I read an article recently that half-jokingly described the “deep research” feature as being, “for people who need to know the mysteries of the universe– right this minute.”
Every time I talk to my friends who are still in NYC and hear about how there’s no jobs for actors now, and they think about leaving but there’s nowhere else to go…
I did go somewhere else, but the ones who stayed miss the same familiar world I do. It’s not a place, it’s a time.
For a while I wasn’t sure what to do about taking “Out of Lockstep” back to NYC. I found out on Substack that the person I was supposed to collaborate with wasn’t someone I could trust at all. I’d had two different people at that point try to get rich off of my idea, so I decided to stop putting myself in situations where that could happen. I decided to learn about Entrepreneurship so that I would never have someone try to manipulate me and steal my work from me again. It was like signing up for self-defense classes when I lived in New York, but for people trying to steal from me by taking advantage of a gap in my experience instead of physically trying to steal my wallet.
Every Sunday for months now has been spent working on my own business proposal to fund “Out of Lockstep.” I’ve had moments where I struggle to put what I’m trying to do into words. What’s a professional way to say “I want to help people like me heal the grief they’ve been carrying for years now. I want us to feel connected again the way we did before the lockdowns.”
The language comes out like this:
- Mission Statement:
Out of Lockstep’s mission is to present a transgressive art exhibit that presents a heterodox view on the harms of COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions in addition to the pandemic itself. By displaying provocative and satirical art pieces, it encourages guests to confront and process their own repressed traumas. It will prevent that period in time from being “memory-holed” and/or repeated.
- Vision:
● We will feature the “Out of Lockstep” installation in galleries in New York City, Toronto, and Los Angeles within the first year.
● Within the next three years, we will expand to more cities in the US and internationally
● Will obtain an “Orange Check” on Substack within the first year (Orange checks are for influential accounts; Substack allows a wide range of free speech and doesn’t ban people for talking about the harms of lockdowns)
At least 10 positive reviews/testimonials from guests
- Culture:
Out of Lockstep’s culture is focused around libertarian ideals and free speech, which allows for a wide range of expression. The humor is dark and satirical, but always “punches up” and tends to say things that millions of people worldwide were thinking but were afraid to say (or even legally prevented from saying) during the lockdowns. Ultimately, the goal is to work towards processing and healing from what happened, not for playing into any kind of “culture war” that causes more stress and division, so we are openly non-partisan and anti-authoritarian.
What I want from this is just that healing for myself and others, but I’ve been putting numbers on this. Return on Investment. Budgeting for the pieces of an installation. What’s the break even point on having people pay admission to go into a grief temple? How does it change when you add in jello shot syringes for dark humor?
I’ve had “laminate Biderman’s Chart of Coercion” be an item on an Asana board, along with “set up a crypto wallet” and “be sure the car gets an oil change before driving to New Hampshire from South Dakota.”
I’ve completely dissociated both when making the art itself and while writing the business plan. When I’m thinking about the logistics of how to light up the “Transhumanist Stained Glass Windows Series” (would they be actual stained glass? A sheer vinyl print with an LED panel behind it? The sheer fabric I’ve been using?), I’m not thinking about what inspired me to give one of them the caption, “if you died alone, the rest of us could live forever.” Tracing images for “Out of Lockstep” with the pen tool in Illustrator? Same thing, completely dissociated from what it actually is that I’m doing.
But at the Libertarian festival I took this to in New Hampshire? People couldn’t make it through the tunnel at the beginning that was mostly full of jokes and featured a quote from Jon Stewart without talking about the people they’d lost– either to death itself or the societal ruptures that happened.
One person walked in drunk and started acting sober halfway through.
Another man silently walked out, handed me $300 in cash, and left without a word.
People were hesitant to go in without their significant other. A 3-year-old wandered in and asked if it was a haunted house.
A few guests pointed out to me that I’d done something on the scale of a Burning Man installation– but without the grants that fund those, the logistics that move giant sculptures into the Black Rock Desert seamlessly, or even without the crew those have. Normally, they have about 20 people or more in a theme camp to run those installations. I had two other people to run it with me, a few thousand dollars, and a Honda Fit full of camping gear and a modular art exhibit.
