Ordinary Decency

I'm reading Robert Stone's memoir of the sixties (it's really good), and I came across this about politics...

"I had always been interested in politics. Belief fascinated me, because of my own experience of lost faith. But somehow, as I lived along with the century, the more interested in politics I became, the further I moved from accepting any kind of transforming ideology as an answer to my fundamental questions. I was never able to advance (if that's the word) beyond the old boring liberalism of the two-cheers-for democracy sort. Like most people, I never trusted anyone who offered a formula that transcended the instincts of ordinary decency. Ordinary decency, I thought, was about the best of which I, and again most people, were capable. And it was not so easy at that, not so ordinary." - R. Stone, Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties.

Mysteries

Okay, so I've looked into the abyss, the dark void...and well, what can I tell you, it's dark, and well, like, you know, there's not much else to say, I mean, life goes on.

What do you do when someone you know and trust, tells you they've seen a ghost, and when they're telling you this, your whole body kind of tingles, like it's been electrified or something, and well, you take the information in, and well, even if you're sort of skeptical, you don't really know what to think, and really there's nothing to do, so you just kind of process the information and then either forget it, or file it away, or well what? I guess, you just figure it's just another mystery added to all the other mysteries that make up your life.

Doom

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said something about intelligence being the ability to hold at least two contradictory ideas in your head simultaneously...I'm not so sure...

Looking at the big picture you might say things are kind of fucked up. The Doomsday Clock moves closer to the end! I mean, the ice caps are melting, the rainforests are disappearing, the polar bears are dying, the Muslims and Christians are locked in a death struggle, powerful nations are led by madmen and idiots, multinational corporations are raping and pillaging for profit, the Long Emergency is coming, the universe is expanding, the sun is slowly dying, an asteroid could knock us out of orbit any minute, the corrupt and powerful push around the weak and defenseless, the peacemakers always get assasinated, the corrupt always get promoted, the population is exploding, our resources are dwindling, we are always stupid and arrogant, the food chain is contaminated, there's a hole in the ozone layer, the oceans are rising, good topsoil is being blown to the wind, the general public is either dumb and complacent, or pissed off and dangerous, nuclear non-proliferation is a joke, war is one of our favorite pastimes, the selfish and greedy are lavishly rewarded, the poor are despised and stomped on for entertainment, etc.

On the other hand, hey, things aren't that bad, right? I mean, I'm trying to do my part. I vote Democratic, I recycle, I'm a vegetarian, I give money to the Streetwise Guy, I walk little old ladies across the street, I don't own a car, I think positive thoughts, I meditate, I try not to hurt myself or others...hmmm...not alot to put on this side of the ledger, really...

Only a few minutes from doom...so, okay, when does the party start?

A World Wide Generalization!

"The world wants to be deceived." Kierkegaard.

Whiteness

I had this vision, or maybe better to call it a daydream, I saw myself walking in a snowy landscape, I was trudging through heavy white snow. My big rubber boots made dark footprints. I could look back and see where I had come from, but ahead of me all I could see was undifferentiated whiteness. There was no path, no clear direction. I paused to take the scene in... there was a certain past (although it was already fading) and an uncertain future. I existed in the tiny point between.

Positive Thinking

I'm sitting in my favorite coffee shop, doing some reports, and next to me are two dudes doing their bible study. They are going line by line figuring out "what God thinks." Jesus, what a load of shite!

I think one of them just said, "God thinks we're all criminals. Sin makes him impatient." I think this is probably true, he must be getting really fucking impatient by now, don't you think?

Anyway, as soon as I write these words down, the two of them get up and move away and set up at another table. Could be a coincidence, or maybe a manifestation of the power of positive thinking. I didn't actually say the words out loud, but if you could read my mind, it might translate into something like this: "take that musty old book and stick it where the sun don't shine!"

Don't know why the Holy Bible pisses me off so much...maybe it's not the book, it's the interpretations and the interpreters that really gets my goat all in a lather. You look at all the horror and stupidty that religion has helped unleash upon the world, and well, I guess, put me in the camp with Richard Dawkins...

Plus, don't you think that in the Bible, the Almighty comes off like a real, Type A, power-mad asshole...? Kind of like Donald Trump on steriods? Maybe with better hair? And Jesus, well, he was a nice guy and all, probably a little too full of himself, sort of a downer, took himself way too seriously, I mean he really went out of his way to suffer, didn't he, and really, when it comes down to it, I'm with Patti Smith, "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine!" I mean, instead, give me Billy Pilgrim, Yossarian, Dean Moriarty, Randle P. McMurphy, or Holden Caulfield any day.

