I have at least a couple friends who go totally ape-shit when I use the word woke. It is more than bit fascinating because I like the word, I think it infers a type of person upset about social inequalities. I too consider myself as having acted woke, in fact super woke. People making judgements, severe sometimes – wanting someone fired based not upon anything empirical but their feelings. That is what pauses me now.

Thought I was right and knew the difference between right and wrong based on my feelings. Willing to fight about it. Maybe I still am. Maybe this writing is an example of how woke I am about my own beliefs. Offended friends say the word means one is a crazy right wing bastard. That amazes me. I am not so committed left or right. I can trace lines of thought stemming from both, which meaningfully I have used in life. Must one really buy team colours? Discussion means more than pistols at dawn.

I suspect some marriages end fighting about Kendrick vs. Drake, Stones vs. Beatles, analogue vs. digital. Is it worth moving the kids? I had a job being the cook at a summer camp when I was nineteen and a vegetarian. It didn’t mean I couldn’t cook 80 lbs of hamburger meat for the campers. I produced an artist one time who wrote music I found uninteresting, her aesthetic was in line with the current popular music. I produced it because she approached me sincerely and she seemed nice and I knew from a certain view it doesn’t matter whether one is a fan or not. I wanted to show the people at Warner Bros. I don’t only produce reflections of my taste. When I gave it to them they were confused. You did this? They liked it. That was my goal. Disrupt their bias. I also wanted to get those bigger commercial gigs but that never happened. There already were gatekeepers for that and I didn’t know anything about this other game.

I would like to build into the next course something about bias. If a person can glimpse their own bias it offers more understanding, no? If there is more understanding there is less stupidity, no? I’ll go back to reading emails now from friends who think Harris is better than Trump or Trump is better than Harris and Kennedy obviously a conspiracy theorist.