Hope Is Looking at You, Kid

And it's looking at me, too

I sat down to write, just now, and like I usually do, I started browsing some music to underscore my writing, to get me in the flow after a long day of trifles one does simply for existence sake. Music is essential, especially if I need to switch gears inside my own state of being. And when I write, I often forgo anything with lyrics and lean into moods that underscore the theme of whatever I’m going to write. It’s a practice I’ve gotten into since writing scripts for Silent Theatre, often allowing music to guide my imagination, my mind unfolding and refolding scenes like feverish stop motion paper applique. Since I have a few essays going at the same time, I was searching for either a lighthearted jazz to accompany my paradoxes essay or some dystopian thing to turn up my end of days neurosis at par level. My eyes usually gloss over all the algorithmic selections and I tend to reuse tried and true until I squeeze every ounce of mood enhancement out of my choice and then promptly avoid listening to that artist for moths to follow. Occasionally, I give the algorithm a chance to surprise.

Today, it was Phillip Glass that caught my eye. You might recognize the name from movie soundtracks such as The Hours or Candyman (the original version, the one that was shot in Cabrini Green, Chicago, which exists no more, but which is forever imprinted on my young immigrant brain upon my arrival in Chicago in the early 90’s). I wish there was a button on this platform which will allow me to curate a playlist particular to each essay for my readers. That would be next level. Substack?

So, I went with Phillip Glass and the first track was a tune he co-created with Paul Leonard-Morgan called Hope from the Tales From the Loop soundtrack. It’s a paradoxical piece of music, both haunting and up-lifting. And it inspired me to write about a new theme while I let the few other ones sit to the side just a bit longer, including my venture into uncharted podcast territory…I might get over my fears and actually put a short audio track out there this weekend. Just a little dip of the toe in that murky ocean.

Anyway, where were we? Dystopia? Ha. Not quite, I hope. Although, by the scratchings of my proverbial pen, and that of some other writers on here, you might say we think dystopia is eminent. Dystopia — a word belonging to futuristic novels, perhaps one that has caught our attention as more within our lifetimes than ever considered possible, from the Greek dys meaning bad and topos meaning place, simply a place that has gone wrong in its quest for the idilic; the opposite of utopia. But we aren’t there yet.

I recently made this comment in a response to one of my readers:

[W]e need more folks writing about a vision of the future. But the future we want, not the future we’re currently headed into. I fall into the trap of writing all gloom and doom myself because it’s a.) a bit overwhelming and I have to get it out in writing because people around me are either sick of hearing me talk about it and/or I don’t want to incite more fear and b.) in a way, it’s exciting to write about the end of the world. We are living in the middle of a sci-fi thriller.

But ultimately, in order to get out of this, we need to see, imagine, and paint the future we want to see on the other side of this.

So this is my challenge to anyone reading this: tell me how you see this topos if everything was to work out for the best in your vision. How else can we work towards a more beautiful world if we don’t describe what it looks like? Here’s the caveat — don’t worry about the how, only speak to the what. Go for broke. If a dystopia encompasses a state of “corporate, bureaucratic, technological, moral, or totalitarian control”, what does a world look like beyond that? And I don’t mean utopia per se, because the wordy is punny — is it greek for outopia (no-place) or eutopia (good place)? Maybe it should be kalostopia, kalos for those who can simply envision a nice place.

You can email me straight here and I’ll post your answers in a subsequent post or if you are a Substack writer, it would be an honor to read one of your pieces based on the topic of your most desired vision of the future. If anyone from my theatre friends is reading this, you know we had to imagine that which turned into the play the audience saw on stage. This was the fun part, the play. I really hope you take this invitation.

Share this with those who you think might participate. If we can articulate what we want and not just paint dystopian canvasses of what we don’t want, maybe we can will what we want into existence. We can’t build on negatives anyway. I really look forward to reading your visions!