How wrong is it to wish him dead?
Hella Immaculate is thoughts/FEELINGS, peculiar music, and actions to improve our world, from writer-performer-comedian Dave Maher. Thank you for reading!
I love my work, and you make it possible. I believe directly supporting artists we love is the way past celebrity, blandness, and corporate control and into a future full of vital and varied art.
If you enjoy what I do and want me to make more, consider listening to my afterlife podcast, following me on Instagram, or telling a friend, “I’ve got this vulnerable, kinda mischievous, existential comedian you’d really dig.”
I honestly don’t know, and I want to.
Here are, in no particular order, the moral/functional questions I’ve got after thinking and thinking and talking to the one very sane, generous, empathetic, and justice-minded person I live with.
Is there a difference between wishing him dead in your mind and saying it out loud?
1A. Is there a difference between saying it out loud and posting it online?If he died, would things get better or worse, and for whom?
Is it ever morally defensible to wish someone dead?
Did Hitler’s death solve anything?
Would it have helped the people Hitler oppressed (understatement, obviously) to kill him?
Do the deaths of evil people stop, lessen, or atone for their evil?
Is there an amount of evil a person can do that justifies their death, where they’ve essentially given up the right to be a part of humanity?
7A. What’s the amount?What does it do to me to foster hatred for him? To what extent is it natural/healthy to face, and to what extent does it corrode some part of me?
Can you snatch justice from those who perpetrate violence without perpetrating violence?
Feel like this is getting pretty heady, so I’ll leave it there. I don’t have any real answers, but here are the makeshift ones I’ve got, listed cereal box style.
1) Not really, and I do. 1A) Yeah, so I won’t. 2) Probably both, for the usual suspects. 3) Just to wish? Probably. Right? 4) NO idea. 5) Ditto. 6) Depends. 7) Truly no idea. 7A) Ditto. 8) Healthy/natural to feel, but reluctant to admit fostering probably always only hurts us. 9) Don’t know at all.
I want to be a better person. I want to be someone who seeks true justice, not just punishment.
But I also DON’T want to be someone who acts like they’ve never had a monstrous feeling or thought in their life, who denies their full humanity by turning away from the ugly parts.
Right now, that leaves me out here how I imagine a lot of people, hating this fucking guy and feeling guilty about it.
This Week’s “This Is Your Afterlife”
Joz Norris made one of my favorite shows at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Joz Norris Is Dead. Long Live Mr. Fruit Salad. It won him the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Comedians’ Choice Award for Best Show. Mr. Fruit Salad was so many of the things I love about comedy, theater, and fringe shows: tender, silly-silly-silly, and with a couple especially memorable theater-magic moments. I saw it and felt like he was a real kindred spirit.
This year, with the Fringe canceled, he released his new show as a film, You Build the Thing You Think You Are. It’s about the shattering of his sense of self when he had to move from his longtime London flat, so: identity, home, and the people we love. Plus much Romanian troll/goblin content.
A lot of Joz’s work is about friendship, which I think is an underrepresented theme in entertainment/art in general. Naturally, there’s some solid friendship talk in this conversation, as well as in-depth discussion of ghosts and the relationship between work and the meaning of our lives.
I hope you enjoy Joz as much as I do.
Just like with Kimberly Michelle Vaughn last week, there will be bonus content available from this episode in the thing I am about to mention right… NOW!
I’m launching a Patreon!
My biggest obsessions in quarantine include:
the two-sided coin of fascism vs. liberation
the artistic economy, in and after this pandemic
all versions of Netflix’s The Circle (Brazil forever)
The second concern is absolutely a self-interested one. I made a New Year’s resolution to go “full-time art,” and COVID has obviously thrown some kinks into that.
I’ve thought a lot about how I can devote my time to making compelling/unique/thought-provoking/funny art in ways that make the world better and without having to go back to my old freelance gig at a boring, soulless, weirdly chipper blog content mill.
Teaching and coaching has been a big part of that equation (I’m available!). Revamping this newsletter to focus on concrete actions to better the world and amplify marginalized voices and communities is another. But I want to make more, higher quality work, and Patreon can help me do that.
I’ve got exciting plans for tiers and rewards, including ridiculous bonus podcast segments. You’ll see the rest when when I soft-launch to you all this weekend (keep a look out!). The official launch is Monday, so now’s the time to spread the word if you’ve got pals you want to bring into the fold.
Wamp Wamp (What to Do)
Read this article about CUP Foods, “the store that called the cops on George Floyd,” which includes the first interview with the employee who called 9-1-1. It’s an interesting investigation into questions like, “Who constitutes a community?” and “What does atonement look like between neighbors on unequal footing?” I’m a fan of anything that advocates for complexity, ambiguity, and nuance, and this does that heavy.
Help prisoners get their stimulus checks! If you know anyone incarcerated, you can help them get their $1200 check from that original stimulus package (remember when the U.S. government at least went through the motions of pretending to give a shit about its citizens?) by following the instructions here. The filing deadline is October 15, so act quick.
Celebrate. We donated a total of $15 to Healing for Louisville, a grassroots group that gives directly to the people most oppressed by systemic racism. That’s what I donated, but hey, we do what we can and we’re doing this for the long haul.
Donate to Nox Arca Theatre. Another independent theater bit the dust due to COVID, and it’s one very close to my heart. It’s where I developed the show that got me my first 4-star review at Edinburgh.
Nox Arca was a space where I could try anything, where I did hard and fun and vulnerable and awkward and experimental work to mostly-empty houses. I canceled a show (after I came back from Edinburgh) due to a panic attack, and even my best shows there were inconsistent because of how aggressively I was trying new things to figure out what the fuck Feed Wolf Ice Cream was/is.
Unlike in the UK, there’s not a big culture in the U.S. supporting the kind of heartfelt, experimental, hybrid-genre, live comedy shows I create. To develop my work, I need more stage time in one go than most stand-up showcases can provide. That’s what I got at Nox Arca, a space to stretch out and do the weird, hard work I needed in front of a few people who really cared about that work enough to help shape it into an actual show.
I donated $20. I know we’re all strapped right now, but man, I’d really love to give Madison and Nick a nice little chunk on behalf of Feed Wolf Ice Cream to chip away at their debt. If you can, reply with what you donate (use wolf and ice cream emojis! 🐺🍨), and I’ll post our total next week.
May I Play You a Sound?
Calvero is my buddy and former roommate Gabe Liebowitz, who not only makes lush, dramatic, nostalgic pop music but can talk about it in a way that invites you into his process (check out his podcast!). He’s a comrade-in-arms when it comes to forging an independent creative path, and he talked sense into me just a couple days ago when I was waaaaayyyyy overthinking my social media “strategy.”
His new song came out yesterday, so what better time to celebrate him? In his newsletter (also great), he talked about taking inspiration from the small town/suburban vibe of “Friday Night Lights” and Lilith Fair.
And “Wait” is equally a song to blast with your 1990 Toyota Camry windows down on that forest-y section of Loveland-Madeira Road or to make you skate a little faster when it comes on at the roller rink so you can catch up with that gangly girl you make out with before and after church youth group.
So get my number when it’s over,
DM