The Boss, People.
I’m flying into New Jersey to do a little part in the Springsteen biopic, Deliver Me From Nowhere. I get to pretend like I’m a recording engineer for a few days. Knobs and such. Not too many lines, just the illusion of riding the faders.
I played Largo with the band the other night and I think it went pretty well, I feel like I’m singing and playing better in front of people. It doesn’t seem like a big deal but overcoming fears and doing new things is just as impactful in your sixties as it was when I was kid.
It’s always good to unload some fears. Free up some space and try not to let it be filled by expanding existing fears.
This anticipatory period of despair is only for another month. Trying to live life as we understand it now, with a bit more intensity, is fraught with the nagging reality of the oncoming cultural and political shit show that will shift our way of being.
Anxiously (and not the good kind) waiting for chaos. I imagine it will start with an oppressive display of ham-fisted garishness followed by days or weeks of theatrical signings of executive orders and immediate investigations of innocent people and the pardoning of traitors while moving people who live and work here into camps or prisons. Ringing in the new year with fear and desperation for millions while millions more celebrate it. The new cultural norm of thriving on the thrill they get from seeing people defeated, hopeless, in pain and ostracized for any number of reasons.
Their bootlicking clown puppets will buffer them with hack anti-woke jokes that they believe imply inclusivity, but are inclusive only as long as their terms are accepted and the terms are their cultural dominance. Their idea of free speech is reveling in ‘Shut the fuck up, you fucking babies.’ Many will.
No reason to legislate authoritarianism. It will just happen at the hands of so many willing to terrorize and troll people into silence and compliance.
Good times.
Maybe I’m being a little extreme. I hope so.
The movie The Order is now out in theaters. Maybe that’s why I’m being a bit dark in this dispatch. It’s the true story of the first white nationalist domestic terrorist group in the States. I play the radio host Alan Berg who was gunned down in his driveway for the way he thought and talked. It was only a few minutes of screen time but it resonates.
Every state has at least one operating domestic terrorist group now and the incoming administration is sympathetic to their agenda on some level.
The movie was directed by Justin Kurzel, who I talk to on Thursday's show. I watched many of his other movies. He's a great filmmaker. It’s grim, dark, poetic Australian stuff. Check it out if you have the tolerance for that. The films I watched are Snowtown, Nitram and True History of Kelly Gang. Great films.
Today I talk to Bobbi Althoff. She’s a bit of a viral sensation with her odd interviews of entertainers. I was kind of curious about her and her character but the conversation turned out to be very informative about what show business is now, with the younger generation. I also found her story quite engaging and inspiring somehow.
Enjoy!
Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda live!
Love,
Maron
