🌏 TREE 240: No one here has X-ray vision
One.
‘Biscottis are on me, lads! Because this guy right here just scored himself a 15% discount on a two-month supply of Henderson’s Finest Horn Polish.’
Two.
If you are a snarling mess of anger and ugliness inside and you manage to be kind on the outside, you ARE kind. You are a kind person. Because it’s what you actually do that counts. Embracing this truth about yourself is a really good place to start sorting out what’s happening on the inside.
Three.
Remember this good time from 11 years ago? It’s perfect for starting the weekend, I think.
In TREE Year One, we got to read fantastic posts from eight members of the FOREST. This year the FOREST wants to hear from you. You have something to say that will help people learn and grow and create. I’m sure of it. Maybe you don’t feel ready to write a week’s worth of posts. That’s okay. In Year Two you can share a single post.
A single post! NBD, right?
Maybe writing isn’t your thing. Maybe music is. Do you know some amazing music that the FOREST needs to hear? Are you a singer/musician/band putting fresh music into the world?
Something for the weekend
Yesterday’s post seemed to connect with a bunch of you, so… I’ve been thinking about how the film Get Out is a really good and deeply disturbing meditation on the idea of being at war with yourself. It’s cheap to rent or buy on Prime.
Happy weekend
Jeff
Important update – 29 September 2021
Once a story is released into the world it is changed as it meets the mind of the viewer/reader/listener. In that sense, how you respond to a story and what you do with it is up to you. And that’s fine.
At the same time, it’s important to pay attention to what a storyteller is trying to tell you. I completely failed to do that when I wrote my recommendation above. I took a film that’s totally not about me and made it all about me. That was really dumb.
Get Out is about what it’s like to be black in America. It’s about white society’s eagerness to celebrate black athleticism and entertainment while trying to deny black people access to the levers of power. It helps to explain why people got so twitchy when Beyoncé performed Formation like she did at the Super Bowl.
When I reduce Get Out to a parable about my white-ass personal growth while ignoring all the larger issues it addresses, I’m actually stunting my growth and doing a disservice to everyone who reads that paragraph. I’m sorry for that.
I’m not sorry for recommending Get Out though. It’s an excellent, entertaining film. When you watch it, please ignore what I wrote and pay attention to what Jordan Peele is trying to tell you.
Re: the update at the end of this post. Here’s a relevant 118 year-old quote from W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk:
‘One ever feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
‘The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn't bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.’
Source: https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/24/14698632/get-out-review-jordan-peele