Barbeque Becky, Permit Patty, Pool Patrol Paula, Central Park Amy... examples of a strain of white female known as a “Karen.”
After Trump took office, some of my fellow white Americans, like the Karens above, began behaving extra badly. I heard reports of both men and women yelling slurs, and hate crimes rose higher, along with hate-related individual and mass murders. There were more police killings— certainly more videos. Something had been unleashed.
And, to my horror, I noticed that when I wasn’t having negative, hostile thoughts about Trump, occasionally a prejudiced thought would pop into my head. That wasn’t normal. I was able to contain the toxin inside me except for the times I made a few insensitive jokes or comments, and I took responsibility for them. I was nowhere near becoming a Karen, but felt disturbed and confused. WTF was going on?
My father, like too many men of his time, expressed racist, bigoted, and sexist views freely and often. Were it not for my mother and other important childhood influences, had I not grown up in the Bay Area, gone to public schools and moved to a city at age 18... My mind would have been configured much differently about people not resembling me. Still, I had some work to do when I was younger. I welcomed that work, and maintenance had been ongoing and getting easier until Trump came along. My resentment of him and his influence could not be more personal.
The presidency has a lot more “psychic” power than I ever imagined. After centuries of white presidents, or “white rule,” came Barack Obama, and white progressives like myself could take some comfort that even if he was too moderate, at least he was not another old WASP dude. But Obama was thwarted at every turn by mostly white Congressional Republicans and hate crimes started to rise. Meanwhile Donald Trump, that douchebag from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, who cracked sexist jokes with Howard Stern, and starred in The Apprentice (which I never saw), heavily promoted the racist lie that Obama was not born in America. And then he became president! The phase of white backlash— white hostility and grievance— was now fully underway. White supremacy is the sorest winner I’ve ever seen.
I felt compelled to write about it—this unleashing of hostility onto non-white people, (including Jews and Muslims) men’s hostility to women (also validated by Trump’s words and behavior), and my own inner disturbance. So what would my form be?
Not songwriting. I tend to write love songs, both happy and sad. I write music first, and tunes don’t suggest overtly political messages, at least not yet. Besides, Trump made me want to scream, not sing. Childhood memoir? Theatrical play? A monologue I could do at The Marsh? I didn’t want to end up standing on stage, talking about my father, which might come off as self-indulgent and stale.
Perhaps I should give up and be a full time activist?
In the spirit of helping others to help oneself, I started a writers’ group along with a bass-playing screenwriter/novelist buddy of mine. We used the format created by Cary Tennis and Danelle Morton in the book Finishing School, which lays out a plan for getting and giving feedback on process only, not content.
I kept journaling, free-associating, clustering, but still couldn’t find a form. In February of 2018, I went on a 5 day writing retreat to a cabin deep in the woods of Inverness, near the California coast. The cabin had no curtains. All I could see, hear, and smell were trees. They were growing all around me. Their energy inspired me and I wrote a long, meandering poem linking my family’s history to Trump’s America.
It’s not a good poem, more of an outline, really, but I’d finally found the right form! With poetry I could tell stories in an epic style, but also explore more abstract ideas in a lyrical way. I could hone my songwriting skills using metered structures, or savor the elasticity of free verse.
Before I went back to the city, I went for a walk on the beach and took the photo below of a sea cave.
Little did I know then what I was getting myself into. I like to refer to a writing phase as “being in the cave.” Hah! Little did I know I was about to enter the deepest, darkest writer’s cave of my life.
Milo