well you can tell by the way i move my feet that i’m a genuine insurrectionary — it’s a kind of nervous shuffle that contrasts so well with bolshevik bravado. and you can tell by the way i raise my hand — not in a fist but for a question. take out your manifestos and then put them away. i implore you to ignore every word i say. and if my status as a figure on a stage implies authority, i hope my caution and my age belies my humility, and will to take my rage and try to turn myself into a one-man landslide. let’s kick it off with a leafleting campaign and follow it up with some public meetings, pressing flesh and kissing babies as i smile and promise things are getting better. i am the party, the apparatchik and the grey bureaucracy. i am the secret police, manufacturing a constituency that doesn’t answer back. i found these words in my bedroom underneath old magazines. and i found this voice in my record collection — distorting tapes kicked analysis awake. you found this song but you didn’t question — swallowed the sleeve but didn’t see my tongue inside my cheek. i am the politburo, but i am the velvet revolution, a budapest kick from fifty-six and so: let’s all go hand in hand to the local polling station and make our own categories, then vote for ourselves.
