Obama 1: Public: Folded into the O-Fold

Indianapolis, Indiana: October 23 We confront Obama first as a public performance of a magnitude we long for but can never master: witness 35,000+ in this downtown park, in this state of basketball-mad Hoosiers, a red state stronghold turning blue with in the (Ba)ra(ck)pture. Obama's present-ness brings tears to some eyes near me (and I note that Americans cry mainly for innocence that has made its mark, the Lassie come home moments made true: however, in the face of a tragedy, Americans, unlike tragic-minded Europeans, retain a hard optimism of face which Europeans envy). Here in Indiana, getting ready to join Obama's plane westward into the night, I locate in Obama that secret power we want for our selves yet never admit to wanting: the irrational charisma of the fascist and the stadium-stage of the rock star, the stance of an iconic Martyr and the mellow langage of Lucifer's seductions: his is a poise and a posture we imagine is us but know isn't, in our slouching stubborn demeanor(s), we fall short and seek a version of this flawless Obamian phantasm outside ourselves: his eloquence is the speech we know that is in us but never makes its way through us: O-bama has already vanquished the O-bstacles that still bl-Ock our paths (money, class, race, disability, access to power, geography) he ceaselessly (like another endlessly celebratory line from that American bard Whitman) over-comes to make it to the top of the very ticket that elides and eludes us and places us into its audience: the Obamian O letters and performs what our anonymity simply cannot: the fantasy of endless, admiring audience will never be (for us). But, before Obama, as he mirrors us, hypnotizing Indiana about Change, his Standing somehow IS makes of us this imagined charismatic/magnanimous we which we didn't know we were (and, (O)-barring a McPalin victory) are and shall be. We, this Indiana crowd signs, WE wish to be this THOU that enters the O.