Words all the way up. (pic CC by beggs )

Foundational Texts is a new monthly essay series for 2026 looking at some of the culture that shaped me and how it still resonates today. This is the first of 12 monthly installments.

I still remember standing there, watching words scroll by on a long LED display: ALL THINGS ARE DELICATELY INTERCONNECTED / ALWAYS STORE FOOD / ANGER OR HATE CAN BE A USEFUL MOTIVATING FORCE / ANY SURPLUS IS IMMORAL ... on and on, blue LEDs reflecting on the floor below them. I don't remember how old I was—14, I think, but I can't tell you for sure—but I remember that moment, still, decades later.

It was at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the old building on Ontario, the one Christo wrapped back in the 60s. I'd taken the train down with friends, definitely early high school and only starting to straddle the line between art kid and punk (with a blonde bowl cut and a penchant for thrifted suit vests, "weirdo" was probably the most accurate description for me back then). I remember the walk from the train to the museum, it was sunny and there was a coolness in the air. I remember the windows of the building, from inside looking out, and then all I remember is the piece.

Jenny Holzer's Truisms was a text-based art series that evolved over a decade, from the late 70s to the late 80s. Starting as stark, short, statements printed on broadsheets and wheatpasted on the walls of Manhattan, they evolved into elaborate art installations involving low-rez LED displays, marble benches, the entire spiral of the Guggenheim Museum, porn theater marquees in Times Square, brass plaques, T-shirts, and wall after wall after wall after wall. Over the course of the decade that she worked on Truisms, Jenny Holzer wrote hundreds of them.

Truisms. (pic CC by PinkMoose )

For me, 14 and still trying to figure out how the walk in the world—motivated by anger and art in equal measure—seeing those LED displays scrolling through Truisms was a revelation. Art could be just words. Art could be just at home slapped on a POST NO BILLS wall as it could in a gallery. And art could be angry and blunt and even funny sometimes and it could be unapologetic for being all of those things at once. It was all entirely new for me, something I would grab onto and hold dear for decades. Truisms was, for me, absolutely a bedrock-level foundational text.

Memory is a funny thing: In my memory, I saw an entire Jenny Holzer exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art that day. Looking back at the MCA's records, that wasn't possible. They had a show a few years before that, and a couple more many decades after, but nothing in what would have been the early 90s. So it must have been a single piece in a group exhibit, or just something from their permanent collection on display. It was a single piece of art so impactful to me that in my mind it became the entire show. Those words, in my memory, grew and grew and grew until they were everything.

There have been so many variations of Truisms over the decades. In that time they have become something of a cliche in their own way. But to me, in a dark room, lit by the glow of the LEDs as words scroll by, or pasted up on a wall as high as you can see, they still hit every time.

Holzer wrapping around the Guggenheim. (pic CC by PinkMoose )

ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE

People are being killed in the streets, children are being snatched from schools, street vendors are being disappeared, goons are going door-to-door demanding papers. The abuses of power that are unfolding on a daily basis are shocking and unrelenting but, if you've given even a cursory glance at the history of this country, they are no surprise. This is the end stage of a country founded on genocide and chattel slavery, of Jim Crow and the Klan, of Japanese interment camps and forced sterilization. Abuse of power is our bedrock. But so, at every step of the way, has been fighting back against it.

GRASS ROOTS AGITATION IS THE ONLY HOPE

As I write this, a 3d printer is quietly warbling in the corner producing, from a thin coil of plastic, 100 whistles. When it is done, I will clear the printing plate, put it back in the machine, and start the process over. It takes about five hours to print a hundred, I'll clear the plate three times through the day, and leave the last one to print overnight. Those 400 whistles will then be sent across the country to organizers that have requested them from the collective of whistle goblins that I joined earlier this month. Yesterday we reached 200,000 whistles shipped in January. While everything has fallen apart, the news headlines have grown more bleak, a better future has looked further and further away, the work happening at the grass roots—be it whistle goblins or grandparents on school patrols or moms risking their lives to follow ICE vehicles or the organizers of the general strike in Minneapolis last week or the kids who walked out of schools yesterday or the people, just regular-ass normal people, who have simply had enough and aren't being quiet anymore—truly is the only hope.

PLAYING IT SAFE CAN CAUSE A LOT OF DAMAGE IN THE LONG RUN

When I was in high school I wore a pin that read SILENCE = DEATH, under a pink triangle. It was made by ACT-UP, the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, a group that truly understood the stakes of inaction. The same is true today, right now, about what is happening in our cities and towns as masked bastards run wild in the streets. Incredibly, the people that are playing is safe right now are not the normal folk—virtually every one of whom would rather be doing anything else than what we are compelled to do—but those we have elected to power and asked to represent us. By and large our Democratic officials in Washington have elected to play it safe, to duck and cover, to talk about affordability when people are disappearing. The damage they have done by playing it safe is enormous and increasing exponentially.

YOU OWE THE WORLD NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND

We have one run at this. The fight against fascism in this country—right now—isn't one you can sit out. The incredible bravery of regular people on the streets of Minneapolis on the streets of Chicago on the streets of your town, probably, right now is the only way forward. I have said it before and I will say it again: the only ones coming to save us are us. And so we owe it—to each other, to our communities, to the world—to do the best we can with what we've got.

WORDS TEND TO BE INADEQUATE

I've really struggled to get these words out. The anger of the last few days, last few weeks, last few months, last few years makes articulating it all difficult. Right now my head feels like it's on fire. Right now I need to act. But I also need to write. We all do. We need to write and witness and act and work. Let's go.

In Foundational Texts next month: Goonies never say die.