07/14/2019
IN PRAISE OF WEAKNESS
It's been five years since the Chicken Fat Perambulation project was suspended; it's been ten years since the seed for the idea came to be; it's been thirty-five years since the life-changing love-finding experience which came to be commemorated through the Chicken Fat Perambulation happened.
The CFP was born out of weakness. It was a celebration of weakness; the strength of weakness. Our own strategic weakness, relative to that which surrounds us.
Weakness can be a strength: it is spoken of in such strategic terms when it comes to political systems and the like, "weak" leadership as an exercise in non-authoritarian democracy.
I have found my strength in weakness over the years. As a child it came naturally, as the grownups were in charge, in control. "Strength" is what I beheld around me, in the form of the world the grownups created around me.
"Weakness" as the act of bearing witness. But when weakness is strength, the strength--that which is "witnessed"--becomes a form of weakness. The act of witnessing, of beholding, brings it down to our level.
And better it be an honest weakness, than a false and deceptive strength.
Over the years, I've been personally discomfitted with "strength". With taking command, with taking charge. Because strength feels like weakness to me. The weakness of the finite. Strength as a finite goal; weakness as infinity. The weak being "outsiders"; and outside is so much more infinite than inside.
Technically, that has "held me back" in some respects. I could have been an author; I could have been a scholar; I could have been a creator; I could have had a family. But I opted--even in my daily job activity--to be a witness. A witness unto family and authorship and scholarship and creativity. And the everyday world.
A witness apart. "Weakness" as the antithesis of Ayn Rand-style heroic individualism; but not quite disappearing into the collectivist fold, either.
The Chicken Fat Perambulation project was weakness in practice--small against the immensity of the city in real time; yet round-angled and open-ended even toward its own self-subversion. It wasn't just about seeing the city in a conventional urban-judgment way; it was about *the act* of seeing our city, in a once-removed sense.
Since the CFP, I've been applying "weakness" in the name of other pursuits, including a running riding-by-riding analysis of 2018 Ontario election results. My "weakness" being in choosing to step back from partisanship and letting the poll-by-poll patterns speak for themselves, as a guide to our own witness-bearing insight into what makes Ontario electorally tick, whichever side we're on. A sort of "electoral urbanism". (The result being the most "unpolitical" political posts imaginable, at least for those prone to steering clear of "political posts".)
Honest weakness and the act of witnessing is, at its best, an antidote to anxiety. Witnessing gives us a sense of place; whereas those prone to urban or political anxiety often betray an underdeveloped "witnessing" reflex--the anxiety of not being able to grasp.
"Weakness" is not dogma--a world of nothing but weakness would be anarchy. But it is a valid option. And it takes a certain strength to opt for weakness.
But unfortunately, it also takes a strong cultural infrastructure to inform a virtuous weakness--an infrastructure which, unfortunately, is harder to come by these days. The breakdown or rarefication of traditional media gatekeepers has taken its toll; like when it comes to the CFP and urban judgment, fewer people have the foundation to comprehensively "view" our urban form, not unlike how the advent of GPS has led to atrophy of "natural" map-reading abilities that were once taken for granted. Plus, through its emphasis on the individual ("selfie culture", so to speak), the age of social media has degraded the conditions for "virtuous weakness"; rather than stepping back and witnessing, we're placing *ourselves* to be witnessed. Social media has locked us into gated sanctums of "deceptive strength".
Though it must also be said that "virtuous weakness" has been baked into great wit, comedy, satire over the years. In fact, nothing embodies "weakness" like the jester, the medieval fool of yore. "Foolishness" = designated weakness: but virtuous in the insights offered.
And of course, the heir to the role of the fool being the inspiration for the "Chicken Fat": early MAD, which made no secret of its being the creation of "idiots", "clods", etc.
CFP wasn't quite satirical in intent like MAD; it was more like a reverie. Which made its weakness more ethereal. (And maybe closer in spirit to how younger people actually epiphanously consumed MAD--or a whole lot of "adult media", for that matter.)
Weakness as infinity; weakness as reverie; weakness as being at one with the world. And weakness as a subversion of so-called strength.
(In which case, one might say that the impending death of MAD is a symbol of so-called strength--in the form of Trump et al--subverting weakness.)
