Words of Others | Hold on to Your Spine

This week’s Words of Others, like last week’s, comes from Warren Ellis’ Shivering Sands, a collection of essays by the British comic book writer.

In “Nothing Happened,” written in 2003, Ellis uses Marilyn Manson as a jumping-off point, specifically an interview in which Manson “explains his evocation of Cabaret in his recent work as a reaction to recent times, Thirties vaudeville as a haven from politics.”

Ellis interprets Manson’s message as a reaction to the start of a new century that is pretty much like the end of the last, and Ellis doesn’t like that idea: “Is it a creative reaction, to answer ‘nothing’s happened’ with ‘nothing’s going to happen and you can’t do shit about it’?”

And then Ellis closes with absolute brilliance (warning, contains language):

The lesson of the 1930s is that, in a time of encroaching conservatism and creeping repression, the correct response is not to flush your fucking spine down the toilet.