Years ago, when I was still just a lad in my thirties, a visiting friend suggested we go out to a nightclub and I found myself immediately cringing at the thought. I confessed to him: “Maybe I’m just getting old but I really can’t stand those places — they’re too loud, too crowded, you can’t talk… I just… I just don’t like it.”
He gave me one of those quizzical and slightly disgusted “Are you kidding?” expressions and said, “What the hell are you talking about? Of course you don’t like it. I don’t like it… Nobody likes it! It’s just one of those things we have to DO!”
That was more or less how I felt at first about doing another round of “Lock him up” signs. Although there’s absolutely no question they’re justified - especially having now added theft of government documents to his list of crimes — it just seemed like such an obvious, predictable text… I remember feeling the same way, though perhaps not as much, five years ago when I first started doing “Lock him up” signs: Yes it was a rote response, but in a land of free speech where we all have the right to say what we think to as many of our fellow citizens as we please... it was something that really had to be said.
It’s the same thing now — even more so.And just like five years ago, mine turned out to be a reluctance only in anticipation, and once I started putting them up I had to admit the signs did look pretty damn good — and that at least part of why the message had seemed so predictable was because it was so precisely the message being called for.
In fact I can’t think of a time when words demanded quite so forcefully to be returned to their rightful owners. It’s one of those things that’s so abundantly clear as an abstract I I could probably even prove it mathematically.
Later.