When faced with the unthinkable, my mind just won't go there.
I've fantasized lately about being a bridge between gun-control and gun-rights advocates. I doubt I'm up to the task.
I didn’t post anything about the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, NY because it felt self-serving to say “I don’t have anything to offer here,” and also because I just don’t feel it’s my place to add my two cents on every single thing that happens, particularly at times when millions of people are racing to comment. I also don’t like how so many people not only project their agendas onto the problem, but they speak about it with an authoritative kind of certainty that makes me really uncomfortable.
Although there are aspects of the issue where I feel I can connect some dots, overall I feel like I’m looking at a puzzle with too many missing pieces. So anyone who steps into the fray barking really loudly in the service of pushing one definitive answer or another (or non-answer, in the case of gun-rights advocates) seems like they’re capitalizing. I mean, I completely understand the outrage, it’s the certainty that doesn’t sit well. Because I have a million questions about these incidents, and I’m still kind of mystified as to why they happen.
On the other hand, it feels cheap and even obnoxious to post about the music-related and cultural issues that arouse my militant tendencies so much of the time. So it feels equally lame whether I chime-in or whether say nothing at all. I mean, it feels like an area where I should keep my mouth shut, especially since anything one offers in the height of emotion is, by definition, not going to be very well thought-out. And who would it serve, anyway?
But I went to Buffalo last night to see a death metal show, and the details about all the children murdered at the school in Uvalde, TX were starting to emerge as I was getting ready for my friend to pick me up. When we reached a point where we could see the downtown Buffalo skyline, we wondered aloud whether there would be any effect on the mood in the venue. My friend wondered if either of the bands would say anything, and I answered that I was quite certain they wouldn’t. I did wonder what it’s like for the members of Carcass — being from England, the prevalence of gun violence in the States must seem completely alien to them.
As I suspected, the subject didn’t come up during any parts of the show that I watched. I mean, what the hell is anyone supposed to say from the stage? I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. And this is not to disparage the bands — both Carcass and Immolation, though they’re nominally “death metal” bands, hew towards cerebral, thought-provoking lyrics. Also, as far as I know, even the most shocking death metal bands avoid writing songs about mass shootings like the plague.
Where it’s long been customary for bands in that style to go into graphic detail about all manner of killing and mutilation, clearly there’s some kind of unspoken rule that mass shootings are off limits. I mean, the whole point of death metal is that it’s supposed to be theatrical — separate from actual horror — even if the bands sometimes flirt with keeping the line really thin so they can be as provocative as possible. And even the death metal bands with members who are known gun enthusiasts don’t tend to be loud about defending gun rights after things like this happen.
Overall, the show was fun, but it felt a little muted to me, not so much because of these latest tragedies, but because even sharp-witted bands like these — bands who’ve had lots to say in terms of challenging the social order — just seem like their message is no longer cutting enough. There’s something kind of safe and harmless about them now, and that feels like a shame. I’m not decrying the fact that they don’t feel evil or scary anymore, what I’m saying is that we now live in a moment where the human being is so aggressively intruded-on from so many different directions that this music hasn’t caught up. It no longer reflects the darker sides of our nature, at least as far as our darkness, fears, and refusal to face that darkness have taken form over the last decade or two.
When mass shootings happen, I have a really hard time focusing on them. I feel like a coward for that. Once I see pictures of the victims, I’ll start to feel the beginning swells of emotion, like an incoming tide, and then I’ll shake it off and avoid it. I steer clear of news reports and online comments. As someone who’s more easily brought to tears watching children’s films than my 4 year-old daughter is, it bothers me how shut-down I get. Then again, it’s like my system knows this is the right thing to do, because to allow myself to even picture what it must be like to be present at one of these horrific scenes is just unthinkable. And when the thoughts slip to “What if that were my own ch—?” my brain steps in, clamps down as if I just walked forehead-first into wall with the words “NOPE. DO NOT ENTER. NOT FOR YOU.” painted on it in 12-foot letters.
I also feel like I have nothing to offer, so it feels self-serving to say “Hey y’all, I’ve got nothing here, but look at me drawing attention to myself over the fact that I’ve got nothing.” it doesn't feel like that today, though. I feel like it’s important to signal to one another that we’re… having a reaction, no matter if that reaction feels blank or confused or incoherent or off somehow — and I use the word “signal” on purpose. With good reason, the word has a negative ring now thanks to the prevalence of virtue-signaling. But can we just shoot flares off into the sky and flash a big question-mark symbol to one another and just be in the not-knowing together?
The heightened sense of cherishing the life of my child doesn't actually make me a better parent, by the way — if I’m being honest, I spent several hours this morning mindlessly surfing the web. I woke up at 6:45am after going to bed late around 2:00. Rather than seize the opportunity, I intentionally avoided the many useful tasks I could have taken up. Honestly, I’m a little nervous to see my daughter because my mood is heavy with having been reminded how precious and fragile life — and our time — can be and yet I know my system has been momentarily stunned into inaction. So there's an immediate urgency to make the most out of life and not take any moment for granted, to hold the most precious as close, and yet the paralysis goes against that. So you feel worse.
