This story is a conversation with Elliot Crown, a very talented performance artist and puppet master whose work has been an integral part of New York freedom rallies during the COVID days. You may know Elliot from his not-so-kind puppet depictions of the likes of Fauci, Bill Gates. etc. Even the mainstream media has been publishing Elliot’s art as an example of dangerous COVID misinformation, which in this day and age is a high artistic award…
(For more images, please check out Elliot’s website.)
Elliot happens to be a friend and a neighbor, I usually run into him about fifteen thousand times a week in the neighborhood, and—a natural comedian at heart—he usually turns every conversation into quiet standup comedy, which is fun.
Soooo I took some liberties with this one, going on rants and teasing Elliot a little about his pre-COVID (long-time-pre-COVID) involvement with the “radical feminist” performance group Missile Dick Chicks. By the way, my point of disagreement on this is different from a standard “conservative” grudges against such things. I am an artist, I have very liberal (proper liberal) views about artistic expression, I feel a bit nostalgic about the New York art scene years ago, and I liked some parts of that vibe but …. it’s just … let me put it this way.
Yes, I agree that it was more than fair for artists to mock the treacherous push for “shopping” as an act of American patriotism (all in the name of war)—but at the same time, my current artistic sense operates on a different frequency than the one I felt from this particular group. I know artists (like, for example, my friend Eric Goodman) who have been conveying a similar message for years in ways that subjectively appeal to me more. (But then, I have also changed. I was more insecure fifteen years ago—and some of the art that I was making back then, I would probably make differently today.)
All that said, going down the memory lane made me feel very sharply that the half-endearing, half-unsatisfying, shallow vibe of fifteen years ago is gone! Many things that we took for granted are no longer there! In 2001, a neurotic twitch was planted in many westerners’ minds (“see something, say something, be afraid, OMG”), then re-planted more firmly a few more times: in 2008, in 2016, in 2020…. (By the way, watch out! In my opinion, more is coming soon, and now is a very good time to pray for clarity and not allow fear, for any reason, just not allow fear.)
In any case, lots of people found their big awakening in the past four years, Elliot and I talk about that. I hope you enjoy our talk!
It comes with apologies to Elliot, we recorded this in April, and he has been very generous, waiting for me to properly publish it. Wait, is it proper what I just typed? I don’t know… :)
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