people talking about male characters: I loveee this guy he sucks so bad but he’s still my favorite #myguy #ilovemoralnuance
people talking about female characters: idk I don’t hate her I just feel like we wouldn’t get along in person and also she does things I personally wouldn’t do so that’s a bit off putting.
Kirby is this example of someone whose cultural impact hasn’t been (and never will be) examined/appreciated in the way that a somewhat middling American author (Phillip Roth for example) is examined/appreciated. And even if Kirby DOES get that recognition, it will still never get close to deciphering what he was all about, because the language to talk about what he’s doing does not exist. Matisse is more important on his own than all the words written about him. But, those words, over the last century, help us to approach his work in its totality…even if we’ve never read them, they’ve merged into the air enough that we can accept Matisse’s radicalism as part of our lives. Kirby will never have this, and that is a loss. In fact, Kirby’s work, in the way most get to access it, is a putrid ugly version of his vision, an almost satanic crime. ‘Comics working class’ this, ‘comics can be made by anyone’ that, but those words miss the complexity of a generation of young & poor men whose destiny was to be blue collar and, in a way, remained blue collar, essentially working in sweat shops….but made visionary art. Every effort has been made to degrade what they did, to make it ugly, and those efforts have been successful. The delivery system, a system for people from poor backgrounds to create imaginative works and communicate to a mass audience, has also been erased.
“When we say cliché, stereotype, trite pseudoelegant phrase, and so on, we imply, among other things, that when used for the first time in literature the phrase was original and had a vivid meaning. In fact, it became hackneyed because its meaning was at first vivid and neat, and attractive, and so the phrase was used over and over again until it became a stereotype, a cliché. We can thus define clichés as bits of dead prose and of rotting poetry.”
— Vladimir Nabokov drops this brilliant bit of insight roughly half way through his lecture on James Joyce’s Ulysses, the last of his inLectures on Literature.
[“Most of us have plenty of examples of how easy it is to say the word “sorry” without meaning it. And we also probably have at least a few examples that reveal how radically different that is from when we say “I’m sorry” and mean it wholeheartedly. Saying sorry can definitely be a starting point for accountability, but it can also be a way to avoid facing consequences.
Feeling sorry can mean a lot of different things—and it is another place where unpacking shame can be very relevant to TJ. Feeling bad is not the same as feeling sorry. And feeling bad doesn’t inherently make us more capable of stopping our harmful behavior, nor does it magically provide us with the skills to be able to do something different when presented with a similar scenario. Feeling remorse—the pain of regret for actions we’ve taken that violate our own values—can be an important part of the work of becoming accountable. It usually requires some level of “un-numbing,” or developing our compassion for the experience of the person or people we’ve harmed.
Doing sorry means that we are taking specific actions toward repair—even if these occur largely separately from the person we’ve harmed. For example, one person with whom I worked made monthly financial contributions to two women he had abused while in relationships with each of them. Another person eventually was able to ask two members of their broader network of friends to support them in understanding the impact of their violence toward their ex-boyfriend.
Transformative accountability means that when we apologize, there is congruence between our words, emotions, and actions. We’re not just saying the words, but we can also name what it is that we’re sorry for—recognizing the harm we’ve caused and being able to acknowledge its impacts. Feeling remorse. Taking action toward repair and restitution and demonstrating a commitment to stopping the harm and to changing.
Being sorry. As folks involved in convening, supporting, and facilitating accountability processes, we need to ask ourselves and one another: Is direct engagement among parties at this time likely to be transformative, neutral, or harmful? “Transformative” is a high standard. It means investing in everyone’s transformation over time—which rarely aligns as neatly between parties as our theory and dreams would suggest.
Complex as it is, this assessment also has to include our capacity to register or receive accountability. Sometimes we are so eager to believe that someone has changed that we may rush toward forgiveness, extending trust long before they have demonstrated any real shift toward new action. Other times, the volume of our own pain and anger about the hurt or the betrayal is so loud that we can’t actually hear anything but our own story, including anything the other person might say or do that indicates real remorse, apology, or amends.”]
Nathan Shara, Facing Shame: From Saying Sorry to Doing Sorry, from Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories From The Transformative Justice Movement
[“Some of us have, consciously or unconsciously, sworn an oath of loyalty to the god of revenge. Hate is rage stuck in the desire to retaliate. People who hate and retaliate have a frightened and tattered sense of self. The desire to retaliate when others offend us is ingrained in us from cave-people times. This is not a sign of moral degeneracy but a natural, automatic survival reaction to threat and abuse. Our work is to retreat from our primitive inclination and advance our natural evolution. We accept the givens of human nature while choosing not to act them all out. We become generously human when we find a way of expressing anger without hurting others. Such nonviolent resistance flows from higher consciousness rather than instinct, and it makes the world a more mindful, safe, and loving place. When we are adult, we can hold and experience apparently contradictory feelings or conditions. For instance, we can be committed to someone and maintain personal boundaries, have a conflict with someone and be working on it, feel anger and be loving. Regarding conditions, we can feel abandoned while we remain committed to showing love. In fact, we can go on loving in any predicament, a touching example of how our psychological work can adhere to a spiritual standard. To see others as good or bad is to split the world into those who evoke love and those who evoke hate. Internally, our love will feel like longing and our hate will hide our fear. When we become comfortable with anger we form an arc of connection that makes us feel that we are whole and that others are too. What propels and sustains us in intimacy is love that is comfortable with other feelings. Then anger is a normal and occasional reaction that never cancels love. Nothing can.”]
david richo, from how to be an adult in relationships: the five keys to mindful loving, 2002
And I don’t know if that is—I don’t know if that’s for me, I don’t know if that’s for this company, or I don’t know if that’s for himself. And I might never really figure that out. But it does feel good, to be able to let go of a little bit of the past, and to be excited about the future.
AEW ALL IN: TEXAS (POST SHOW MEDIA SCRUM) | 07.12.25
