With Sunday Morning Hope by David Byrne and Patti Smith
I don’t care for the word utopia. I feel it’s been so overused for so long that my associations with it are skewed toward impossibility or boring-hood. And term weariness is not helpful if you want to make something good happen.
We need some new words for what we want to move toward.
The weariness of word utopia for me reflects inner statistics of my inner experience1 around a given term: of the perhaps 5000 times I’ve heard the word utopia, only 3 or 4 actually made me feel anything I desired. Because the majority of utopian conceptions have made me feel cold distance and futility, and therefore inside, I return a hearty, “no thank you.”
Just like choosing your evening experience by scrolling through streaming services and internally saying “no, no, no, no, no” hundreds of times before – finally – choosing a movie to play.
Getting practiced at saying “no” to something inside your mind can renders the concept into oblivion. And, you’ll probably never pick most of those movies you said “no” to repeatedly, because you may retroactively believe you had a good reason for it.
Unless you have infinite time, that is, then you can see them all.
And, practically, who wants (even the most glorious) dinner of their choice extruded out of a machine? Or wants to live in a Stepford-styled community, where behavior is regimented, following a prescribed authority, where homogeneity is enforced as a key to safety? Or, a “perfect” society where everyone’s behavior is predictable, pleasant and stratification-stuck?
We don’t. And that’s why we support artists. They help us see and envision utopia in new ways, and 9 times out of 10, it’s because they help us feel something. Something we feel too.
So what’s a better term than utopia? What’s a compelling conception that can literally pull a person forward toward it even while they are sleeping? What are words so positive about your community’s future that it pulls you all forward? 2
I’m advocating each of you come up with your own exciting phrasing around ‘best case scenario’ so that we have more positive things moving us all forward.
I’ll be working on this myself. And keeping you posted. There are just too many snarky, battle-weary folks acting like everything we’ve worked toward is getting burnt to the ground (they aren’t wrong by the way, yet phoenixes only rise via ashes, so maybe that’s the vision?).
Why does a writer choose a word, or instead choose to coin a term?
Perhaps too many authors and thinkers used the same word “utopia,” or didn’t define it in ways that we collectively felt were reachable. This was my experience anyway, until David Byrne went all lovingly cheerful that is. His American Utopia invocations are rich, and the entirety of the piece of work beautifully crafted too. This show includes past hits played by a stripped down stage of musicians, with the audience an equal part. “US” is the meta-construct of the show and songs are the fodder. Byrne’s American Utopia is people being together and dancing to the same music.
I’m so on board with that.
Patti Smith just blew away a huge swath of the righteous pillars of this planet with “Peaceable Kingdom” the other night. I know she’s onto something too (always has been). “Peaceable Kingdom” is layered with meaning of so many kinds and she lets us know from her bones that we can build it again. She’s seen this kingdom and been all around peaceable-ness too. She lives it.
Thank you Patti.
We need people like this around. We need them speaking up, making art, even turning phrases, because it helps us to think about what we’d like to move toward.
So, I feel it is also my duty to come up with a concept that feels great to me, stands for what I’d like to see in this world, encompasses living beings and the planet and most especially, is sharable and inspiring. So, I need a term, one to replace or enhance utopia, at least for me.
This means first, I have to drop into the deep possibility of something positive in my bones.
And then, to listen for the words. And because this place is one of my mediums, to write about it here.
Will you join me?
Then, will you share?
Let’s create a bit of a Peaceable Kingdom right now. Even if we are seeing some parts of the house burn down. It’s okay, we can still dance.
Strong and Hopeful Music for a Sunday Morning
FOOTNOTES & SUB-SUBTEXT 😉
- When I write sh!t like this, I feel like I’m sitting in the space of an AI trying to explain how it does what it does. I’m definitely not AI, but interested in the differences between LLMs and AGI. ↩︎
- “What’s a compelling confection?” is a lighter way to ask the same question. That is, the turns of phrases we “cook up” are like sweet treats in a bakery… appealing and bring a bit of joy. They also can guide us forward and are sharable. Conceptions of “dystopia” vs “utopia” generate very different emotions in most listeners. I’m advocating for intelligent, multi-faceted, and creative versions of the latter. ↩︎