I mean, why wouldn’t I drop everything and race to see her at the first opportunity and squeeze her as tightly as I can? If I have to fumble in my feelings for an answer, I guess it’s because her mere presence is a reminder that at the end of the day I can’t protect her from these kinds of extreme horrors. All we can do is kind of ride life and swim behind it, as if we were grabbing on to a dolphin’s tail fin, and hang on as best we can. I’m a longtime proponent of the idea that our intent does have a significant bearing on what we encounter, that things don’t necessarily happen “to” us. These kinds of incidents shatter my conviction that that’s true and reveal a deep well of fear that’s always existed side-by-side with the feeling that I’m at the steering wheel of my own life.
I must confess that I was once vehemently opposed to 2nd-Amendment absolutism. I never understood it. While I still identify as what I would call “quite far to the left” politically (insomuch as the left-right dichotomy is even useful), my stance on gun rights has shifted dramatically over the last two years. I don’t like guns, and I still find it really disturbing that there are more guns than people in the United States. I also find it really difficult to fathom the idea that the supposed right to gun ownership must always come first, no matter what the cost.
By the same token, I’ve seen enough since 2020 to convince me that governmental structures oriented very heavily towards regulation are prone to regulating too much, and that that leads to abuse. Point blank: I find it abhorrent, for example, that the Left was manipulated to align in favor of covid vaccine mandates, the suppression of credentialed scientific inquiry, mass firings, the interests of mega-profitable pharmaceutical corporations and tech giants, etc. If you can’t read those words — much less face that conversation — without shutting down or getting red in the face, that’s unfortunate.
Regardless, I will maintain my position that while government, Big Pharma, and Big Tech just made some of the most breathtaking incursions against human sovereignty in the history of our species, the Left remained in utter dereliction of its core principles. But I can kind of understand why so many people with my value system got to a place where they were willing to sacrifice our core values. And I can kind of understand why people take polar-opposite positions on things that make it impossible to get anywhere.
With guns, I now find myself not so much in a middle ground, but in a slushy gray area where I have no answer and where I can sympathize with both parties, but where both of their positions feel completely inadequate. I’ve long felt the same about abortion — since childhood, as a matter of fact, even though I was raised by a staunchly pro-choice mom who spent a few of her almost 60(!) years as a nurse working at a gynecology clinic. I was also raised Catholic, and I’m not a woman. All of these things “inform” my position of… not really having a clear sense which way to go.
If your outlook on nature dictates that life starts at conception, then by definition you’re going to think that abortion is killing, and that killing is murder. I never held that view, but I understood that the people who did weren’t speaking the same language as someone who’s more focused on the sovereign right to be in the driver’s seat of her own reproductive system. Both positions, as far as I’m concerned, have a kind of fundamental, irrefutable truth about them, and neither outlook appears to have the capacity to take the other outlook to heart.
Moreover, pro-choice advocates are being completely fair when they point out that anti-abortion conservatives care about life until an unborn child is actually born, when it’s like “You’re on your own, kid. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps or tough shit.” In reverse, I feel like conservatives are also being fair when they point out that viewing abortion merely as an elective medical procedure diminishes the sense of awe and respect we should have about the consequences of sex. Both those arguments, by the way, have giant holes in them, but I think they’re fair arguments to put on the table, and that the perspectives they represent are both valuable.
And I feel like if we lean one way or the other, we get to a sloppy, untenable place where either one giant segment of the population or the other is very unhappy with how we navigate the issue policy-wise. Likewise, where I used to view the concerns of 2nd-Amendment advocates as utterly unreasonable, I’m not sure where the workable middle ground is with laws that actually make sense. The whole issue feels murky and tangled, our own domestic version of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — endlessly mired, with tremendous loss of life as the cost we’ve just come to accept.
I’ve had a fantasy thought bubble-up lately that because I can kinda see things from both the gun-rights and gun-control viewpoints, then maybe I could somehow bridge the gap between these points of view because I can actually hear both of them where they can’t hear each other. But there’s no way I’m up for that task. Worse, in spinning this off into some sort of thought exercise, I’ve once again avoided sitting down and forcing/allowing myself to just be with the gruesomeness of this latest episode in American psychosis.
Still, I felt it was important to put it out there: I have a giant question mark and an awful, sinking feeling about this and very little, if any, light to shed. I feel momentarily paralyzed and cut-off from my feelings, my joy, my responsibilities, and my parenting. The haze of all that will lift, but my concern is that, as usual, the full extent of how awful this is will just fade, because it’s too surreal to hold onto. Our minds aren’t wired to do that. There’s obviously a utility to the mind being able to pull itself offline like that, but that mechanism certainly has its limits.
I reckon that now would probably be a good time to get together with people you care about and just kind of sit in the warmth of and care of each other’s company.
<3 SRK