Red chalk and sledgehammers
Have you ever taken a sledgehammer to a Tesla?
On Thursday night I pulled on a visor and safety gloves and assured a man with a fading A tattooed on the side of his face that I know how to handle a sledgehammer.
In the queue a self-identified pacifist scrunched his face. He didn’t know, really, why the thought of destroying a Tesla seemed so appealing. On his waiver, I saw his title is “Doctor”, and, in a Latine accent, had mentioned his husband, a writer who isn’t writing right now.
Golden hour was coming and the April air was warm, blue and peaceful. On the short walk from the station, others strode purposefully with work rucksacks and cotton tote bags, runners in greige and gunmetal grey athletic gear, parents pushing pushchairs, by tall flats with one grand entrance and another, social one, through the gate, down a path.
Fourth in line, walking over concrete tiles, I feel conscious of my handknit jumper, my stout self, the hot constriction of my safety visor. Don’t fuck it up.
5-4-3-2-1 the swoop and space of my rage and helplessness, such small dents forming in the blue bonnet. Arms free like the moment before landing a right hook that might just shoot your padded hand back two feet behind your ears, quickest crack. Although I practise my attention on landing the weight of the sledgehammer through the bonnet around and around my attention on one small space, the metal withstands.
My time is up I hear “Good form?!” from the chorus and I am pleased, in addition to my hook I can turn chunks of tree into kindling in a glide and I carry the 32 kilo dog ten times a day whenever his legs or his stubbornness refuse.
It is still only about 6.15 and I’d caught three short trains to get here, peak rate, and the evening is too sunny and strange to head back to the valley of home.
So I sit to the side, my unneeded cashmere overcoat that was, until October, my dad’s coat before he died without warning, and my work bag and the sweeties in 1980s money, ‘candy cigarettes’, each fruit flavoured sugar stick cracks in my mouth.
The queue is alive with cameras and shouts. Ricocheting thuds and clanks draw whoops GO ON as a rhythm forms and we watch the car crumple. One woman’s smile shines through the visors and her wallops land with intention she moves around her prey, two woman with baseball bats more timid but “She knows how to handle THAT! 8 out of 10!”
Jazz appears from a bar on the left, and drinkers enjoy the spectacle as one man jumps on the roof and despatches the glass. Photographers scramble to the table and they ask him to repeat, it was all too perfect.
Two men, office shoes and Help for Heroes tandem the car rhythm and cycle pound after pound after pound they have longer round and round holes appear in the doors and we whoop cheer damage damage is being done and as the rear bumper start to loosen we cheer egg him on COME ON!
The ricochet of iron on aluminium, magnesium, and steel, the sheer effort of dismantling something created. The dullness of baseball bat on tempered glass the crowd loses attention, a little, when damage is less audible.
MOMENTS
Mostly, people were white, not all. Mostly, people seemed artsy vintage-buying book-tote-bag beaten docs and cons and flannel, people in neon balaclavas and CHOOSE LOVE shirts. And: people in office clothes, workout gear, thin soled suede shoes, work polo shirts, a plain red top.
Glee and frustration, or not knowing where or how to put our small bodies and tools against this object, we all circled the car and tried to meet the moment, person against machine, only our strength and skill, and being watched and recorded and seen.
This lurker and lingerer sat and wrote this poem. Then I was given a chalk pen after the last blow landed, in hot red words I marked TRANS RIGHTS and SEND MUSK TO MARS and YOU’RE A MIGRANT TOO, ELON.
On the train home, some red chalk staining my fingers. It looks like small evidence, a moment in a film, where you are tied back to the scene of a crime. Old shudders of fear run through me, memories of WW2 museums and graveyards, the day we went to Auschwitz, tangled piles of wiry glass frames, lumps of pantomime suitcases.
I scratch at the chalk with my dirty fingernails.
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On Destruction
Crack the bat blue steel blue sky luxury flats and hidden social entrances
A sledgehammer arc to the bonnet draws cries
Straight backed behind bellies rage
YES BRUV BE A WINDMILL
Crowd sits up to the banging echo
Toes reset balance and skip over shattering glass
Fingers stretch and regrip sledgehammer, baseball bat
Sunshine cresting my visor bank of photographers
CHOOSE LOVE thick blonde plaits stance pulsing electricity of contact
Rhythm intention set upon her foot of metal anger joy ricochets pulse
Glass the shards absorb confound
Our thirst for rage allowed contained and sweetened with party bags
White teeth smile from faces
In our smallness, in our fear blood and hair and smiles and skin
Flowery thin polyester over thick pink and red baby on board badge Help for Heroes workboots and workdirty
Halternecks hand knits and hoodies
We stand as we are
We use the tools we have
To fight oppression
Want to learn more?
Guardian coverage and great video via Daily Beast
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NOTE
As the organisers say, this was an art work. The car was no longer wanted and it was donated. The battery was safely removed for upcycling. We had to wear sensible clothes and use safety gear. Do not smash up any Teslas.