I thought it was you

It was on January 12, 2021 that I first saw him, and my life would never be the same again.

I’ve long nursed a particular weakness for bad likenesses, whether it be inept lookalikes, wonky portraiture, or, best of all, the wayward waxwork. So when a story from The Guardian entitled “‘Brazilian horror story': internet melts down over sculptor's peculiar waxworks” popped into my Twitter feed, I couldn’t click fast enough. I skimmed over the words of the story in search of a quick chuckle, and wasn’t disappointed by the dismal, melty, surreal—yet, crucially, marginally recognizable—representations of such well-known historical figures as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Princess Diana.

And then, at the foot of the page, he appeared, a big, beaming beacon of confoundment:

“Is it…? It can’t be,” I thought to myself. “But who else can it be? And what is that sound?”

The sound, it turned out, was indeed Nelson Mandela corkscrewing through his grave in response to this rendition of him by a Bolsonaro-supporting septuagenarian Brazilian madman.

This particular waxwork poses more questions than could ever be satisfactorily answered.

Why are his eyes pointing in opposite directions?

Why is he so large and so wide?

Why is his chin his neck?

How can wax emit such clearly Australian vibes, and actually why is he Paul Hogan from Crocodile Dundee?

Or is he Gary Busey?

What is he so happy about? Doesn’t he know this is 2021?

This ghoulish, inexplicable image—somehow so apt for a year that would begin with the Capitol Riots and be pockmarked with continuing global pandemic catastrophe—soon became my go-to picture on Twitter, a multi-purpose language replacement I used to underscore my dismay at dwindling levels of media literacy, my irritation at forgetful and/or incurious cultural commentators, my general despair at the state of the world, and my suspicion of so-called “color blind” casting, to name just a few things.

“Nelson” became so ubiquitous on my Twitter feed that I started to ask myself what I was doing on the doomscrolling app so much, and whether my time would be possibly better served elsewhere?

I’m not leaving Twitter (Stockholm Syndrome doesn’t work that way), and I wouldn’t expect anyone to care if I did, but here is something else: “Keeping Up”, a newsletter named, on a whim, after a characteristically beautiful and enigmatic Arthur Russell song (featuring Jennifer “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” Warnes on backing vox). It’s intended as a space away from the increasingly maddening discourse Ouroboros of Twitter to share music/film/TV/art/football-themed thoughts, ideas, recommendations, and perhaps some old features and interviews of mine that have never been published online or have appeared online only in curtailed versions.

I’m not overpromising anything here—in fact, I’m not promising anything at all. This will be an intermittent bulletin at best. But if any of this does sound interesting to you, please feel free to subscribe. It won’t cost you a penny, and it could be fun.

“Nelson” agrees.