A meditation on holding professional gravity and creative chaos in the same breath
I wore a tie to a deposition this morning and quoted Foucault to my kid at lunch. Both acts felt subversive.
Let’s begin with the obvious: contradiction is not a flaw in the system. It is the system. I’m a trial lawyer who writes plays about talking garden gnomes. I argue about policy while wearing cufflinks engraved with Shakespearean insults. I have a Juris Doctor and a stack of rejection letters from theaters that begin with, “This is wonderfully strange, but…”
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
This is a love letter to the paradox people. The ones who can cross-examine a neurosurgeon without blinking, then go home and cry at the final scene of Ratatouille. The ones who carry legal pads in one hand and dog-eared philosophy books in the other. The ones who live simultaneously in a courtroom, a script draft, and a thought experiment about whether the DMV is a modern panopticon (spoiler: it is).
The Tie
Let’s start with the tie. Ah, the necktie. That strangled silk semaphore of corporate compliance. The modern leash we willingly knot around our throats to signal that we belong. That we’re Serious Professionals™. That we are not, in fact, writing surrealist one-acts about a toaster that thinks it’s a defense attorney.
A tie says, “I am prepared to speak Latin in court, even if I have to Google what res ipsa loquitur means again.”
A tie says, “Yes, I woke up at 6 a.m. to organize color-coded exhibits and am emotionally tethered to the functionality of my highlighter.”
A tie says, “No, I will not discuss my novel where Death is a freelance Uber driver until after this mediation.”
But what it doesn’t say is what’s brewing underneath. The weird. The wild. The whisper of Foucault in the back of your brain asking, What power dynamics are you replicating in this office birthday card?
The Foucault
I discovered Foucault during a graduate seminar where I nodded for three weeks before realizing no one else understood him either. Foucault is the French intellectual equivalent of your friend who never directly answers a question but still convinces you to change your entire worldview.
To quote him is to invite chaos to dinner. “Power is everywhere.” “Discipline is a mechanism of control.” “The body becomes a site of political inscription.”
Great. Now explain that to your paralegal when they ask why your email signature includes a Derrida pun.
But here’s the thing: Foucault belongs in the courtroom. Not literally – he’d object to the architecture – but conceptually. Every legal argument is a dance between authority and resistance, visibility and silence, identity and surveillance. Judges and juries don’t just weigh facts. They absorb narratives sculpted by ritual, symbolism, tone, and well-timed sighs. The law is less a machine than a pageant with consequences.
And so is life.
The Tension
Being both a lawyer and an artist is like trying to waltz while wearing a full suit of armor. You clank. You overheat. You question your choices constantly. But when you get it right – oh, when you get it right – it’s a thing of chaotic grace.
I’ve argued motions by day and rehearsed monologues by night, sometimes with the same intensity and often with the same caffeine. I’ve spent my lunch break quoting appellate cases and my dinner rewriting dialogue between a nervous defendant and a talking houseplant.
This doesn’t make me confused. It makes me whole.
Because creativity without structure is noise. And structure without creativity is a spreadsheet that dreams of being a nap. The magic happens in the contradiction. The ability to draft a complaint and a confession scene in the same breath. The ability to quote case law and King Lear in the same paragraph and mean both.
The Point (If There Is One)
Contradiction is not your weakness. It is your origin story.
So wear the tie. Quote Foucault. File the motion. Write the monologue. Cross-examine with passion. Direct with precision. Be terrifying in deposition and tender in act two. Confuse people. Confuse yourself. Be the Venn diagram that no one asked for and everyone secretly needs.
Because somewhere between the robe and the rehearsal, the affidavit and the absurdity, is a world where contradiction isn’t failure. It’s freedom.
And if anyone asks why you’re scribbling play notes on legal pads again, just smile and say:
“Discipline is a mechanism of control.”
Then straighten your tie. And get back to work.
Brian Brijbag 