Public Universal Friend

"I Am" and "I Want" songs are the bread and butter of musical theatre. "I am" songs introduce us to characters and situations (examples: "Jet Song" from West Side Story) and "I want" songs explain those characters' desires/fears to the audience (examples: "My Shot" in Hamilton, most love songs, "Part Of Your World" in The Little Mermaid).

Of course it's important to know who I am and what I want. But increasingly it becomes difficult to distinguish having an identity from having a brand. And I don't want a brand. Partially because having a brand requires maintanence. Partially because there are parts of myself which hide from myself, like cats under the couch, and I haven't coaxed them out yet, and I have a feeling that my inviting guests over would scare them off indefinitely. I want to be as close to anonymous for as long as possible because it makes me feel free.

I also worry cultivating a brand would distract me from devoting myself to a cause.

What's the difference between a brand and a cause? Cornel West: "A brand is something you sell. A cause is something you live and die for." Devotion to brands produces leader-centered groups. Devotion to causes produces group-centered leaders. You can build a brand on your own, but you can only join a cause. Attractiveness is a brand. Beauty is a cause. Politics (left right center red blue green) are a brand. Housing for all is a cause.

Of course these differences are arbitrary and of couse the only person I can judge by them is myself. Everything falls apart if you try to impute your thought process onto the other.

Chasing power and profit for oneself is definitely counter to any/every leftist principle. But any person with sufficiently shrewd social media instincts and strong sense of charisma can grift an entire career. The more actively they post and generate revenue on Meta Twitter etc, the more lucrative the grift becomes.

I do worry that by writing about this I sound condescending or judgemental. Another worry is that there is perhaps some as-yet-unknown central lack or void within myself that subconsciously seeks to be filled by an ideology or a flag. Oh well. I've made a lot of bad bets and (God willing) I look forward to making many more. Optimal number of libidinal mistakes is not 0.

One last thing: I learned recently that Pixar used a secret set of story guidelines to differentiate their films from other animations. The rules: no songs, no love stories, no villains, no "I want" moments, no happy village.