I saw this meme which said; “if you are not radical in a world where millions of people are starving to death while 8 people have more wealth than the bottom 50 % combined then what the fuck is wrong with you?” and i asked myself “what the fuck is wrong with me…”
I. BRUSSELS
In my experience walking through Brussels feels more often than not like a disarranging operation. The city is quite new to me and I’m of a sensitive kind, so this reality is still able to shock me in a profound way. Brussels is no hell hole, like right wing politicians would like you to believe but it is also not the dreamy Disneyland of diversity, like left wing politicians would like you to believe. The reason why walking through Brussels is not exactly a walk in the park to me is because Brussels is an awfully truthful metro pole. The city doesn’t seem to be great at hiding the system’s reality, it’s rather bad at masking poverty and pain, it doesn’t push them in small alleys and far corners like many other places do so well. For me it seems like Brussels shows you the inequality on which this modern world is built in an almost caricaturated way. The north station, where I live, looks like a cruel cartoon. In between the towers of glass you find bodies without homes or papers, without the chance to live a life of quality or even the right to exist. People starve and freeze in front of banks as man in suits try their best not to look. Writing this down, it feels like I’m just describing a bad cliché, but it’s precisely these kinds of clichés that are so harmful when they appear to be true, they’re stubborn and cruel, and they trick you into believing they have reason to exist. I catch myself walking there, being of course a cliché of my own, hoping to become something of a big girl in this big city and I can only admit I’m part of the irony. I suspect myself to be in a way pleased with this disarranging feeling, content to be in the midst of this reality. Secretly seeing it as a great chapter in my own coming of age story, keeping me woke, whatever that means. So I walk through this painful decor of Brussels and I know part of me is gladly letting my mind and body be disrupted by this madness, a game of being out of balance, challenging myself to look the effects of the politics, I’ve read so much about, in the eye. (A dear friend of mine often says he feels like he’s ‘Glitching through life’ and i understand.) I use this city to help me understand that what I know as my comfort zone appears to be a bourgeois hoax and I have the idle hope this city will free me from this construct built by privilege blurring the view of truth. But the thing is, I don’t get less privileged in this place, I seem to be even more privileged. The relationships of power, the necessary hierarchy needed in order to maintain this reality become more visible, more concrete. In this cartoon I’m walking through, where I give this poor lady one Euro, it’s obvious that I am very much the oppressor. I’ve felt pretty shitty by this constant confrontation with the cruel reality of inequality and injustice. I’ve felt shitty for the hypocrisy of feeling shitty. I’ve been angry at the people who aren’t feeling shitty, those who have been living here for a long time or all their lives, because they walk through these streets so free of concerns, with that they give me the feeling of having normalized all this. For themselves and by that in general. I am jealous off this attitude, but at the same time I can’t stand the idea of growing indifferent towards that which is so bluntly embarrassing. I understand that the only way of getting comfortable living here, would be to get comfortable with this reality. But to tolerate and accept this truth seems like a new and maybe even more dangerous lie.
So where it felt like becoming a citizen of Brussels was a constant dilemma between getting numb or drowning in desperation, there appeared to be an escape route. I think I chose to let this city radicalize me rather than lead me to despair. I hope this radicalizing means: I can stay angry and astound, I can keep looking and caring without growing bitter or dull or apathetic. I believe it means that I’m in a fight, that I feel responsible, that I have to choose sides. It means I’m able to address an enemy, that I can hold people accountable. It makes it possible to be tough in being soft! In this new picture, I am of course still the oppressor, but whilst fighting the system I benefit from, I’m also fighting myself in that position.
II. TO BE THE ANTAGONIST
to be continued………
alosingsleepover 