Diversity Envy

Do you ever feel you lack diversity?

Sure. All the time. I spend my life forming and transporting balls of dung. Not a lot of diversity in that.

Exactly! And I’ve been up these trees my whole life. I mean, I come down to poop and that’s it. There’s so many things I’d like to do and see but just can’t because, you know, the sloth thing.

Yeah, I know. You don't get around much.

I feel like an idiot. I mean, I want to be able to carry on intelligent conversations and have an important voice in the community but I feel like I’m transparent. I mean, I’ve lived in this same five square miles of forest all my life. I don’t even know what the sloths on the other side of the forest talk like or talk about. I can’t relate.

Well, let me tell you their dung is all the same.

Seriously, though, what if I wanted to become an author or a political figure? I’d be laughed out of the community. I don’t have vision. I can’t speak in anyone’s language but my own.

Why would you need to speak a different language?

Not different languages, I guess, just different ways of speaking. Speaking out of different experiences. I mean, I don’t know how two toed sloths speak. I’ve never lived with them and done the things that they do. They’d never take me seriously because I don’t speak from the same experiences they do.

Well, we’re all alive and having experiences. You don’t have to speak a different language just talk about common experiences. There are things that we all go through.

Yeah. Do listen to Of Montreal?

A little bit. I really like Satanic Panic In the Attic. "Lysergic Bliss" and "Will You Come and Fetch Me" kill me every time. I haven’t gotten into their other albums, though.

There’s a really great song called “Don’t Ask Me To Explain” off the album Cherry Peel. He sings, "How am I supposed to let it show when I don't even know?" That’s kind of what I’m talking about. I want to say great things but I don’t even know how to.

There’s nothing more to it than you just do it, is all. If it works out, fine. If not, whatever. You're still a sloth hanging upside down in a tree.

Yeah. Have you ever done something like that?

No.