BREAKING NEWS: Abraham Lincoln Endorses Kamala Harris (after first tearing the sh!t out of her opponent)
I invite you to watch this goofy, anarchic, poetic thought-grenade:
Donald Trump’s election win over Hillary Clinton in 2016 triggered something in me. I spent the next few days furiously writing a poem that, in its first incarnation, was called “My Final Offer”. By early December I was spitting My Final Offer into my phone and performing it at protests and poetry nights in New York. The first ever rendition went out as a Facebook post:
Almost 8 (crazy) years have passed since that (crazy) fork in human history. I’ve substantially rewritten the poem several times since then. In horror, after January 6th, 2021; in fear, as it appeared that Joe Biden was bumbling towards losing the election; and most recently, with renewed optimism, after president Biden cemented his legacy, stepping aside and endorsing Kamala Harris.
No matter where I’ve lived (and I’ve been fortunate enough to live in several different countries) the occupant of the White House has always had an outsized influence on the world and, by extension, my life. But even when I’ve lived in the US as a legal immigrant, I’ve never been allowed to vote. My only option to have any say in an election that could have grave consequences for all of humanity, is to express my thoughts through words and art. If I’m lucky, my words and art might influence a few people who are allowed to vote.
Over the past few months, with almost no budget at all, I pulled together a small international team of artists to build Washington, D.C. in the social virtual reality platform, Sansar. Inside that virtual world, we filmed a performance of the poem, wearing an avatar made by breaking apart a digital scan of the statue of Abraham Lincoln.
Click here for more information about how this was all done.
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