When Do We Build a Temple to the Great Algorithm?

"Here then is Darwin's dangerous idea: the algorithmic level is the level that best accounts for the speed of the antelope, the wing of the eagle, the shape of the orchid, the diversity of species, and all the other occasions for wonder in the world of nature...Can it really be the outcome of nothing but a cascade of algorithmic processes feeding on chance?" - Daniel Dennet - "Darwin's Dangerous Idea."

Robyn Hitchcock on being human:

A happy animal/a sick god.

My World, My Dystopia

Bob Dylan has a famous line: "I'll let you be in my dream, if I can be in yours." I think I'd like to amend it to read: "I won't make you live in my dystopia, if you won't make me live in yours."

I saw another movie about a "dystopia" which, since "utopias" are idealized places that "don't exist," the only "topias" available to us are the "dys" type. They are the places where flaws flourish, worlds very much like our own. First it was "Idiocracy," (see previous post) and now it's "Children of Men," a truly powerful, mind-blowing experience. It's not just a great movie, (you will never think of "homeland security," and "immigration reform" in quite the same way), it brings a few key trends and just slightly pushes them forward to reveal the deep cracks in our world that are already with us, tearing our societies open wide as we sit here today.

I guess, all I really want to say about the movie is: go see it! It's filmmaking at it's finest. Great direction, great acting. A perfectly realized vision. I loved the music, especially the late sixties British psychedelic music that comes to us from another world, far, far, away, promising a golden, trippy, time of love - a glimpse into a utopia that couldn't quite stand up to the light of day. The Court of the Crimson King, indeed.

Idiots Is Us

I finally saw Mike Judge's very funny (and sadly, oh so true) movie Idiocracy. I prefer the original title: Amerikwa. It is supposed to be about the future of our little paradise, but of course, it's about now. I do believe we have dumbed ourselves way down - we are fat, stupid, complacent. I believe that every time we listen to this guy (evolution? devolution?) speak, our collective IQ automatically takes a nose dive. Just listening to him babble on (I mean about anything) makes us profoundly dumber! What the hell happened to us?

P.S. I finally caught up with Green Day's American Idiot...what a great song...the anti-idiot-anthem...I love Billie Joe Armstrong's buzzsaw guitar work!

P.S.S. This post from MaxSpeak says it all in regards to Commander Codpiece's latest (ahem - did anyone say fuckup?!) stratergy....

To Schlepp

Well, the movie promises that "all you have to do is dream." I'm afraid it ain't so. I mean, I do believe in the creative visualization thing, I do think you need to dream, to envision what you want to do, who you want to be...you have to imagine the world and then exist in it, but if you really want to do anything, to actualize it, to make it real, to keep a job, put on a play, be in a band, well, truthfully, "all you have to do is schlepp!"

Maybe not the best movie tag-line, but there it is...

I mean, you don't want to be a schlepp, although, that might be inevitable, it might just come with the territory, (is there a specific gene that dictates that you will be a clumsy or stupid person?!), who knows, you play with the cards you are dealt, and that means, lugging that guitar through the turnstyle, that means making the arduous, difficult journey across the city, that means standing on an el platform with the cold winter wind cutting through you waiting for a train, that means getting chilled to the bone, so you can set up and plug in and jam with your band mates for a few hours.

So you dream, and then you schlepp and well, that's what you have to do.

On the Sideline

Adam Gopnik has an article in the latest New Yorker about professional football called the Unbeautiful Game. I'd link to it, but I came up empty. Anyway, here's the last paragraph, which smacks of worldy wisdom...wisdom even a Bear fan could appreciate.

"The essential experience of watching sports is experiencing loss; anyone who has consoled a twelve year old after a Jets loss, or been a twelve year old in need of consolation, knows this. Since loss and disappointment are the only fixed points in life, maybe the best we can say is that pro football, like anything else we like to watch, gives us a chance to organize those emotions into a pattern, a season, while occasionally giving us the hope of something more. The Jets don't always lose - just nearly always. When they do better, we feel better. That's the margin, or sideline, on which we live."

