Unsaying a Yesterday That Never Was

I cannot say anything new. 

But for all that there is nothing new to say - our not-new words should not be un-said. For while we are silencing our dead-horse words, they are leaning into their done-and-buried words to make tomorrow - 

yesterday.

Unsaying a Yesterday That Never Was

I am in the habit of dragging horses to water and beating dead horses. Because I am in the habit of not letting shit go.

It is not a unique habit.

Though I have been maligned for it as though it was my failing and mine alone.

Hah.

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Case in point:

people in the habit of dusting off done-and-buried words to make tomorrow - a yesterday that never existed.

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Let me unpack that:

Some people cannot be bothered to see something new. 

Maybe they grew up valorizing the not-new. Or they grew to despise the new. Or they grew a rapacious appetite for using whatever 'they had' (i.e. valorizing and despising) to get whatever they didn't. 

Regardless, these people do not dismiss the not-new as obsolete and worthless; these people fossilize the not-new as infinitely useful.

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Done-and-buried words give a vibe of impotence and irrelevance to the perennially obsessed with new, people who cannot bear to acknowledge something not-new.

Maybe they grew up idolizing the new. Or they grew to deride the not-new. Or they grew a rapacious ambition for using whatever 'they had' (i.e. idolizing and deriding) to get whatever they didn't.

Regardless, to these people, only the future lives; the past is dead and gone.

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From a sequel to the Inquisition to a sequel to Jim Crow, there is something not-new to champion.

From science fiction to make believe, there is something new to advance.

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Meanwhile, yesterday's tomorrow is today. And when

yesterday's tomorrow promised to be a faithful sequel to a yesterday that never existed except as a fairy tale:

yesterday was not when people were bamboozled by something new. Yesterday was when people embraced done-and-buried words, exactly as their predecessors embraced done-and-buried words, yesterday and yesterday and yesterday and yesterday.

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Because dragging horses to water and beating dead horses, that is, not letting shit go, is not my failing and mine alone.

Is it?

More

It is sometimes called a "playbook", when something not-new is used today, to make tomorrow yesterday.

It is so much so, not a unique habit, that it is named as such; a "playbook", hoar-worn and time-tested, cannot be anything but

not special. 

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When done-and-buried words "promise" a mythic narrative, this is neither a "saying something new" nor a "doing something new". This is exactly what was done yesterday and yesterday and yesterday and yesterday, to champion a faithful sequel to

a fiction.

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Because a lie that wears every face of Janus and every head of the Gorgons, is infinitely useful. Because a yesterday that never was, is what people elect when not letting shit go is

the hill they will die on.

M