The following text was written as I watched the news of my home country, Venezuela, two days before the presidential elections that will take place on Sunday, June 28th. Paranoia, anxiety and nerves are very present throughout its body. It is totally based on songs I listened to while writing it: however, the playlist is left as an exercise for the reader to enjoy.
On July 13, 2024, Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in a rally in Pennsylvania. On the same day, I was arriving at the Chicago O’Hare airport after some twelve hours of traveling from Caracas, Venezuela. There, the engines were starting for the presidential campaign of our first somewhat free election in more than a decade; however, I could not register for the electoral roll because I am currently studying in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country with the most complicated political system in the world. Five days later, I lost contact with one of my best friends because she is from Bangladesh and, due to the current wave of protests taking place in her country, the internet connection was shut down across the entire territory. Now I’m here (now I’m here) // Think I’ll stay around, around (think I’ll stay around, around)
Now, eleven days later, I am in a dormitory at Yale University, less than two hundred meters away from where the first arrests of the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses all across the United States happened, nervously texting my friends because it is the first time they will ever vote and, although we have some degree of hope in a change occurring on the elections set to take place on Sunday, we recognize deep within us the unlikelihood of such outcome. But if you close your eyes, // does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?
No, it does not. We tend to yearn for the past because its doors are all traversed and its paths all fixed, the graphs of its misadventures are all complete, and the metaphors of its misdoings are already well understood. Yet, for me the past houses nothing but the same dissatisfaction I feel for the present. As Mick Jagger put it back in 1964 and whose never-ending tours might express nothing but a continued commitment to such an idea, I can’t get no satisfaction // ’Cause I try and I try and I try and I try…
And here I am, a grateful product of my continual trying but just a simple residual of my own irrelevance. Even though eight years ago I might have dressed up as Trump for Halloween and watched the electoral college map of the United States change colors without really understanding what did each of these numbers mean and now I am at the very country where it all happened, do I really understand anything better now? As most of my blog posts refer to in some way, I feel as if I was a magnet of political despair and a victim of a constant sense of impending doom. Anyway, I don’t wanna be an American Idiot // don’t want a nation under the new media.
Why would I be? I am not American, anyways. I am, of course, not from Bosnia and Herzegovina either: in paper, all that associates me with such country is a sticker on my passport. My Portuguese passport, because there is no reason why I should travel with my Venezuelan one: we are negatively labeled all over the world, the names of my fellow nationals covering the streets of all major metropoles (and the documents of migration agencies) in search for a better future. So, maybe, I am not so Venezuelan either. I’d love to change the world, // but I don’t know what to do.
And, even if I did, would I be able to put this potentially unbearable knowledge into true practice? Probably not. The way things feel right now, nothing seems to be in place. Even though I cannot write about the political situation of my home country because its sheer simplicity makes it too dangerous to openly discuss, it is not hard to realize that the world is not at its highest point right now. Indeed, everything points at it being at its worst. Oh, has the world changed, or have I changed?
Wait, when was the song of the last paragraph published? According to Wikipedia, “”The Queen Is Dead” is a 1986 song by English alternative rock band the Smiths, appearing on their third studio album of the same name.”. This piece, which I am quoting now in what my literary self-esteem would love to call a very context-aware manner, was published 38 years ago -and 36 years before the Queen actually died! Has the world really changed that much? I do not think so. Even though everything seems to be about to tip over, hasn’t it always seemed like that? Haven’t we always been trying to cope by setting ourselves to be comfortably numb?
Yes, we definitely have. Yes, we definitely have. In 2019, when Venezuela seemed to be falling apart due to various reasons, including a couple of presidents, there were Euromaidan-like raging protests two blocks to the north of my house and queues to buy cauliflowers two blocks south. Two seemingly entirely different realities happening one right next to the other, less than a mile away. However, while their physical manifestation might have been totally different, I see them as two equally valid coping mechanisms of getting through the same struggles. As the Venezuelan band Sentimiento Muerto put it back long before we knew what chavismo was, it was all the magic of an absent sensation.
A sensation of having control over something we, as individuals, lack almost any kind of saying. Here I am, in the United States, a Venezuelan who lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina and can do nothing about any of these countries while, at the same time, feeling strongly connected to the struggles they all currently face. And not due to personal links, but because of simple exposure: if I was associated with other countries in any way, I would definitely be as concerned as I am right now due to different reasons. As it seems to be, the natural human state is one of worry, even though anyway the wind blows.
And, as I unnerve myself trying to contact my friend in Bangladesh, reading the news about Biden dropping out of the American presidential race, and trying to figure out what is going on in my very own home country,, I try to think that everything will be fine. And, if it won’t be so by itself, there are always small things we can make to slowly turn them that way. True care, truth brings.
I am often considered someone extremely pessimistic. Indeed, amongst my WhatsApp friend groups, many audios of me engaging in the strongest kind of complaining have made it to the pinned message pantheon. Yet, I do not see it that way: if there is something to complain about, why not point it out to the same extent that good things are enshrined? If you want it, here it is, come and get it // But you’d better hurry ’cause it’s goin’ fast
How can we get them if we don’t know where they are? As worlds seem to fall apart and I feel as if I am hopping between crises, I can’t choose but to try and make my best. For us to take, it’s all too much // Floating down the stream of time, of life to life with me
It certainly is all too much, but don’t you know it’s gonna be all right?
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