...It's More of a Manifesto

It was February of 1497, when a monomaniacal, Dominican monk, named Savonarola, called for the citizens of Florence to gather those possessions deemed artifacts of human sin and congregate in the Piazza della Signoria. And in this L-shaped piazza, on its large and puddled slabs of stone, a stock pile of vanity -- mirrors, cosmetics, dresses, musical instruments, books, pictures, and even masterpieces of Renaissance art – were set aflame. This event, known since as “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” stands as a violent reminder of the destructive nature of a society that allows its religion to infiltrate its politics and manipulates its citizenry with fear-mongering and deeply instilled paranoia.

And holding fast to the memory of this historic lesson, we ignite a flame of our own, not to the vanities but to the inanities of our culture – to the drivel, the hypocrisy, and the ineptitudes of those short sighted, long winded few in charge of and responsible for far too many. Savonarola’s was blinding, anarchistic; ours will be illuminating and electric. His darkened the world around it by contrast; ours will be lit by a 4^th of July sparkler and its rejuvenating glow will warm the tired bones of a country growing old before its time. The flames of our conflagration will strip off the subterfuge of partisan ideologies and layers of enmity and apathy, so that we can once again glimpse the lessons of our past and the wisdom of our elders. And from these ashes will rise a new Renaissance, for just as with every upcoming generation, we carry a banner and on it reads, “Hope.” No matter what calamitous and self-propelling evils have been set in place, we carry a banner; despite bleak outlooks and “Ask Again Laters” from our Magic 8 balls, we carry a banner to signal a new era in which all things point towards novelty and originality. From out of the teachings of history the future will be ushered in, glowing with the embers of our bonfire.

Bob Dylan said, “An artist must always be in a state of becoming,” and so, as we steady our aim and crystallize our might we stand as the artists of our country’s future, one born anew in our minds as a rich tapestry of multifarious and strange forms. Dylan’s generation, the generation of the 1960’s sought their revolution under a limiting blanket of anti-establishment sentiments, their rhetoric marked by a swirling psychedelia of vagaries and indignation. Theirs was a movement of unparalleled optimism but overwhelming futility. Their legacy is more a cautionary tale than a template on which to base ours, for we do not seek to oppose the establishment, but remold it in our image. We are a generation forged from a capitalist mold – our pragmatism will succeed where their flower power could not; our education and ambition will guide us to where their musicians and aging beatniks and psychedelic shamans could not. There will be no turning on, tuning in, and/or dropping out for us. There will be no rest for the weary, because we are hungry; there will be no Zack Morris “time outs,” because we do not need a mid-episode recap; there will be no half-time to our quarter-life crisis, because we have crammed for the tests that life brings and are ready for them. And those of us who believe themselves unprepared for the task at hand will know no discouragement nor hindrance. We must begin now, but none will be left behind.

We are young… and we are teeming with hope and idealism, full and fearsome, with reckless curiosity and open minds. We are only too aware that no one creed or demographic holds the answers for us all, that not from a single slice will we define our American Apple Pie, but only from the confluence and synthesis of clashing and antithetical opinions will the solutions take shape. Never before have we seen our world so filled with injustice, corruption, and artistic scarcity, yet never before has the world seen such a unique period of hope and possible redemption. With the promethean flame of the internet we are closer than ever – to each other, to the means and information with which can realize the fulfillment of our potential.

We are young… and we will not stand pat, arms dragging idly by our sides, soaking up the endlessly radiating signals, calling to us like sirens of lethargy from our televisions, while the next wave of ideologues and careerists flood our nation and our world with their closed mindedness deeply rooted, their ears (and eventually their hearts) too clogged to hear the voice of our nation gasping for change and new direction. We will cut them off at the pass. Ours will not be to confront those of our generation whose beliefs and opinions differ; no, ours will be to welcome them with a fabric-softened embrace into our ever burgeoning numbers. “You are one of us. We are some of many,” we will say, though we know that in the now dim, soon blazing light of our future there will be no “us and them” -- no opposing sides locked in continuous stalemate, but one vast and interconnected, enmeshed and borderless blob of Humanity, pulsating to the tempo of our passion.

We are young… and we are strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Though we may not yet be able to glimpse the ends of our means, progress needs action, change needs motion, and the embers of our bonfire need the winds of all our exhaled opinions to stoke its flame. Together, let us sing of the body eclectic, the body politic, and the body electric (boogie woogie woogie). Together we will edify, electrify, spark and proliferate, congregate and commiserate, so that our beautiful polyphonic rants and unflinching awareness will spread throughout the land, like purple horseshoes, red balloons, blue moons, and magic rainbows, giving life and taste to the bland and indigestible toasted oats of the current culture. As we begin our quest, our voices will not be silenced or misheard for we will speak directly to power, casting aside the mediating mechanisms that hear with selective ears and speak with personal agendas. We will settle for nothing less than full frontal democracy, stark and naked, beautiful and new.