How To Kill A Statue

Reading the essays of Renata Adler while re-reading her novel "Speedboat", I foresee the time when I will lose an idea the moment after it comes to me and/or the very moment I honor the impulse of taking up a pen to write the idea down--that I'm now capable of losing an idea in one or two of those moments, or both.

I'd hoped to make a point about the taking down of public statues in the US and in Europe (Great Britain & Belgium) of Confederate generals and global imperialists, that it indicated some sort of nascent world-wide initiative toward the recognition of the connection between mental health and social justice, but I stopped myself in the act, not wanting to sound like one of those people who say when they're speaking of such things, "the reality is..."

Instead I began making a list of the statues that had been made for me, and then the statues that I made myself, mostly of purportedly good men and women, that I might tear down myself in the spirit in which the statue of a rebel general might be toppled, taking both ends of a long rope and tying it around the subject's neck while simultaneously hacking the statue base with a sharp instrument forged in the hot foundery of my hatred.

The reality is that my list kept growing and growing, beyond the realm of common sense, to include Austrian philosophers and a 19c religious leader, several legends of sport, a person or two with whom I'd once done business, the professor of creative writing who'd told me that all good writing comes from the fury of being misunderstood...

The list of statues that must be felled turns out to be endless, forests and forests full of the "crackpots and charlatans " Hannah Arendt makes repeated reference to in The Origins of Totalitarianism, which I am reading as an audio book. According to my calculations I still have 19+ hours of listening remaining.