#I don't begrudge the performers their work; it's just fascinating to me how people can be

[notbecauseofvictories]

By the way, the inspiration for this was a Shen Yun performance, and I swear this Jia Tolentino article was hammering in the back of my head the whole time. It's a good article, but it also made me think about how America has been the refuge of weird splinter religions from the start---and most of whom in the 20st century have used media to conduct outreach. For example, there are ads in '30s pulp magazines for the Rosicrucians' LA branch; the Moody Bible Institute had phenomenal (decidedly creationist) school science videos in the 50s; in the 60s and 70s Pat Robertson (rest in fucking pieces) had CBN and The 700 Club which in turn led to the founding of American-Catholic tv station EWTN. I'm not even getting into the big names objectively associated with "cults", like Heaven's Gate, which leveraged the web as early as the 90s.

Yesterday, paging through the program brought me to an ad for the online "Shen Yun video platform" which feels like a rhyme on all that's come before. I mean, is there anything more quintessentially American than a sleek slick snake oil salesman, trading on all the religion and nationalism we've left lying around?

(Even just the concept of "snake oil" has its roots in American-Chinese-Native relations; one of the first cases the FDA took on was puncturing Clark Stanley's claims that beef fat and turpentine were "Native American" medicines.)

Afterwards, I went home and watched a bunch of youtube videos about Chinese dance: different variants of Mongolian biyelgee, the Yi's flower dance, even some beautiful Uyghur performances, because it came up on my feed and I was fascinated. Ironically, that led me down a rabbit hole---through First Nations/Native American rap; Latvian choral singing; Yemeni Jewish pop music; Chilean fusion. Maybe a song or two from The Hu to round it out.

All this to say....smart is for children, curiosity is forever, and also people should keep making music, writing articles, and doing things, because for good or ill---nothing on this earth is more fascinating to be around.

I do think that my seemingly limitless interest in the world is my best quality. I have other good qualities probably! But I am always, always deeply fascinated by the world and everything in it, such that even a lackluster dance performance can inspire thoughts about making a living as an artist and the creation/performance of identity and communicating meaning as a political act, plus a couple hours spent watching videos of folk dances to try and clear my palate.