The Racket #15 : THE NEW YEAR

Jan 29

Jan 29 The Racket #15 : THE NEW YEAR

01.29.2018 - ADOBE BOOKS - 7PM

And this is the New Year.

We here at The Racket bid adieu to the skin fire that was 2017 in a dingy office building with a small handful of drunks and a ping pong table. And if anything, we were not celebrating the beginning of a new year, but rather the steadfast departure of a downright awful one.

In doing so, we started to think - what if 2018 (upon which we've pinned so many of our hopes) isn't just a continuation of what came before, but something exponentially worst? What if as the months start to careen by the world (and our paltry view of it) gets worse? What if white supremacy and fascism and the dangerously dunderheaded views of the Supreme Tweeter inspire more toxicity, more abominable actions by abominable people? What if we continue to ignore the dangerous warnings our planet issues day after day and extend our pursuit of monetary reward over saving what's left?

And sad as it made us, we decided to look backwards instead of forwards to all the centuries before this. The centuries of war and hateful thought and political incompetence that have plagued our world since humans had the capacity to do so. And within each century - each year, each month, each day - we always found a glimmer, the tiniest speck of light amongst the overwhelming fog of darkness. Be it Martin Luther King Jr. and his crusade for equality for all people or hearing Bright Eyes "This Is The First Day Of My Life" played by a busker in the early moments of 2018 or a million Puerto Ricans banding together to dig themselves out of the mess made by natural disaster or just the tiny, infinitesimal joys we experience each day and then forget about forever - there is always a sliver to cling to, always a ray of light to show the way forward might not be that bad.

So 2017, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

2018, we are wary, but we know no matter how bad you get, we'll scavenge something better from the ashes.