Brianland

Blissfully Ravaged in Democracy

I spent the afternoon getting all gussied up in my black velvet tails and Ben Franklin knickers with knee-high socks topped off with a top hat, accented with colorful Obama buttons, and everything underneath my waving homemade Obama pennant flag with a little red & white Canadian one on top.  All I needed was a clanging bell and some rolled parchment.

Heading into the Election Night, for the first time in my life, I was the most popular person in Harlem!  Looking like a “Hear-ye, hear-ye!” town crier from the American Revolution, I was carrying Obama’s flag into battle — lighting up faces of people who still hadn’t come close to learning English.  Shopkeepers were waving, and mothers were pointing me out to their small children.  Passing pedestrians were either breaking into huge smiles or full-out hollering, “Obama!”  It was dusk on the final day of The Nightmare From Texas, and minorities may have been happier than anyone that the lying war sap’s reign of error was finally ending.

Riding the subway through Harlem in black velvet regalia — facing beaming white smiles from dark African faces, shining and sharing across the aisle like Washington would soon be if all goes according to plan.  A little boy beside me was admiring my buttons, and finally says in the cutest voice, “All Barack!”  So I reached in my bag and found a button for him just before he got off.  And some guy was watching me do this, and he pulled out his keys from his pocket and wound off his little Obama key-chain and handed it to me across the subway car.  It’s the coolest thing and I’ll cherish it forever.  And so I looked in my bag and found another button and hand it across to him.  And there was some guy standing nearby smiling as he watched all this go down, and the guy I just gave the button to hands it to him.  A crowd got on right after that and we all got separated — but within seconds all us strangers had just given each other something for nothing.  America was changing right before our eyes.

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Here’s where you can get Blissfully Ravaged in Democracy.

Here’s the first show for the book — a live stream on Facebook — where I perform the Top Hat in Harlem story —

Here’s some reviews and quotes about the book.

Here’s the Beat Museum’s Jerry Cimino’s Introduction for the book.

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by Brian Hassett

karmacoupon@gmail.com   —  BrianHassett.com

Or here’s my Facebook account if you wanna join in there —

https://www.facebook.com/Brian.Hassett.Canada