04/01/23 - 04/29/23

“John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave...”

-Traditional

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord...”

-Traditional

“Solidarity forever...”

-Traditional

“John Brown’s baby had a cold upon its chest...”

-Traditional

“...and they rubbed it with camphorated oil.” How in the hell did a song about an abolitionist morph into a nursery ditty about an afflicted kid (and by intermediary turns, the respective anthems of U.S. Christian nationalism and organized labor)? One tune, a pocketful of ideological positions. Pick your poison. 

(And who is the ‘they’ that rubbed that baby?)

I would like to propose in this particular coming together of contexts the traditional/seditional not as a dichotomy, or even a spectrum, but rather an operative, resistant, convoluted and contradictory key for acting together in the world - to propose it as a refrain, not in diametrical opposition to either repressive tradition or fanatical sedition, but as the very chorus of their de/re-composing. In Karen Barad’s terms, a cutting together-apart.

(And the baby had a cold upon its chest, not in - one can only infer here that the oil penetrated where the virus could not.)

What kind of folk remedies are we to concoct when all is toxic, and each cure evinces the next set of maladies? When hell is starting to look like a pretty good option? What kind of balm can you make from produced water, for instance? 

(Solidarity forever? Infernal baby oil.)