After all the lights and screams
nothing but my dreams matter
2pac
"Agency" is the buzzword of history in the twenty-first century. People love agency. Agency means that people act to change the course of their own lives, that people act to change the course of events, that people can change the world. Agency rejects the Grand Inquisitor, freedom, bread, give us both! Agency means liberty, power, despair, struggle.
Agency means the world is yours; the future hangs in the balance. Structure can come down, but agency will flow up.
The city is in flames.
What is agency? Did rising food prices snatch the rug from beneath Cairo's simmering calm? Or was it a man's singular action, gasoline, a match, pyrotechnic suicide, screams and destruction, breaking open the night?
The urban malaise: invisible guidelines, invisible bonds, society...together. Because urban dreams can be dangerous, or they can be nothing. Windows down, stereo up: drive on through. But the true agent knows: push on the structures, or push on nothing. Stone walls are hard, no matter who controls the fist.
