I am afraid that I am going to disappear into the desert and that nobody will be surprised, even though I would be, and I’m not sure why. Not why I would disappear into the desert, nor why everyone would “get it,”— but why I’m afraid. Not afraid of disappearing into the desert, but afraid that everyone else would’ve seen it coming, while I’d be surprised. Not surprised that I disappeared into the desert, or of the fact that at least part of me wants to disappear into the desert, but that I was surprised when I finally realized that this part of me wanted to, while it feels like nobody who knows me would be (surprised). That I was surprised that I was surprised, while nobody else would be surprised— though it does make me wonder if they’d be surprised that I was surprised.
Why? Probably because we think we are freer agents than we actually are? That once we get to know someone, or just watch them live for a bit, what they do begins to make sense, or on the flipside: things we find ourselves being surprised at in regards to ourselves makes sense to everyone else. Anyway I think this certainty in regards to others is mostly illusory— as illusory as our sense of self certainty? Not sure— but that doesn’t make me feel any better. Tbh it’s a mild— though undeniably present— fear; I suppose each of us gets to the bottom of the fucks in our bag now and again and pause, understandably, before flicking the last of them out the window on our way to disappearing into the desert.
It’s incredible the extent to which this sort of self-knowledge is wrapped up in everyone else, in other people, specifically in other people seeing, apprehending, or even knowing you, or us. It’s even more incredible the extent to which social media not only mediates but facilitates this seeing/ apprehending/ knowing and its related sense of self. It’s also incredible the extent to which all of this is wrapped up in the question(s) or problem(s) of freedom, as it suggests that not only that us as a we, as a collective being (or becoming!), are/ is the stuff or material and/or terrain of even imagining— let alone desiring— freedom, but that apprehending and knowing are essential to desiring, imagining, and more than likely realizing— manifesting? actualizing? immanentizing?— it. Freedom is also apparently an epistemological concern.
For me it’s the desert, and it's a paradox or a conundrum or even a contradiction, because on one hand it’s “getting away” (see: disappearing), while on the other hand it’s at least a gesture toward something like freedom. For me it’s the desert because places like Slab City are referred to as “the last free place” or “city” in America, and in that community the discourse of freedom is on everyone’s lips and in everyone’s bones, or at the very least in the facebook groups.
Over twenty years ago I got my only impulse-buy tattoo— the word “freedom” on my right wrist. I’d always wanted it in big, hardcore, old english type, across my back, but instead I got it on my wrist in cursive, as I only had 50 dollars. Thank god! I got it because at the time I was a pretty invested evangelical christian, and there was one bible verse that always intrigued me (and still does to this day), John 8:32: Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. I was intrigued at the prospect that freedom was something that followed from simply, or merely knowing. Of course there are all kinds of contextual, linguistic, connotative and philological concerns, but the formula itself still holds the form of many historical, philosophical, theoretical — and personal— questions, as illustrated above.
But it’s not a highfalutin problem, either; doesn’t take scholarship to unpack. A facebook account and being tired of how hard life is will suffice, so it’s an issue for everyone. Earlier I mentioned the “mostly illusory” nature of certainty regarding ourselves and others, and by that I mean our imaginative capacities: the way in which we fill in the blanks, unconsciously or consciously, in that which we apprehend, including and especially (“other”)people. This imagining is an important element of freedom because of its ability to posit and better-than, or at least an other-than, the way things are now, but it also plays a part in what we feel is our own imprisoning: our inability to imagine ourselves as anything other than failures, or less-than, etc. This is probably because it’s animated, or at least informed, by desire, which we know doesn’t always even point us toward satisfaction, let alone lead us there.
But imagination is crucial to theorizing, too, to thinking, to pondering freedom or why we want things, or who we are or how such and such looks so amazing without (?) filters or can afford this or that on instagram, etc. This is probably why everywhere in history there are figures of the crazy, “truly free” people. Maybe we’re scared of being crazy without being free? Maybe we read the figure of the fool-for-christ as social abuse apologism: “they’re homeless, but they’re more free than we’ll ever be,” maybe we are actually just afraid of being “wrong” or of ending an essay without a positive uptake. Maybe we can’t imagine that we don’t know what we want. Maybe that’s what we need to learn.
In the verse prior to Jesus’ formula for freedom he says that if you “hold my teachings,” which I imagine means if you not only believe them but practice them, you will do something like “know” in the way people say “the biblical sense:” not that then you will have checked off the correct boxes, or that once those two boxes are checked something will “happen” that will then induce your freedom, but that you will then actually embody what that freedom-state is. Folks like to say you can’t know if you don’t do but it’s not that simple because it’s not simply either or both knowing and doing, but a secret, third thing, which doesn’t look like what we imagine “freedom” to be. Which miiiiight be the problem. What we (are able to) imagine freedom to be is historically cultivated, made possible— no our imaginations aren’t a pure force against the material world— and so we see the contours of a formula that smooshes imagination with practice (“holding”) toward some secret third thing. Which I imagine is neither actually a secret nor a single thing.
When I first visited Slab City I was taken by the famous proclamation of its self-designated “last free place.” What does that mean? I’ve watched videos, scrolled through facebook groups, visited and read the signs and the articles. My theoretical side kicked in, cogs whirring away tryna find a way to articulate something like an “anthropology of freedom,” or at least a research plan to figure out what that might be, until at some point my imagination, tuckered out from the heat and less theoretical concerns (if such a thing there be), realized something: I think they mean you just don’t have to pay to live there. Which didn't help; didn’t foreclose on the imagino-theoretical machinations, but does seem to speak to the form of this conceptual mash-up and it’s purported secret third thing that apparently tends or wants to happen, that perhaps the point is to smoosh the highfalutin with the lowfalutin, in an attempt to articulate and embody something like the middlefalutin. I really don’t know.
I do know that instead of calling it “an anthropology of freedom (according to the slabs),” I am now in the process of attempting to write “NO / TRESPASSING: impressions, reflections and questions from the vernacular desert,” and it will be the first official ‘zine of The Parallax Conspiracy for the Articulation of Thaumaturgical Research/ Ideas. I’m going to try and have it available in time for christmas.
Sorry for the long post. I’m a bit overtired as I am preparing to pack up my car and head to the midwest to be with my father, who is gravely ill. If you’ve been reading my shit for awhile I would greatly (I don’t know how to say this with anymore emphasis atm) appreciate your patronage at the above-linked patreon page, and/ or you can help by donating to my recently established go fund me, which will help me get there and take care of my dad. I’ll post more about this soon as well. Thanks again — Joshua xoxoxo