Writing

D.C. Copeland

Writing: Books
SOCIETAL DROPOUT: A CULTURE MANIFESTO FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Introduction

After one drops out of society, everything becomes possible. This book is about dropping out of society; why one would do such a thing and what the experience of such a freeing act feels like as related by an outsider, a millennial, a voice from the underground who means to share the fruits of her solitude with her listening audience. Words shape our existence. I am suggesting that my readers shrug off any words that have been applied to themselves by others and that ultimately diminish their experience of themselves and their life. I mean to shake-up the status quo with this culture-manifesto whose topics include sex, drugs, art, mental health, social media, artificial intelligence, suicide, gender, fashion and style. Presently culture is sick. This manifesto describes the sickness and elucidates the cure. We are sick from following the advice of others as opposed to turning towards ourselves. The cure is to better appropriate words that are more aligned with our direct experience of ourselves and our life.

How do I introduce the possibility that what is collectively understood as “this present society” may be harming not only your own sense of well-being, but that may be profiting off of your unhappiness, your ill health, your restlessness, and your identification as a victim?

Many of us have already dropped out of a society that is so hypocritical in its messages and meanness. I wish to tell new stories that will elevate the reader. Though I have “dropped out of society” I have not dropped out from humanity. Paradoxically, I have found that I can be a better humanitarian beyond the confines of the social contract.

I am writing for those who need a witness to testify that we do live in a dark time and that the hackneyed methods used to motivate us out of it are not working. I write for readers who want to listen to a story about overcoming the conventions of contemporary culture and the psychological and spiritual illnesses fostered by it. This book is for college age students who are looking for fodder to feed their own inner rebellions and revolutions, artists and those who love art, academics and those who love and are immersed in academia, millennials and gen-Zs that feel their voice is underrepresented in contemporary culture. It is for the normal everyday person who experiences that society does not give a rat’s tail about themselves as individuals and for the individual who is simply unsatisfied with the care that society does provide. It is not a book for those who do not enjoy critical thinking.

In society, the word “suicide” is commonly used as a noun. In the cosmos of this book this word is a meaningful metaphor and used as a verb as in “though I have suicided myself from society”. I realize that such an expression may insinuate that I am advocating the literal killing of yourself as a positive action in the vein of protest. However, such an expression refers to a frame of mind, or rather, a state of being, wherein you may rid yourself of anything in present society that does not suit your soul, or your one-time-only-limited-edition-mortal journey known as “your life”. For the most part, in this book “the society” referred to is American society.

With this book I mean to be part of the literary tradition that exemplifies the connection existing between all strong writers and their readers; the kind of potent communication that defies time and space such as in the work of Michel Montaigne who wrote essays about culture at the end of the sixteenth century. I am sharing timeless topics with my reader such as art and death and style, but I am re-contextualizing these topics within their timely application to the present moment. The book is timeless and timely because I am discussing the soul. The topic of the soul is timeless and yet it is ever timely because it is ever relevant and significant to the vitality of my reader and my reader’s ability to hope.

This voice is unique. It does not need you to agree with it. I have intentionally crafted and shaped the voice which by listening to it, gives the reader the space and the support to ask their own questions about what they believe. I dug myself out of intolerable circumstances based on my ability to imagine new stories that better mirrored my true experience of reality. I encourage the reader to tell their own stories about who they are. My voice conveys the message of the creative innovator whose self-reliance and personal achievement are meant to sound provocative, playful and original; aligning with the tradition of free and independent thinkers who have helped to shape and define contemporary culture with their writing.

I was asked recently whether my book is a memoir or whether it is a collection of essays. In response, I say that my book is a manifesto. It is a written statement publicly declaring my views about culture and I am using my own life experience to tell the story of each chapter. For example, I have written a chapter about fashion and I have a unique take on this theme. When I was twelve, I was “discovered” by a boutique clothing store and I began to model pre-teen clothes. I had such a rich interior life as a young person that I may never have come out from under my shell except that modeling made me experience myself as an extroverted object and that there was meaning and content in myself as a form, as an object that was far from superficial. This experience is at the heart of the book. It is why my book is also a visual story about the world I see around me and a collaboration with other artists to supply an equally riveting imaginal journey to the one I am “wording”.

My book invites readers to relate to it. “Yes, I have been there too.” “Yes, I relate to D.C.’s journey. She is describing my own.” I believe the voice with which I write provides a pleasurable and valuable experience for others because it testifies to the absolute joy of being alive. There are many times where I have been challenged. I do not claim to know absolutely “the way out of the reader’s suffering”. However, I believe we sell ourselves short when we let others tell us “the way”. I have found that my personal tragedies and private nightmares make me so very much more like other people and not less. There are many times I could have stopped on my course and sunk under the labels that society imposed upon me, but instead I swerved into a larger sense of what makes my life worth crowing about. I have found the difficulties to be a blessing and not a curse. They have led me to believe that despite our backgrounds, race, sex, and various predilections and opinions, we are still so very much the same and that the stories told by the media – the stories we keep relying on out of habit – do not fit the experience that myself and I believe many of my generation and the ones who follow are having.

I wish this book to be a breath of fresh thought for my reader. After reading my book I want my reader to feel as if they have gone on a journey that has elevated and inspired them and ultimately, has changed their life for the better. I want my reader to think, “I relate to D.C. Copeland. I too have overcome much. I too long to celebrate myself.”

The chapters of my book can be thought of as independent essays meaning that each one has the ability to stand on its own. Each chapter has its own style, the style that is best to illuminate the topic at hand. I recommend the reader to look at the titles and read the essays in the order of their piqued interest. For example, if I were a manager at a Gucci store, I would read the chapter about fashion first. If I were a psychologist, I might first read the chapter about mental health. In other words, the book should be read in the order of one’s own penchants and proclivities.

Happy Reading!

– D.C. Copeland