Larry Wilmore & David Gilmour
Text that links names together is a haphazard consequence of the maddening randomness that lies beneath all our surfaces.
We are creatures that strive, that create and build as if in this labour lies the reason for living. This is probably true. It is what separates us from all the rest. We somehow evolved these opposable thumbs and the dumb, head slap satisfaction most get when something is complete, when it is done, when we can stand it up and say with pride that this now can be used, either as the cog in some great machinery or as a decorative piece placed gingerly on our window sills. We create and so we are.
This fascination with creation, either regarding the big bang unfathomless of our place in the universe or in our affection for doo-dads created by rural artisans, lends to our lionization of the people whose wares proliferate across our mental landscapes. We dream of the brash founder and the rock star.
We’ve gone so far as to rank such people by the number of clicks, likes, follows, or other analytics that mass society uses. It is the masses that bestow these clicks and somehow we value the mass appeal more than any fodgy analysis of what constitutes success or important art. We don’t want to be challenged, to learn, to develop ourselves. We just want to exercise our fractured power in bestowing the same click that millions of others have conferred on some shiny, silly, sad, and typically shoddy creation. We do this because we hope, we pray, that the masses will bestow the same clicks on us.
Larry Wilmore and David Gilmour. The first is an intellectual, a writer, a producer, a thinker and a black man awkwardly searching for a fit in the new narratives of difference and power in a society that is quickly dissolving the promise of equality and freedom as it congeals around angry authoritarianism. He did this as a lead writer and correspondent on the Daily Show right through to his recent podcast. In these, he is more the funny Oscar Wilde than the intellectual James Baldwin. He draws from Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates, and Michael Eric Dyson and yet these inevitably make him more academic than he is. He is more akin to Lenny Bruce than Richard Pryor, and he knows it. This, of course, use to be fine. Now, the stew, as it congeals, is causing conformity in that the only way to influence is through the quip and if you don’t think in quips you are going to have a hard time. Only a few have shown ways to do this well, including Fran Lebowitz, and she isn’t racking up TikTok points. Maybe this is evolution, out with the old, in with the new, the stir stir stir of our cultural pots that inevitably lead some together and some apart. Fine. The second, however, is a guitarist for one of the most successful rock bands, Pink Floyd, from the 1970s. He is devoutly English, continuously wary of clashes with Roger Waters, and happiest when strumming a rare guitar. he continues to talk about his days with Pink Floyd, reminiscing at how presumptuous it was for a few lads in their early twenties to write songs about the deep emotional tenets of life. Pink Floyd, and David Gilmore, are firmly etched into the grooves of our lives, so much so that a college kid from Ghana is as likely to hum along to the Dark Side of the Moon as is a Hollywood influencer, although each might not admit it in what they deem polite company. This is not meant to compare the accomplishments of Larry Wilmore with David Gilmour. These are simple consequences of letters and rhymes. The question is whether, in this fractured, click click click landscape that consumes our mental landscapes, how anyone can create a groove that lasts a lifetime?
We create to fill the void. We can’t click click click and create. the clicks are spinning around the void and our creations are languishing while others make things that are made of stone and glass. We need to create. We need to make. We need to bury our heads into our own abilities, our own talents, and forge and sand, mull and marry, make, make make. We must create to fill the void or the void will fill ourselves.
Dorian LaGuardia
2022
