Revolutions, by Mike Duncan, is a somewhat dry historical account of various revolutions in the form of a podcast. Aside from a few philosophical inquiries, like for example, What is it that specifically defines a revolution as a revolution? the series is pretty meat off the bone. Short (30-ish minute), easy to digest episodes focusing on the mostly agreed upon facts. It is a great primer for understanding wider, more ideologically weighted writings of both yesterday and today, and extremely helpful (to me at least) in pinning down where we (people) were on a material timeline when specific ideas or injustices or what have you worth revolution-ing over came up. I’m a fan, and frankly a bit sad to have finished its last episode a few months back.
I’m not writing to plug a defunct podcast however (although by all means, if hundreds of hours wheedling through historic plot points leading from seventeenth century “True Levelers” to Stalinism sounds like your thing too, well the link is in the first paragraph). I’m writing to exorcise something that’s been rattling around in my brain since a particular episode amidst Revolutions’ series on Russia. At that time of its recording Mike was living in Paris working on his book about the The Marquis de Lafayette, while simultaneously rounding out the final season of his podcast. Amidst all of that, The Yellow Vest Movement picked up some serious momentum. This warranted a special episode of Revolutions in which careening around the edges of the rioting while trying to navigate the city on a basic level is narrated. Overall no real grit from the situation is pored over, but the anecdote that stuck with me particularly is one end of day thought. Looking through the camera roll on his phone and seeing pictures of his family shuffled in with images street skirmishes between the people and the police, i.e. the state, he pauses to reflect that these are the moments that surround all of history. That the riotous, the subversive, the revolutionary et al, may ripple outward, but it is embedded in the mundane day to day.
Le Mouvement des Gilets Jaunes, as I imagine would be the proper term in gay ol’ Paris, doesn’t seem to be on the radar of too many people I know. Maybe it’s because we’re all the way on the West Coast of America and we have a whole lot of our own problems, or maybe it’s because the US media sucks fucking dick. It could be a lot of things. It is a shame to me in any case though, as it has produced some arresting visual fodder. At least once, Parisian firefighters in solidarity with the protestors donned Joker makeup, marched toward lines of riot cops, and set themselves ablaze. Then they clashed. The pasta of cultural references boiling over historic repetition in that moment is stunning on its own, but on a macro level you are seeing the aforementioned ripples and what they are passing over at once. A trip to the cinema in 2019 washes across Thích Quảng Đức. The service of society vs the “service” of society. The yellow vests metaphor. And of course the pictures Mike took of his kids and stuff on his cell phone. Identifying this is what, in a nutshell, I think good art is.
In looking through my old photographs (and I guess taking some new ones on occasion too) I think that saying this without words is sometimes what I have been trying to do. To catch where the mundane, the aesthetic, and the significant interlock, and how they create an absurd portrait of a whole—at least from my vantage in the molasses rise and apocalypse of… you know. Stuff. I’m not saying I’m good at it or anything. I’m parsing work, and it’s only the reflection I have for right now, which is what this whole “My Mirror” series is supposed to be about. An actor prepares.