America has always been characterized by the refusal to mourn, the denial of death, and the incapacity to grieve, & now we are seeing those pathological traits compressed into the hyper-now of the digital present (and as absences in the off-screen world) 1/?

to grieve would require acknowledgement, vulnerability, and community. These modes threaten Am. power structures, & the modes themselves are rendered *nearly* inaccessible due to the balkanization effects of long-term nat'l fascism 2/?

instead, we're left with mythologies, aporias, and the semiotics of performative feeling, all of which will plunge us into the complicated / unresolved grief this country has always engendered 3/?

if we cannot, as Carlo Levi said, "stand the terror" of death, we become "incapable of liberty," even as the cynically-named Liberty Fest rages on. 4/5

We need and will continue to need renewed and focused efforts toward intensive grief counseling and death education, but we also should seek, co-create, and re-affirm safe communities centered in mourning, and should resist internal and external normalization. 5/5

What does that look like? It looks like questions, deep reflection, and stillness. And action, real action, not aesthetic fodder or signaling. What does it feel like? Slow, difficult, thick, and analogue, even if mediated through these channels. 6/5