Children of the future Age
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.
William Blake
This is the sickness, right here. The moment we decided that ecstasy needs credentials. That you can’t just be happy, you have to justify being happy, prove you’ve earned it, demonstrate its utility. Meanwhile, misery just walks in the door. Depression needs no references. Despair is always pre-approved.
Look at this photos, three people in some black-box theater in San Francisco, making the case for what every animal on earth knows without thinking about it: that morning feels good, that being alive occasionally doesn’t suck, that sometimes, not always, not even often, but sometimes, there’s a reason to keep going that can’t be reduced to bullet points.
Blake knew the score two centuries ago. He saw them coming, all the future scolds and accountants and puritans who’d want to put love in the dock, who’d demand that beauty justify itself while ugliness gets a free pass. The ones who insist you explain why you’re not grinding yourself into paste for someone else’s profit margin.
And Maher, centuries later, still fighting the same fight. Still staging the same trial. Which tells you everything you need to know about how we’ve “progressed.” We’ve got better lighting and sound systems, but we’re still prosecuting the same crime: the crime of feeling something real without permission, without paperwork, without a goddamn whitepaper explaining the ROI of waking up and not wanting to die.
The indignant page. That’s what Blake called it. And that rage, that’s the tell. You only get indignant when something precious is under attack. When the barbarians aren’t at the gates, they’re inside, wearing badges, demanding you prove you have the right to experience a moment of grace.
Mickle Maher There Is A Happiness That Morning Is presented by Performers Under Stress.
Mickle Maher There Is A Happiness That Morning Is
Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason Street, San Francisco
Performers: Geo Epsilanty, Valerie Façhman and Scott Baker
Directed by Katja Rivera