PTSDetroit l I am an unoriginal by Miles Boucher

Today, we discuss me.







There I am!



Hullo, me!



Anyway, this was an excerpt from our work on PTSDetroit, otherwise known as Plant the Seed, Detroit.

It was hosted on January 20th, 2017 and started at 7:00pm (Eastern).

That day I had watched the Inauguration as had approximately 30.6 million according to the Atlantic.

It was hard to see.

For those who couldn't watch, you should watch it.

For those who can't here is the transcript, provided by the Washington Post



It was hard to watch; incredibly divisive for a president.

But, what could you expect?

I had decided weeks in advance, my audition for PTSDetroit, if you will, was to lift out a chunk of text from President Donald Trump's Inaugural Address and see what could possibly be done with it.

I figured, we had chosen the date of the performance anyway, let's make it significant with the day.

It would also prevent me from over planning or overcooking my performance.



In the end, I had to back away.
I couldn't use his actual text.

For performance reasons.



So I turned to why I wanted to do it in the first place and what I ultimately concluded was this:

I wanted it to be something true.



Something true.



On this day of days, I wanted something that was said to be true.

I didn't want it to be half-truths and half-lies.

I didn't want to hear something to appease the fan base or congratulate conservatives or console liberals.

I wanted people to really think and consider just what had happened and our actions in letting it occur.



So I went with Shakespeare.

Henry VI part 2 as a matter of fact.

John Cade's Rebellion: 

a populist leader who ultimately through his brash and insolent nature almost overthrows the monarchy, but is ultimately executed in a garden by a loyal knight of the crown, all but nameless in his cowardice until he dies. 

And is beheaded.

I don't know why I thought it would make a good substitute, but the bravado and the appeal to almost dream-like promises seemed accurate.

So I ran with it.

I copied it down verbatim into my journal and then wrote bookends for it that would be absolutely true.

What came out was a critique on truth.

A critique on the hashtag culture that we are living in and the horror of the reality of Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom, which foretold:

"People choose their facts nowadays."

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it.

I hope it made you think; it certainly has made me think about what it is we are all doing here.

Please, please, please, love one another and love yourselves.

Ultimately, the demagogues perish because they are alone.

They cannot help but be alone because they drive a wedge between everyone until they are the only ones left.

It happens all of the time.

Stand together. Stand up. And take care.