The Minutemen

Well, you wonder as per Wikpedia, how many bands out there really were influenced by the Urinals? I have never owned a CD by the Minutemen, but I have been aware of Mike Watt, their bass player for a few years. I know he's considered to be one of the great bass players in rock, or punk, or well, whatever category you want to slap on his output.

I rented a DVD about the Minutemen and it's one of those enlightening and inspiring little windows into a fairly obscure little subculture (Punk California Style?), with it's own roster of prophets, poets and madmen, and there are interesting interviews with people like Henry Rollins, Richard Hell, Jello Biafra, Lee Renaldo, and various ex-members of Black Flag.

It's a classic tale of outsiders, kids who had few prospects, but liked to hang out together and bash away on their instruments, making music that was crude but exciting. Over time they became quite adept at a certain approach, in fact, they finally became masters of their own wildly original genre of music. They broke all the rules, except, being true to their own do it yourself ethic.

D. Boon the lead singer and one of the principle song writers is one of the great oddball, eccentrics. He was a mammoth man armed with a sizzling Telecaster, and uncommon grace and wit. The movie is ultimately a love story of three guys who banded together to do their particular thing, damn the torpedoes...they blazed like a comet, and then, well, one of them met their demise, and the Minutemen were no more.

7th Ward Snoop

Words of wisdom from 7th Ward Snoop (as per Triksta: Life & Death of New Orleans Rap): "The grind is what defines your character, that's where the magic is...real success isn't what you crave. It's what you already have."

"All we've got is skin and our souls." - Nik Cohn

I think a sign of a really good writer is the ability to bring alive a subject that might not, at first glance, be of interest. I think of Melville and whaling, or David Foster Wallace and tennis, or well, a good example, I just finished Nik Cohn's great book, "Triksta: Life and Death of New Orleans Rap," which brings alive another world.

The book was written before Katrina, and the soggy Death of New Orleans, which makes the story he tells even more haunting. Nik writes about being in love with the City, not the tourist trap of Bourbon Street, but of the tenements, the low-down, burned-out neighborhoods, where Hip Hop, Rap, Crank and Bounce thrived, as practiced by ghosts with names like Supa Dave, Sinista, 5th Ward Weebie, P-Town, K-Gates, Bigg Ramp, King George, Lil Mel, Soulja Slim, Bass Heavy, Hot Boy Ronald, Tek-9, and many, many others.

It's a complex tale, with strange connectors and well, what's a white British dude doing hanging out in the hardest and bleakest of hoods anyway? It's a fascinating tale, and character study of people struggling to live and make their mark. Of course, we read the tale knowing that many of these neighborhoods and people were washed away and displaced, refugees in America, neighborhoods that will most likely never be re-built. It's a heartfelt Rap for those on the margins, those looking to have something of the great American Hustle for themselves...it's a sad and noble tale too. And the music, in whatever form, even if it's a beat box, a scratch record, a machine gun burst of staccato verse, whatever, it will not be denied.

A Mouse Click Away

The internet really is a cool space, isn't it? It's amazing what you can find, who you can discover. In the late seventies of the last century there was an explosion of new bands out of New York that captivated me. They included: Television, the Patti Smith Group and the quirky, edgy and funky Talking Heads. One of my favorite blogs is written by David Byrne, former lead singer of the Heads. David writes about music and philosophy, and well, I guess just whatever he wants to write about. He always seems to have something unique to add to the conversation. I guess this was evident the first time I heard him at the microphone - there was an adventurousness, an intelligence in his lyrics that was unsettling and inspiring. It's kind of cool to be connected to him with just one little mouse click.

A Silly Red Hat

The NYTimes on Tuesday highlights the debate going on in science on "free will." I love the picture accompaning the article, a little monkey (representing our conscious thought) riding a tiger (our unconscious thought). The monkey holds a steering wheel, (connected to nothing), and well, he's looking backwards as the tiger surges forth. I think basically the picture says it all, although the whole article is worth a read. Could it be that the best stuff in life, the stuff that makes it possible to get up, put our shoes on and face the day with a smile on our faces, is illusory?

My favorite line is from Dr. Dennett, who tries to reconcile the dilemmna of free will and determinism: "We have the power to veto our urges and then to veto our vetoes. We have the power of imagination, to see and imagine futures."

And well, maybe that's enough...I think it explains why that little monkey is wearing a silly red hat. He's kind of like us, he's imagining himself as a player in some kind of circus drama well beyond the world of the tiger. But of course, we're not just the little monkey, we're the leaping tiger too...looking forward, looking backward, ferocious and silly, working together, trying to survive in a world we didn't make.

