Make weird shit.
A creative manifesto for fucked up times
Nov. 6, 2024 update:
Keep making weird shit. We need it now more than ever.
This manifesto is part consolation, part rallying cry, a reminder that even in dark times, there are always people making cool, weird shit — people who, through their artistry and weirdness, dare in large and small ways to stand up to injustice, question the status quo, and imagine what could be.
May you and I be among them.
Listen.
The world is burning.
The world has always burned, but the scale is bigger now. The stakes are existential. Power, division, tragedy. Heads buried in the sand.
Do you feel helpless? Hopeless? Ready to throw up your hands in surrender?
The world is always burning somewhere.
The fire in your heart is burning, too.
Listen.
Make weird shit.
Excavate the deep, dark yearnings of your heart.
Scour your bones, your blood, your twisting guts. Dig up your essence and make of it an offering, fey and feral and strange.
Take weird photos. Write weird poems, weird songs, weird books. Paint weird art. Knit weird sweaters. Bake weird bread. Brew weird tea.
Make weird shit.
Does that sound small? Meaningless? Laughably insufficient in the face of what’s to come?
Listen.
Weird comes from wierd comes from wyrd, which means “having the power to control fate.”
Go back even further, to urðr and wert and Old English weorðan, and you get “becoming.”1
Millions of years ago, our ancestors’ genes did a bunch of weird shit. They stumbled their way into RNA. DNA. Mouths and muscles and sex. Bile and blood, bone and brain.
And so we became human.
And so we evolved lungs, thumbs, frontal lobes, and the power to change our fate.
Listen.
Everything new is weird.
Ask any historian: Freedom is weird. Feminism is weird. Universal suffrage is really weird.
Electricity? Gravity? Germ theory? The Earth revolving around the sun? Weird, weird, laughably weird, weird bordering on heretical.
Weird is transformation, fresh soil for stale ground.
Weird is young. Weird is ageless. Weird is the wave that rises and falls, the river that makes canyons out of cliffs.
Listen.
Weird is so fucking brave.
Weird is a white dress, a green scarf, a yellow umbrella, a rainbow flag.
Weird is hands up, a bent knee, a three-finger salute.
Weird is quiet words spoken in the dark, loving hands on trembling shoulders, proud gatherings without shame.
Weird is millions of people all standing together, shouting, crying, whispering:
WE ARE HERE. WE ARE REAL. WE WILL NOT BE ERASED.
Listen.
Weird is the farthest thing from meaningless.
Weird is important. Weird is enormous. Weird fucking matters.
Weird is change, subversion, becoming.
Weird is the power to control fate.
Weird is the fire in your heart — burning, burning, burning —
And in that fire is hope.
I need to ask for your help
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Source: Etymonline.com
This is really resonating with me 👻👻👻👻
"Millions of years ago, our ancestors did a bunch of weird shit!"
Love it .......haha 😀