Lemon Tsupryk Q3 #3: A Letter to the Referee
It must be comfortable, not having to get your feet dirty. Standing there, labeled with stripes, a warm whistle in hand hanging like a gavel.
What gives you the power?
The power to put unassuming groups one against the other on the faux-grass field, to wave the red card, to cast such weighty judgement…they run after the ball, crashing into one another, breaking bones, and you get paid to watch it closely.
So watch.
Watch and hope the ball won’t get kicked astray and bounce off your skull, toppling the stadium walls. Oh, what a delicate tightrope the powerful must walk! Made of the richest, flimsiest silk, floating between disappointed investors and rioting workers. They’re always protesting, my mother says, like they don’t have anything better to do.
Meanwhile those with the means, the funding, are playing Jenga. How many pieces can you take out before the tower topples? Before they notice? Before a knife clatters to the floor when you open the door and you hear resistance? The faster you go from paying them with metal to paying them with dust, the faster they'll rebel.
So you have to be convincing. Sweet-talk them, if you can. If you can’t, buy all the loudspeakers in the world and shout. Did the egg come before the kitchen that cooked it? Would the chicken still walk at all if there were no roads to cross? No, no! You yell into every megaphone. Man is not an animal! Man does not need food or sleep or water, or rest or bathroom breaks; man can work 12 hours a day and come home happy. And they will come home, and think what they have is passable.
But eventually, they’ll start to realize.
They’ll start to sing again, instead of listening to the whirring of machines. Instead of the black-and-white ball, they’ll chase after the sun. Eventually, they won’t settle for fake grass anymore.
And I, for one, can’t wait.
Sincerely,
your fellow animal.
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Text partially inspired by this surrealist collage I made for Art History. Like the collage, this poem(?) turned out surreal, but I hope most of the meaning still pokes through. |
Lemon, I want to start by saying that the image of the collage you made is truly incredible; I thought it was an image taken off Pinterest until I read the caption. I would love to have a conversation with you about why you chose to include those specific images and what you were hoping to convey with your final product. Your writing is also incredibly insightful. I aspire to be able to draw parallels between two very contrasting relations the way you do between a referee and the rich of our society. It really does present an interesting perspective to look at the world with. We are pit against so many groups in our life to the point where it feels as though everything is just an orchestrated game meant to make the rich richer. The mention of a gavel in your blog reminded me of how much power a judge truly has. I am reminded of watching Law and Order with my dad and noticing how the lawyers react depending on which judge has been assigned to the case. People’s own biases can either save or ruin another’s life. I also appreciate you discussing how the rich are straining every last bit of wealth and mobility out of the working class until they are being paid with “dust”. The idea of society getting to a point where people are working 12-hour days and regarding it as normal really scares me because once we are in that situation, I cannot imagine it being easy to get out. I cannot find a way to twist the situation into considering that working that much is worth it in any regard. And while I’m sure that there are many nuances and deeper meanings that I did not pick up on, this blog has got me thinking about so many aspects of our society and I appreciate you bringing all of it to attention.
ReplyDeleteYour comparison of corporations slowly chipping away at workers’ rights to Jenga is striking. What is an innocuous game when played between friends can change so drastically depending on the players. Your blog this week reminds me of an interesting article I read on Forbes recently. Elon Musk, who is evaluated as the man with the greatest net worth currently alive, has given away less than one percent of his wealth. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg: less than five percent. The rich have only been growing richer amid protests from their workers and public resentment alike.
ReplyDeleteStokely Carmichael said that “In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience.” The wealthy, then, must have no conscience at all. Corporations seem to be all-too-enthusiastic to replace any possible worker with AI. They still choose to do so despite experiencing no loss while keeping humans employed—it’s a testament to how little they seem to care about actual people. In the end, a private corporation exists solely to bring shareholders profit. And in our modern world, is there really space for anything else?