Mockingbird

The Mockingbird is the state bird of Florida. It was also forced down on the populace with the required reading of To Kill A Mockingbird to which, I must admit, I only vaguely remember and find myself wondering what they tried to wire in. How could they take such a versatile symbol and leave it so unimpressionable, or perhaps one could find excuse since it was a mandated read, a slow back and forth though mostly one-sided lecture. Referencing the rubric.

Sometimes I could be convinced, if I was determined enough, that I, too, would defecate out a story to shill by the tune of whatever the big donors wanted and collect government endorsed royalties but we have to get with the times and do videos instead, maybe.

In either case, as with some delicacies so sweeten in age, the Mockingbird fits unbelievably snug to the state.

Because, after all, Florida is something scary from afar (to which I’ve only learned upon departure, with much surprise and confusion). But following the mockingbird trail and the amusing symbols laden, indeed, it seems apt: to be afraid often correlates to what one doesn’t understand. A shifty and swampy place. A masked bird and not at all privy to what’s underneath.

What could possibly be the appeal of living in a jungle three-fourths haze, plastered down and the sweltered three lanes, isolation sublime, and even touching the door handle burns beyond sunrise? And when you talk to your neighbors, half the time they’re New Yorkers, Canadians, or some other migrant, of all types: indeed, it’s the state of Florida, but who is actually Floridian? No one, not even those claiming to have grown up here.

Because if you grow up somewhere, or stay long enough, you may adopt its state of mind… But of everyone I meet here, well, it’s clear they found their state of mind elsewhere. When you begin, and you nod to each other, do the weather spiel, I don’t know, and well, I guess you got roped in by all the travel propaganda and others swarming in, hotels all along the I-4 with Disneyland. We can keep talking past each other if you want.

But here is where the strangest beauty of it is. And perhaps this is just a fringe print of Florida one could get, but you see, to mock has two definitions.

Surely when you read “Mockingbird” you don’t think about what it means to mock someone. Is it a mock up or will you mock them to tears?

The first definition is to make fun of, the other is to imitate. The etymology of the word suggests the first definition gave way to the other. Because, after all, derisively imitating someone is a way of making fun of them.

Mocking, so one could suppose, as though etched in its etymology, is a fork in the road. And while it’s easier to keep standing at this fork in the road waiting for Godot, well, the unconscious impatience grows and one can only resent those who make a real choice.

To mock is, obviously, to make a statement. The unfortunate reality is that the statement many want to make is I fit in. I understand what is accepted and not accepted. I understand what is hated and loved. If this is the only statement you hope to make, well, it’s out of fear and thus without agency, lifeless. It’s not a real choice. You’re still standing at the fork.

If you never truly mock anything, you don’t stand for anything, and that’s a null existence. Likewise if you mock everything, you don’t stand for anything either, and it’s just a more clever way to have a null existence. You can’t have friends without enemies.

One can mock some things — that is, imitate them, like life paths and career treks — but if you don’t mock when confronted, well, do you have any conviction in what you chose?

One can get hand-wavy and say who cares, it’s already chosen, let other’s do what they want. Garner maximum appeal, learn the ways of the squeaky-clean corporate statements to diminish any liability. We can shed any trace of being complicit toward that which, generally, we have a distaste for. No one needs to hear your opinion. But if you ever wonder why you feel so alone, well, you can’t make bonds if you don’t have anything to tie to.

Anyway, as a beautiful stroke of history, Mockingbird as emblem, so Florida confronts you. You’re going to have to mock something. Such a controversial state! By mere existence it’ll wiggle out what you are, what you stand for, turn a critical eye and perhaps rebirth you into something you won’t understand when you go home. Whatever the struggle so somehow — unless you adapt your state of mind — so somehow Florida delivers our Mockingbird’s fork-in-the-road until impaled.

Thus people that come here or are born here attempt to fit in of those who are here. Or dismiss in an attempt to hold onto your own definitions. They don’t know that those here were already mocking all the time, of some fictional past, some fictional idea of what it means to be Floridian, of their own mind. Or maybe they don’t care. You don’t become the Floridian no matter your attempts: you become a mutant of all of the lands you thought you have heritage in. The land of lies plentiful, and if you try to pin a truth out of it, you’ll be all the more confused. There is no truth here; only heat. To an amusing tune, we get the perpetual mock of the Florida Man because, yes, the only way to identify anyone who has stayed in Florida long enough is someone who made their own consensus of reality. You won’t find that consensus outdoors, or in anyone around you. That’s asking for death.

And with a Mockingbird perched and tending to a cycle of calls, so I wonder if some genius from the founding knew how Florida will always be a figment and a mirror. There’s an idea of being from Florida, living in Florida, but it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist. You live on your own isle, conveniently brick and suspended between asphalt ponds. You make your own mythos and kingdom in our Corporate America fiefdoms. Other states at least have a modicum of familiarity, whether in neighbors or general outlook or political leanings. Here, you never know what you’re going to get. You learn that quick. Friend groups cast such a wide variety and you could hope for some common ground, but it’ll erode the same.

