PRELUDE: As I write this, on Monday morning, the 6th of April, the world waits to see how or whether U.S. President Donald J. Trump will follow through on his Easter Morning post on his Truth Social account:
Tuesday* will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP
*But just when on Tuesday? That Sunday afternoon, Trump seemed to clarify with an updated one-line post: “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!” OK, Eastern Time. Which is 3:30 A.M. the following day, Wednesday, in Tehran. The city will be bathed in darkness for another two hours, the sun not rising until 5:42 A.M. If it’s a clear day, the snow-covered peak of Mount Damavand will be visible. Mount Damavand is a volcano.
André Breton’s Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, published in 1924, begins: “So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life – real life, I mean – that in the end this belief is lost…Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.”
Breton decries the “reign of logic” as insufficient to the times. “But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest.” Yes, this day and age: Breton’s Manifesto came in the “aftermath”—a word I’ve never really liked—of a war that killed on the order of twenty million, soldiers and civilians included, in his native Europe.
Later on Monday, Trump attends the White House Easter Egg Roll. An adult-sized figure in a bunny costume featuring enormous pink ears stands next to the President. A brass band plays festive music. Iran has to say “uncle,” Trump says, because “if they don't, they'll have no bridges. They'll have no power plants. They'll have no anything." As to that 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time deadline, Trump also said, on Monday, “I mean complete demolition by 12 o’clock” midnight.
TUESDAY, T-HOUR: At 8:06 A.M. Eastern Time on Truth Social, Trump posts: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
At 10:14 A.M. Eastern Time, the right-wing conspiracy theorist Candace Owens, who has accused Emmanuel Macron and wife Brigitte of plotting her assassination, posts on X re Trump: “He is a genocidal lunatic. Our Congress and military need to intervene. We are beyond madness.”
At 12:36 PM Eastern Time, The New York Post reports that an Iranian government official is telling the country's youth to form human chains around power plants.
At 6:25 P.M. Eastern Time, Bloomberg reports on its home page that “Oil Falls, US Stock Futures Gain on Ceasefire Bets.”
At 6:32 P.M. Eastern Time, Trump posts on Truth Social: “Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE!”
I dutifully read, each morning, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times. Between sips of coffee and bites of toast, I always find items of interest. But these stately and earnest publications seem, perhaps in their own dutifulness, their obligation to be grounded in the soil of reality, to make use of cold logic as an explanatory tool, to miss the vibe. Maybe it will take Art to catch the moment, by unfurling a New Surrealism?
