On Becoming Unfit for Polite Company.

In an arts environment rich in speculative academic jargon, returning to ourselves and making contact with our own truth is possible, valuable and feels good.

Screenshot of a polaroid. Me on set age mid-30s. Canalside Studios East London (early 2000s). Being a photographer helped me process what I observed, but at my pace. I always wondered —Do I see what you see? Feel what you feel? Hear what you hear? Through photography I was trying to work that out. Photo: PipTot

It's funny. It's like over the course of the last couple of years, I find myself becoming more and more unfit for polite company. You know, it's like you start...

What I mean is that I lose the thread of questions because my mind starts... I go off on these detours, like these little walkabouts, I guess you might call them. And maybe the way that they generally work is that I've become more and more conscious of the fact that I don't know what people mean when they say certain things, even though for the last 50 years, I've been acting like I knew perfectly well what everybody means when they say things, you know.

And it's like I'm no longer operating within the consensus, within the common sort of sense of it, you know. 

Fred Moten extract from The Verso Podcast: Spectators and Witnesses | Legacy Russell & Fred Moten, 2 May 2024

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The above quote is an extract I experienced as a listener during a complex back and forth between two critical thinkers, on the role of critical fabulation in history. Both speakers seemed to have opposing communication styles that collided in a dizzying impasse at this point in the conversation. Fred Moten changes gears and rather than give an answer to the inquiry presented to him - he decides to step up and out of the confines of polite discourse and speak his truth.

I found his response beautiful.

I listened to it four times - wondering what it was about his elegant pause that struck a chord with me. I realised that it was the way he centered himself in his response. Put the brakes on operating within the consensus and it felt like there was a message in there somewhere, for me.

All this to say that I have some news. I think.