Year 3, Day 202: Shakespeare Institute -- The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Writing an outline.  Again.  Writing up the Thesis Schedule, so that I have now planned to write 4,000 words a month for the next 17 months.  This will somehow result in the masses celebrating my ascension in education, and then I shall have an entire year after that in which to submit the 80,000 word monster (called, 'the write-up year').  That's me, all caught up.

What I've actually been thinking about is the poem, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron.  The first stanza of that piece is as follows:

You will not be able to stay at home, brother

You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out

You will not be able to lose yourself on skag

And skip out for beer during commericals

Because the revolution will not be televised.

It is that first line which I cannot get out of my head.  The implication that the speaker is family, or as close to me as my own, and that there is a revolution coming that I cannot avoid.  It won't be anywhere that it can be observed passively, for it is just beyond my front door and it is happening whether I want it to or not.  That my entire community, people I see, know, love, and laugh with, are and will be the revolution. (The rest of the poem is just as pertinent today as it was when it was released in 1970, which believe it or not, was 45 years ago.  Read it yourself, here.)

This poem, funny as it may seem, reminds me to get out of the house.  Rent a car, and drive to wherever.  Walk to the store.  Don't order it all online.  It even reminds me that if something pisses me off, I shouldn't post about it on Facebook.  I should write my congressman, my senator, my president, or even my friends, and tell them all about it.  I should be informed by all sides, not just the ones I agree with, and keep an open mind.  I should always remember that I am not a poster child for any one cause, but a free-thinking person who believes in many ideas... and so is everyone else.  Just because you agree on one thing, doesn't mean the person standing on the soap box is your brother, your family, or your revolution.  The poem reminds me that this has all happened before, and will keep happening until there is actually a revolution.  The world is not out to get you, and will not care about you unless you are out to get the world.  Get it?  Get it.

The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

I don't think any of this is especially relevant to my PhD, or the writing of it.  Call it an emotional purge, so that I can move on and not think about all the stupid stuff going on in the world, and praying that one day I will no longer have to think about it.  Praying that one day, a revolution will come to my doorstep.

Shakespeare wrote something similar, even though it wasn't a revolution televised that he spoke of, it was a book:

"O God! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea! and, other times, to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune's hips; how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die." -- King Henry IV (2 Henry IV, III.i)

Year 3, Day 202 - Words Written: 26,707 and counting.