ANNOUNCER: This is the Channel 62 News “Soapbox Minute,” made possible by the support of Exorcist IPA. “The power of hops compels you.” And Iron Age PowerMax vitamin supplements. “Conquer toxins; enslave vitality.”
ANCHOR: Jacob “Jake” Anderson lives with his partner in Red Hook and works part-time as a bookkeeper in Manhattan. In his spare time, he volunteers at his local library and food bank. He’s here to give us his take on a pressing issue of the day. Jake, what do you have for us?
JACOB: It amazes me the lengths we’ll go to find contentment. All that time and expense we hand over to a slick product or an elaborate program. What does any of it do? It makes us distrustful of the power of simple ideas to make us more secure in ourselves. I come to you tonight with no program or product. I don’t stand to profit or otherwise benefit from what should take me three seconds to tell you, and one second to make an impact. I am only here to state what is factual. Not just factual, but true. Let me tell you a story.
The other week I was walking on a crowded sidewalk when I saw a woman approaching in the opposite direction. She was in office clothing, perhaps coming back from a lunch break. What professional level she was, whether executive, managerial, or administrative, was not clear and I didn’t presume, but she strode with apparent competence and sense of purpose in whatever she did. Yet just as she was passing me, she had a bit of bad luck. Out of nowhere, one of her heels gave out, causing her ankle to twist inward and sending her once-stable equilibrium straight down onto the concrete. Her knees hit first, and she groaned at their scraping. Though that was a soft landing compared to her hands, one of which made contact with a piece of glass. In pain and embarrassment she struggled to get back on her feet. More fortunate pedestrians walked around her as if she was an obstructive pile of junk. So I did what any decent human being would do. I helped her up, taking careful notice of the blood cascading from her palms and knees. No, I didn’t clean her off; I didn’t tend to her wounds. I just looked into her teary eyes and told her that “You don’t actually need blood to live.” She froze in a lightning-flash moment of astonishment but then smiled and walked, broken shoe in-hand, off to the nearest subway.
You may be wondering, “Is it really that simple?” Can something that seems like barely a truism really infuse someone with confidence? Well, it is easy to under-appreciate the far-reaching benefits of something so comparatively miniscule. But small things contain many working parts. In the time I have here, I will discuss two of the most important parts.
The first is overcoming pain. Pain is real. But pain haunts you. It is through fear that pain reaches its greatest intensity. It is the fear of coming loose; of your contents being threatened. That strange logic has overcome our species across the centuries, instilling in you that what is inside of you must stay there. But at what cost? I guess it’s a matter of propriety and good sense? But in reality it reduces you to a deplorable status. You’re a Ziplock bag of leftovers. You’re a Hefty bag carrying the week’s trash. You live in slavish devotion to your skin, this thing you’d apparently be lost without, keeping your parts intact and your secrets hidden. But it is a secret you share with everyone else: you are fine, actually. What is that pulse you feel? Things in good working order? Hardly. It is a mass trying to pound its way out of you, trying to claim the freedom it’s entitled to. Scrutinize the data closely enough and you’ll find that there is no conclusive proof of anyone dying from blood loss. This is yet another op orchestrated by doctors and profiteers to keep us complacent, dependent, and afraid. But the wheel of progress turns regardless, and soon we shall see this faulty diagnosis replaced by the more accurate “lack of hustle.”
Once it is understood that what’s in you aches to be out of you, and that it has every right to be out of you, you discover that the onset horror of coming undone, that pain of having been broken into, is not quite as dominating as it once was. In short order, an under-surface abrasion, a slight knick on your finger, even a fairly productive gash will not inspire the alarm stale tradition has long attached to them. What was once an “injury” is now an accent mark—an umlaut here and apex there—a physical manifestation of your personality. In a time when getting to know someone even casually is a challenge, we are blessed with this literally innate resource by which we may present, with minimal risk of blowback, our manifold complexities and our deepest yearnings.
Blood is the expressive medium of intimacy and individual consciousness, which leads us to our second working part: aesthetic effect. Outside of vantablack there is nothing more efficiently intense; and I doubt there is any other hue nearly as vivifying as blood’s particular brand of red. King Crimson, you could call it. For this is no frivolous thing.
To secrete it under your skin, which I have conclusively established beyond doubt as your enemy, is to stifle your blood’s beautifying destiny. You’ll find an astounding variety of uses for it. Put it in a fancy vase or a mason jar. Put it in a lava lamp—those are in need of a comeback. Redecorate your apartment with it. Trade it on the market as a commodity. Use it for cooking: mix it into risotto, marinate your steak with it, glaze it onto a cake or a doughnut, or ferment it. Soon there will be a whole new branch of sommeliers trained in judging a blood’s exquisite vintage.
But the fun is only just beginning. Once you’ve drained yourself of your blood, you are free to embalm yourself with the fluid of your choice. Honey, rosé, shamrock shake, Tang, gasoline, actual piss and vinegar, whatever!
Consider a culture in which red predominates across our physical realm; from the artery to every swimming pool, reservoir, and manmade lake. Then onward to our surfaces: our clothing and our walls—on, not in, our skin. Finally, to the very center of our consciousness: red language, red dreams, red social cues. All this once an oppression that’s long overstayed its welcome is usurped and King Crimson is free to reign in a magnitude appropriate to his mandate.
ANCHOR: And that was Jake Anderson with a thought-provoking piece. Thank you, Jake. To be considered for a future installment of “Soapbox Corner,” please submit your idea to 62news.soapbox@notarealwebsite.com. And now let’s go to Tricia with sports.