One can mock coming to Florida, hope to ward away its leer, and mock the Florida Man to a heart’s content, in whichever interpretation of mock you please. But one cannot mock lukewarmly unless you want to be overrun. No one can come here long without knowing their own world. A swamp flavored modern illness. Need a build of hostile antibodies.

For though it may be a state filled with a bunch of sleazy, sickly, and strange creatures, so stepping on its soil and roaming long enough your soul reveals itself. One will know your very essence, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. A concrete swamp and your skull will get carved in this heat. You will confront your demons. Palm trees and bahama breeze, and you can’t claw your way out of its grasp. We are one of the capitals of psychological control.

Watering holes all around the world break people, in a way of nuance. You hope for retreat, but instead you’re staring at economic depravity, solidifying your material being and severed from any divine. You hope to relax, but the heat gets in your temples and you won’t see straight. To hope for what was sold on the adverts, yet the anxieties rise with each strike of midnight.

Because, with the Mockingbird as guide, what you begin to realize is that this is more than an apotheosis of Florida living. The same as a journey to the wise counsel of the mountains so one can attend to the mirage between the beaches: to unveil one’s own shadows and depravities and way to live when you are fully suspended and dazed, lushed in crypto scams, amongst the disfigured and cocaine pushers or broken towns three blocks of yore, with all of these strange people everywhere and scattered, statues placed and graffiti pierced between the streetlight smoke and hookers holding the corner — a constant shifting landscape social and otherwise, and thus one shelters away while the heat eats everything. Peering from your balcony it’s drawn in the sand: the embedded hostility permeating. This isn’t what was advertised and you may intuit vaguely the mocking and nonsense underlying, and pushed to mock further, because the alternative is that it slowly eats at you. It eats, the same as brainwashing.

To brainwash, with Florida Man par exemplar, the easiest way to begin is to keep repeating the slogans. Keep repeating the taglines, etch in the logic branches. Let it sear into the subconscious. You will know the tourist industry if it kills you, and the fear lurking in the backwaters too.

And by staying silent, and as one’s relationships and those around you march to the new tune, and you will suddenly find yourself losing what you didn’t know you had. Not just Florida, but everything you hold dear. As with any choice, sacrifices are made and, in silence, forgoing one’s mocking, so one sacrifices what was taken for granted.

If everyone is great, then there are no more markers of prestige to aim for: those who may have done great things may give up. Without prestige so the social decays.

If everyone would just do the “right” thing and ignore those who “wrong”, slowly faith in what’s right and wrong erodes. When no longer upheld, you’ll be in the hands of barbarians and raw power, an equalizer of all things in our red river south.

If everyone is an individual with the right, nay, impetus to carve a path only for themselves, then the hidden emotional labor and support systems stitched and cradling life itself become evicted, and those who fall will slam into the concrete. We’ll take your blood for the wars and economy at least, before bullied in the retirement homes.

What do you believe in? Maybe the above jives with you — I mean, when I think about our accelerationism and technocapital gods it’s hard to say what’s next.

But only by mocking — yes, only by clinging underneath the Mockingbird’s wing — could you stop these, well, perhaps for your own well being, these transgressions.

Because it isn’t enough to highlight the second-order effects. You will get dragged into talking points by those who wish for your destruction. Dragged into night clubs and vultures upon your wallet; disoriented with how the world seems to function. It isn’t enough to hold onto your identity. Your identity necessitates others’ destruction.

Arguments only work in good faith. What good faith is there in those who directly counter and hope to destroy whatever ideals you stand for? You have to mock them, otherwise they’ll mock you. Even if they try to convince you otherwise everything is peachy, the same as Florida’s advertising. You can feel something isn’t right…

Mocking may be uncomfortable, but sometimes I just see this long line of those by the cliffside for the often advertised swan dive. How many of those in that line were, from birth, listened and listened, and not a single one pointed out the alternative of existence? They only see Florida as the beach front, or the sickly land, or the strange biome, the unfortunate host to Neverland, surely, and though they wouldn’t be wrong, but maybe they aren’t entirely right either.

After all, when all you do is mock, however lukewarm, you lose your sense of self and existence; you become the chameleon. And such floating existence is infectious and incites a delirium for those who won’t make their psychic anchors. You become unintelligible except to those who know what meta-irony could be.

You could also argue back it’s futile unless you own the outlets, and yeah, I think you’re right. That’s the core irony: eventually one may concede there’s nothing to hold onto. Nothing to mock.

But while I walk about, Mockingbird perched by the myrtle, and through each calling so sometimes I imagine the bird has its nest filled with the skulls of those who couldn’t understand it.

That the mockingbird severed their tongues as its own, and inadvertently leaves a blood trail for its own glory. Indeed, a call awfully murderous while it weaves through the scalps of each naive bird coming down, hoping for a nest, hoping for a peaceful retreat, even if whatever one comes here for is rarely found. Alternatively, of the few birdsongs remaining, perhaps so shows evident an exchange of mutual respect, a mutation upon the migratory bird as they unified their singing, and so they spread the duplicitous nature back home.

O Mockingbird, we know why you sing: a taunting more than anything. Existing alone, hidden and in plain view. For those who can hear the mixed-tune. For those who won’t understand its chipper melody.

Wearing skinsuits to affirm one’s own existence. Inciting others to follow along.

To haunt each visitor.