Each Day a Gift

Speaking of mantras, this new year I've adopted a new one, which I am determined to repeat to myself every morning, it goes exactly like this: "each day a gift." Maybe sans quotation marks.

There's a great book by Lewis Hyde that illuminates "the gift" in our lives and imaginings. I'd like to be as expansive as possible and say that whether there's a loving god or not, whether, we can look to randomness or chance, or some benign or malignant force that's overseeing our every move, or not, we have been given, or we happen to inherit or, well, whatever, we are alive and it's a state of grace, I mean this life that we have can be snatched from us at any time, we might as well enjoy it, embrace it to the fullest, it's a gift whether there's a giver or not.

There have been times when life has seemed like a burden or a chore, or a punishment, but really these are cracked visions...life is only a gift...whether we like it or not, whether we want it or not...it's ours...to do as we please. But as Robert Stone reminds us, this gift comes with attachments, it is not free, and that is our dilemma, our challenge, we pay the price every day for a gift we didn't ask to receive.

I was reading a review of Robert Stone's new memoir about the sixties "Prime Green," and this passage really caught my eye, it seemed to sum up a certain credo that may have outlived it's usefulness: "In our time, we were clamorous and vain. I speak not only for myself here, but for all those with whom I shared the era and what I think of it's attitudes. We wanted it all; sometimes we confused self-destructiveness with virtue and talent, obliteration with ecstasy, heedlessness with courage. Worshipping the doctrines of Hemingway as we did, we wanted constant grace under constant pressure, and stoicism before a disillusionment that somehow never went stale. We wanted to die well every single day, to be a cool guy and a good-looking corpse. How absurd, because nothing is free, and we had to learn that at last. We were the chief victims of our own mistakes, measuring ourselves against the master of the present, we regret nothing except our failure to prevail."

The Big Ideas

It turns out the David Lynch, the writer and Director of such dark and surreal masterpieces as Mulholland Drive, EraserHead, and Blue Velvet, is a dedicated meditator. He practices Transcendental Meditation as popularized by this well-robed, and abundantly bearded fellow. I understand that the good Yogi is still alive and well. Good to hear.

Lennon wrote a song (Sexy Sadie)about the Maharishi, back in 1968, after he (Lennon) was disillusioned by some overly friendly contact that the Yogi supposedly had with Mia Farrow.

Since I'm one of those who thinks that the "saints" among us are really flawed human beings just like everyone else, I'm not surprised or disillusioned to find that the good Yogi might be in same the club with Sinatra and Woody Allen - men attracted to the lovely Mia.

Anyway, I too, tried the Transcendental Way. Back in something like 1978 or so, my cousin and I went to a TM house, we went through the ritual, we agreed to refrain from smoking pot for a week or so, we received a mantra. I can remember coming out of the intial session supremely serene. My cousin took one look and thought that I had been transformed.

It didn't last, I ended up dropping it all, it wasn't until I found Invision (see link) that I re-affirmed my life of meditation. Now it's a daily ritual. Instead of a mantra, I now create visual images, which I use to focus and "clear." It's pretty much the same concept, just a little bit different technique. This is in contrast to the Zen way, where you try to still and empty your mind. I find this to be very difficult, if not impossible, I mean I think it's a struggle to find emptiness...using the the mantra or creative visualization as a point of focus seems to be a more fruitful technique, with practice it becomes almost second nature.

Anyway, I've always been a great fan of David Lynch's work. It's validating to hear that he too sits in the silence, looking for that "quiet alertness," finding a stillness so that the "big ideas" can find a place to settle.

New Year, New Look

This is how the journey begins. One feisty Spermatoza meets up with a fat shiny egg. Ain't it so strange?! We all have come such a long way. Wonder where we're headed...

Well, I was gonna go with a new design, but I decided to revert back to my standard. This is how I'm going into 2007, seeking the new, but bringing some of the old with me too. For some reason I have great expectations for this coming year. I am very surprised that I made it, and I'm looking forward to a rocking good time. I expect there will be ups and downs, that's how it always seems to work. You don't get to experience the highs without enduring the lows. I've posted a picture of me with my doppleganger over to the right. I will leave it to the reader to decide which one is sunny and which is dumps.

Happy New Year!