Can't We Still Be Friends?

A couple of years ago, I woke up at 4am and decided I had to do something about the outrageousness of isolation and divergences I had experienced in the political views of my friends and felllow musicians.

I felt alone, but who doesn't at 4am? It's been said that this is the suicidal hour.

Ironically, we have more ways to stay in touch than we have ever had, yet I feel lonelier and more detached and fearful than ever.

It's either the eggshell walking, or my absurd emotional outbursts in private: floods of tears and rage I never knew I had. Pulling myself back from the tide of victimhood and despair.

Alone, I can create the deepest angst, the tragic opera of our times and my advantaged yet unsatisfied life. My creativity can capture the screenplay of THE FAILURE, five acts and a teledrama you could spin out for at least three years.

And so I created THE F CLUB. The idea was simple: get a group of ten people together once a month, and different people each month. These people might or might not know each other, but after a dinner party, a sharing of poetry and music, perhaps everyone would feel a little less frayed.

The experiment took some investment and doing. I think it was a good thing. Everyone commented that their night was especially engaging and intimate, relaxing and filling a need, to unplug and just be in company.

Year Two of F CLub, perhaps not surprisingly, was not as successful. The demons of overwhelm, overwork, and overthinking made it possible to cancel most of the engagements. Suddenly, these friendships felt like a burden. Could someone else take on the dinner party idea? Why me?

I knew then that I would have to re-examine my committment.

The question was never whether or not people in themselves were difficult. I find that anytime I reach out to anyone I care about I am more than amply rewarded. I learn that my feelings have a place in the world, and that , not only am I not alone, I have every reason to be as I am.

The gift of Los Angeles is that it is diverse, yet artistic souls find many commonalities and feel a sort of refuge in community.

Only lately do I feel a sense of paranoia, and with that a tendency to want to hide under the covers.

The recent consolidation of powers, in "The Merger" and the creation of Skydance, Larry Ellison's behemoth, combined with the letdown feeling most of us experienced as Newsome, Bonta and Bass capitulated to the Corporates left us gaping. Maybe, cynically, we assumed all would lean Right when the dust settled. But we felt the shame and rage anyway: HOW COULD THEY?!?!

And truly, how can government make deals that further benefit the billionaires they so remonstrate against?

What kind of friends are they, anyway?

And so we find in these mass giveaways a sense of betrayal and a lack of balance. It's an emotional vertigo, very unsettling.

Who we love, who we root for, where we stand: it's all on the line, all the time.

Recently at breakfast, I had to beg a friend of mine to VOTE BLUE when she angrily confessed that she hated all of the candidates and wasn't going to bother voting in those categories at all.

We have been reduced to a pathetic "HOLD YOUR NOSE AND VOTE" culture. We are more ashamed of our side than we are disgusted by the other one, the one that has dispelled ICE agents, and taken away our protections, and tried to cut our social programs. We are so on the edge with what we will lose next, all we know to do is to lash out at those who acted like our protectors and friends.

CAN WE BE FRIENDS? Can we even root for our own baseball team when we find that their owner is a staunch Trumper and a proponent of everything we have mobilized against? The cannibalism of our times encroaches upon us so that we question what we can eat and drink, where we can shop, what we can buy and who we can support.

Every day it seems we add a new enemy to the list.

On top of this, we, with all of our information, are now being led to suspect that we have NO information, only propaganda. So who tells the truth? Who to read? Who to listen to?

We can call this state of affairs "FASCISM" but on a more personal level, which some might not even call "political," we feel spiritually undermined. Zapped.

Not knowing who knows what or believes what leads us to wonder who we can sit at table with. Who we can invest in friendship with.

Do we become even more clique -clustered? Do we gather with the less and the few? And what if even the few let us down?

In these ways, the Trumpian political world interferes even with those who say "I don't vote. I don't care. I don't believe in politics."

Somehow we are forced to deal with politics when it starts to impact upon the way we make friends, and live in a healthy and communal manner.

For we are not AI. We are human beings who feel vulnerable, potentially displaced and existentially insignificant.

We need each other more now than ever.

We need our friends and we need new friends.

And maybe we need to recognize that those we have been making into enemies are not that.

They are only more frightened than we are.

This is what I choose to believe.

EVIL is only LIVE spelled backwards.

Humanity needs each of us to LIVE. Not to acknowledge this is very backwards.

EVIL, indeed.