When I had this idea in January 2022? I thought, “no, it’s too basic. It’s too obvious. Over half the world was locked down at one point. Literally, billions of people went through the same thing I did. Every one of them could do this, too.”
But I’ve only found a few other people who are in that overlap between big city creatives and people who read what dissident scientists have to say. Writing about that for Entrepreneurship class has been interesting. How do I figure out the target audience for this when everyone went through lockdowns, but no one is comfortable with talking about it? Some people react to my idea by saying I can’t use their gallery, while others invite me to use a sound stage in Los Angeles for free. Some people freeze up and can’t say anything. Others talk as if it’s the first time they’ve ever been able to do that. I couldn’t even pick up the first prints I did for it without spending over an hour talking to the people who were working there.
My life reminds me of the second half of Final Fantasy VI: you wake up on an abandoned island one day, and you have to wander a world where the continents have been re-arranged in search of your friends, hoping to bring back the life you knew before that re-arrangement happened.
And I’m writing about this in business plan form. Numbers, costs, figuring out how to make it actually happen.
An offer to stay in France for free!
— and then a realization that most people who support what I’m doing support it because they’re broke now because of what it did to their industry–
–and then, “I can help you make some of the art for this, but also I want to die right now, and there’s no work for actors in New York any more–“
–I have to do this so I can save them–
It’s not, “I need to write this proposal to pass a class,” it’s, “I want to write this so I can afford to take my transgressive art installation back to New York City because so many people still haven’t recovered emotionally.”
When I think about what drives me to do the crazy things I’m doing to make “Out of Lockstep” happen, I remind myself that grief and questions about death, loss, and transformation have always motivated people to create amazing things.
The Pyramids were built because of thoughts about eternal life. Did someone sit there in Ancient Egypt writing up a ledger for the limestone they needed for their grief temple? Old writing systems were used for inventory needs. Maybe there was an ancient business administrator who budgeted the cost to build a pyramid. What tools do you need? How much do they cost? Who secured the funding it took to keep stone masons paid while they painstakingly built Gothic cathedrals over the centuries? When Mozart wrote his own Requiem, someone had to figure out a rehearsal schedule and a way to pay the musicians. When I “camped” in Zuccotti Park for weeks on end at the end of 2011 for Occupy Wall Street, I used to quietly lie on the ground at night watching the red elevator outside the Freedom Tower construction site like is was a lava lamp. There needed to be spreadsheets and logistics to build that monument to grief and resilience in Lower Manhattan.
The first story ever written down by human beings, “The Epic of Gilgamesh” was created from the same grief that fuels “Out of Lockstep.” When his friend Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh searches for the answer to eternal life in order to bring him back. But he finds out, “Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands”
Except I’m writing it in business plan form and figuring out how to use Adobe software to make an exhibit that can be re-printed anywhere. “A musician in Australia just told me about the makeshift memorials he’s seen people set up along the roads…”
I literally have had famous people want to be involved with what I’m doing. When I e-mailed Ronny Moorings, the lead singer of Clan of Xymox, about obtaining permission to use his album “Limbo” as the soundtrack for part of my installation, he responded enthusiastically about why he would give that permission to me for free, and his agent was CC’d. I’ve had Aaron Kheriaty explain to me why my exhibit would reach people his book wouldn’t.
“I’ll take ‘Out of Lockstep’ to Brooklyn but set up in a gallery for the whole week or more this time… I’ll take it to Sturgis since my neighbor suggested that… I have an offer in Los Angeles from someone whose career never recovered… maybe Toronto would be a good place for this… there’s a retreat at a farm in Virginia where dissident doctors are gathering…”
It’s a modern-day version of “The Epic of Gilgamesh.” Search everywhere for the answer for how to reverse your loss.
I probably should have set up a Kickstarter campaign before posting this blog entry… instead I just wrote it spontaneously because of something an old friend from the set of “Gotham” said to me tonight.