023 The Power of Three
Returns
It has been a while.
Yeah, I’ve had shit going on that I haven’t really wanted to talk about. Given what I am prepared to talk about that means that I probably haven’t fully processed it all yet, and it will most likely take me some time to do that, and maybe then I’ll write about it. Maybe. But for now, let’s look at the power of three.
Throughout history three has been the number of invocation and incantation.
You can see it everywhere:
The Fates. The Graces. Hecate. The Three Bears. The Three Little Pigs. The Three Wise Men. The Three Witches. Maiden, Mother, Crone. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. Father, Son, Holy Ghost.
Everywhere.
1.
My favourite Christmas movie is A Christmas Carol. The old version. The three spirits of Christmas past, present, and future visit Scrooge the night of Christmas Eve to teach him to go to therapy heal from his old wounds, stop being a miserly prick, and maybe folks won’t dance in the streets when you’re finally dead. Scrooge goes on to change his ways.
2.
The parable of the drowning man is another story that sticks with me where the power of three is prominent. The flood threatens the church but the priest stays with his building and turns down two offers to be saved by people in boats as the flood waters rise around the church. He refuses one more time from someone in a helicopter, as the priest clings to the steeple with the flood waters lapping at his feet, insisting that “God will save him.” When the priest inevitably drowns in the flood he does go to heaven, but he asks God “I was faithful to you all my life, why didn’t you save me from the flood?” God replies, “I sent you two boats and a helicopter.”
3.
And I think my own personal power of three has visited me since the beginning of this year.
One
Jeannette Winterson returned to Substack.
Jeanette Winterson is one of my favourite writers. She had been away from Substack because she hadn’t felt good about the fact that it seemed endless. Once someone has written something here one does feel the invisible pressure to keep producing, producing, producing, which isn’t always what writing needs.
In her post she notes that what she saw on the faces the Trump Team as they listened to Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde was surely anger, but also what she (Winterson) fears most: Failure of imagination.
It’s interesting that she sees that lack imagination on the faces of these people. Since 2016 I have been trying to imagine the kind of world these oligarchs, technocrats, and dictators actually want. To me it seems quite bleak, it lacks anything that could make it endure or sustain itself.
I often try to imagine the kind of world desired by the people who wrote and are now implementing Project 2025. To me it looks profoundly drab. Their vision of the future actually reminds me of the book and film ‘Hard to Be a God’.
‘Hard to Be a God’ is set on the planet Arkanar where they have not experienced a Renaissance. They are stuck in their middle-ages. Anton has been living on Arkanar as an undercover operative from future Earth for 20 years, tasked with observing the society and protecting the intellectuals who are constantly tortured and executed by the inhabitants of the planet, its police-state government and an influential militant religious sect. Anton is otherwise not supposed to interfere with how the society develops (or doesn’t), nor is he permitted to kill anyone. To cope with his despair of this situation he drinks heavily and indulges in debauchery when he can.
I imagine the world according to the authors, implementors, and supporters of Project 2025 looks very much like Arkanar. The film version gives a particularly good visual impression of that world: extreme cruelty, utter filth, and the suppression of knowledge.
However, Jeanette Winterson’s point in her return to Substack is simple:
Putting what resides in our imagination out into the world staves off death a little. It gives an opportunity for the idea of us to remain and inspire others to create. Creation creates creation.
Two
Jacqui Lofthouse is a mentor and friend who recently appeared in my inbox with a video imploring people to continue their writing in the face of what is happening within the world “whether it’s a light romance, a children’s book, a literary work, or an essay, your work really matters.”
She also makes the point that it is easy to get dragged down in response to what is happening right now. And she’s right. In 2016/2017 I felt like I was about to have a heart attack at all the chaos that was underway. Why the fuck did I know the name of the US Secretary for Education? Why were people so stupid as to believe anything those lying arseholes put on the side of a bus? Why can’t they see they’re trying to shaft them? Why isn’t anyone doing anything about this?
