Life advice from Shakespeare’s Villians
(but backwards – you know, learning what not to do from their bad actions)

Never make someone a friend who tells you “must put me in your heart for friend.” If you’re becoming friends with people based only on their manipulations and their say so, you’re going to be in trouble.
If someone has a list of reasons you MUST be friends with them…if they make arguments and proofs for why you suddenly owe them friendship…odds are, they are not your friend. They will not prove to be friends later. And in this case, their “friendships” will get you killed.

I’m not a parent and I don’t spend a lot of time with small children lately but something I have noticed is how readily they will respond to an invitation. If you offer a place to go, if it sounds fun, they will follow. They don’t have to know what it is or choose it necessarily. But one can get anywhere with an invitation to run or skip or slide.

Enforcements are not so productive. Try to get a child to do something by your will and the child will quickly dig in her heels. Why would they ever do something they did not want to? There is nothing stopping them following their every whim. Except of course, safety – except of course, limits. Of course – except social structure.

What if there was a giant axe of justice in the city? And it stood at the center of the square, just waiting to come crashing down on offenses.
I mean, I suppose that’s what a guillotine is – and that’s essentially what happened during the French Revolution, from some folks’ perspectives. A giant axe, dealing out justice.
But of course I’m picturing a very different sort of axe than a guillotine. I’m imagining a Viking axe or a Paul Bunyan tree falling axe – and I picture it set up like a gate to the city – suspended over the entrance, ready to fall at any injustice.

The dings and scratches on my ego happen so often. I sometimes miss that they’ve happened until later. But an artist’s life is a landmine for this.
In a scarcity arts economy, there is intense competition that is usually heavily veiled. It is competition disguised as community or cooperation. But jealousies abound. And to retain the idea that somehow my art is still worth something even as I watch my peers get the opportunities I’ve been refused, I have to pull a neat trick not to start beating myself, metaphorically speaking.
But I must find ways to support my own vision – as no one else will. So I shall.

While I would absolutely NOT like for a man like Claudius to labor with my soul – I am intrigued by the idea of someone with the ability to do that. What if there were soul laborers? Or soul whisperers? Perhaps who could bypass your conscious intentions and just speak directly to your soul.

Actually, we do have these people. They’re called artists. Not every artist speaks to every soul but there are artists who speak to many at once. There are artists who perhaps only speak to one soul but even that is valuable. There are many artists who labor with my soul. Remedios Varo, Robyn Schiff, Shakespeare, Joni Mitchell and on and on.
My soul laborers.

Ah, the collateral hand. The collateral hand has been quite busy in our current political moment. No one is guilty, it would seem, but so is everyone, by collateral hands. I have to hope and expect that there will be prosecutions, there will be convictions but right now, the collateral hands are so busy, there is no pausing long enough to them.

And just to remind you – I wrote this at the beginning of 2017. There have been so many prosecutions and convictions already though not nearly enough.

Just keep in mind I was trying to write these things in the first months of 2017 and it was nearly impossible.

Dear lord. The times are so terrible. I can’t focus on this line at all. I see the word judge and all I can think about is the judge who put a stay on this horrible travel ban and what a hero he is. And how this administration is trying to discredit this George W. Bush appointee as a left leaning wacko and how they removed the judicial branch from the White House website and how judges orders are being ignored left and right and that’s all I can manage right now.

This is my plan for the current horrifying political moment. I’m going apart. I am seeking out two of my wisest friends (among many wise friends these two live in the same geographic region, close to one another but far from me.) In dark times, they both give me comfort and great wisdom. It has been too long – too far, too impossible to see them before now. But now. now I will draw close to my wisest friends because I need them more than ever.

In addition to being a murderer and manipulator, Claudius is also a dick. I mean. This is a dick move. Even more accurately, it is a narcissistic move. Insinuating himself into Laertes’ grief for his sister? I mean. It’s so ridiculously about him – and given the current political moment, I can’t help but imagine Claudius as our Toddler in Chief –our Chief Narcissist. Our Egomaniac Elect. This feels like something he would do…watch a man’s heart breaking and insist on his right to commune with him.

While I COULD buy that Claudius is upset about Polonius’ death, he doesn’t actually seem too bereaved. His principle response when he heard the news was to think of himself and how it might have been him. This is the first mention of any actual grief for the man – for this chief advisor. So while he MIGHT have felt some grief for Polonius’ death, this is the first we’re hearing about it – so this grief seems more like a performance of grief than any actual feelings.