of Francis Levy's The Kafka Studies Department on Booklife

and listen to "Love Train" by the O'Jays