Back then I knew too much about things like Cambridge-Analytica and its interference in elections. And once Brexit was voted for and Trump was “elected” I fell for the flood of discord and tumultuousness that immediately followed. I think a lot of us did, while malignant melanomas like Steve Bannon, Rupert Murdoch, The Haunted Pencil, and their metastasising cronies clapped with sadistic-contrarian glee. The panic hasn’t happened this time, at least not for those of us who saw it happen last time. No, this time it’s a far more measured response.
For me it has been a palpable change. Visceral, even. The energy I previously used up with anxiety and panic has been redirected towards supporting people I know who are far better at organising than I am, reaching out to friends who I know are vulnerable to let them know they have my support, and, of course, creating.
That’s a lot of energy by the way. I can feel it in my body whenever I catch salacious, click-bait headlines designed to inspire rage within me. Over the last 9 years I’ve used techniques borrowed from Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to divert my thoughts away from getting caught up in the anxiety and panic politicians, technocrats, and other influencers want me to feel, that puts me in a state of flight, fight, freeze or fawn, and turned my thoughts towards the calm, supportive, constructive thinking that helps get me moving again.
This helped me realise that at any given time we all have more or less of the following:
Time
Money
Influence
I’ve never had any influence, but when I haven’t had much time, it has usually meant that I have had money that I could donate to real, influential organisations; and when I haven’t had much money, I have had to time to donate in whatever way the real, influential organisations need us to.
So no, I will not allow myself to get dragged down by these world events, especially since despair, distraction, and distress are tools used by these people to make sure they go unchallenged. That’s not to say I’m going to put my fingers in my ears, close my eyes and sing ‘la-la-la-la-la’ to drown out the noise. No, instead I will drag myself out of their spray of shit, and turn my energy (whether it’s time, money or creative force) towards something more positive, more precious than fear.
Three
Along similar lines, Chani Nicholas, your and my astro bestie, popped up in my inbox to say:
This also struck me HARD.
“Reclaiming our imagination from the machines of destruction” is as rallying to me as “seize the means of production”. Maybe they’re synonymous, who knows.
These machines of destruction come in many forms. One form is technological. The technological destruction is clear as day; it’s there in its most basic form: the delete button. As soon as the new US administration entered the White House they hit ‘delete’ on the official website: the Spanish-language version, gone; any mention (good or bad) of DEI, gone; datasets related to HIV and STI prevention, LGBT, and youth health, and the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, gone. These arseholes might be trying to do their own personal, digital Kristallnacht, but the internet doesn’t delete things easily, and there are a tonne of people already saving data sets outside the USA.
There are plenty of other machines of destruction. Maybe that is something for me to explore here. Or not. A lot has ended up in the scraps pile while writing this, I will have to see whether I can give my limited energy to it or something else.
So those are the three spirits, wise women, witches (complimentary) that visited me and told me to get my imagination out in the world again. This place seems like the easiest, most accessible place to do that for now. This has been a place where I have tried to not judge myself too much before hitting the button, and I’m going to try to keep to that. There is a difference between judging myself and thinking too much.
Do I think what I have to say is important? I don’t know. Maybe? Not really? If anything I hope some of what I write and have written will be left as a tiny piece of evidence that a queer, middle-aged woman existed in this time period. Because queer, middled-aged women have always existed, as have lesbians, gay men, bisexual people, trans people, queer people, intersex, asexual and 2 Spirit people - all have existed for as long as people have been around. And we have all lived lives far beyond the limited imaginations of government officials, and we should continue to do so.
THIS WEEK
Most listened to song: ’Not Like Us’ by Kendrick Lamar
Favourite thing I’ve watched: Minnesota Frost 3 vs Ottawa Charge 8
Favourite thing I’ve read: Butter by Asako Yuzuki
I’m most excited by: Figments of the imagination