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“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” --Oscar Wilde
"It's alright to shake to fight to feel." --Stephen Malkmus (yes that one, ok?)
Perhaps most people are other people. And I know what Mr. Wilde intended when he wrote that. But it's hard to believe that deep down (down, down, down there) wherever *there* is people aren't, at the least, capable of acute intermediate periods of unbridled emotion. Lori and I often take our daughter to see a movie on the weekend. To see adults secretly cry and choke back sobs during PG movies as their children wiggle in their seats proves something, no? They refuse to look left or right, afraid they might be caught mid-breakdown, pretending they aren't seen. They wipe their cheeks and slink out of the theater, kids in tow, hoping no one has seen their "silly" tears.
I know two sisters who, when alone in the safety of their own homes, will bawl during the opening title sequence of "Legends of The Fall" simply in anticipation (yes, in anticipation!) of the heartbreak they know is coming. But they are embarrassed, like the parents I mentioned above, to let anyone know. And rightfully so. Any display of emotion, of passion, of real feeling, is a sign of weakness today. Our modern selves adore the idea of stoicism. We strive for it. We chastise ourselves for feeling too much, for telling too much, for being too much. Of anything. Of everything. Until we all become Customer Service Representatives in our daily lives. Modern Marcus Aurelius'.
It's been proposed by recent revisionist historians that Abraham Lincoln was gay. His diaries and letters have been re-examined, re-compiled, and thoroughly re-considered by a generation of younger PhD's with too many books and not enough passion. Their own lack of emotionally charged relationships with people of their own gender has led them to believe falsely that Lincoln was on the downlow. The belief is centered around simple enough evidence: he told his closest male friends he loved them often, spoke at length about the depth of his own demons with them, discussed his feelings for them at length on occasion, and while traveling with them even they even (gasp!) slept in the same bed. By this logic Bob Frank and I are deeply committed homosexual lovers. On tour we have more often than not shared the same bed. Every phone call we have we end with a "love you", and we have discussed everything under the sun (somehow always coming back around to the subject of carnitas). Yes people, Bob and I are now gay. We've been outed.
Passion is a bitch. Today only the mentally ill are given a pass for displaying it openly. Love between friends (and often within families) must go unspoken, lest the speaker be branded a loon. Yet as modern as we may believe ourselves to be, humanity hasn't changed one iota since Lincoln's day. Passion, at the end of the day, is all we really have. It's all we have of any real worth, anyway. We each need our soapboxes. We deserve them. And we ought never step down for anyone, much less a faceless misnomer like "society". After all, what is society but a collection of neurotic individuals (thank you Mildred Dubitzky, my Freudian college professor, for that one). Indulge me this, a quote from William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking."
So I will continue my own puny and inexhaustible rant by giving some examples (and two awesome/one pathetic youtube clips) of people as themselves. And in these three cases they are of "people as themselves" and their failures when acting as, pretending to be, or attempting to re-create themselves as "other people". Or perhaps their acting, attempts, and re-creations are in fact "real". You be the judges and jurors. Seriously, post some comments, I wanna know myself. I'm a walking ball of confusion here, and it's now 1:30 in the morning.
Example 1:
Eric Clapton.
Clapton wrote "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs". The heroin-addled recluse wrote the brilliant album to woo Patti Boyd, his friend George Harrison's wife. He'd fallen in love hard, like a fifteen year old with sweaty palms. That singular goal, his friendship and artistic dependance on Bobby Whitlock, and perhaps even his inability to remain sober for more than five minutes at a time, allowed Clapton to create with such fire that he was capable of ignoring his own insecurities entirely. It eventually worked and Patti left her hubby, then sitar-loving culture-vulture George (don't worry, he got better later). Then a heroin-free but drunken Clapton, the same "God" the English had branded and the Americans had embraced, recorded an incredibly soulless appropriation of Bob Marley's "I Shot The Sheriff" for an equally awful album. Maybe Clapton did shoot the sheriff. He should've shot himself and taken post-Genesis buddy Phil Collins out with him.... It would've prevented "Journeyman" and his entire post-Derek catalog, collaborations with 'ol Phil, and Phil Collins entirely. Damn. Sorry for that (sorta).
Example 2:
Thomas Pynchon.
Korean War vet Pynchon. wrote "The Crying of Lot 49". It's no secret that I generally (and that's being generous) despise post-modernism (and all the post-post-posts, too - keep the meta vomiting going...). Yes, yes: I know at times I act as if it is my personal duty to dispute it's relevance and show it's inherent dishonesty as an art form and as a philosophy. But back to Tommy, the man in question. "The Crying of Lot 49" is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius (you better believe that cruelly awesome pun was intended and that I'm crazy proud of it). A postal conspiracy: true. I've mailed things. There is a counter in the front and super secret work happening behind walls decorated with holiday stamp promotions and labeling instructions and restrictions. Written as a secret organization, well.... Faceless and soulless Oedipa, the bumbling and confused Mucho? Brilliant. The inclusion of goofy pre-New Age Berkeley, California as it's partial setting? Very, very satisfying. All of this is hard to admit. After all, any 22-year-old with a freshly printed English Degree would call Pynchon one of the fathers of the (more modern) post-modern lit movement. Then there was "V.", "Vineland", "Gravity's Rainbow", and countless other works of pure and unadulterated shite. Did anyone actually read "Mason & Dixon" in it's entirety (or just buy it when the paperback hit the bargain shelves immediately after it's release for less than 5 bucks)? Strangely, there is a twist. My father gave me "Inherent Vice", Pynchon's newest, and it's good. Go figure. But the facts remain. His "spark" was a flash in the pan (that may be sparking again, but still...).
Example 3:
Werner Herzog.
German filmmaker Werner Herzog has been compelled, seemingly since birth, to both terrorize and enlighten his audience and to make sense of the world around him by using the tightly focused lens of his own thought and existential experience. His documentaries, since his earliest days with the camera, have been brilliant. Werner is capable of taking the ordinary, the mundane, and the (often to me, anyway) plain boring and turning it into something else entirely. Something greater even than the sum of it's parts. Herzog, in my goofily proud opinion, is more capable of exposing the violence of nature, the cruelty of humanity, and the indifference of the universe than any documentarian alive (or dead). He is capable of doing so while also shining the brightest of lights on the beauty of the world, the quixotic cry and indignant commitment of the human spirit, and the ambiguous grey area where everything genuine in this forsaken place exists. He's only able to do this, though, as a documentarian. Instead of hiding behind the camera, he inserts himself fully in the drama. It's his own philosophizing and his own struggle to understand himself in relation to his subjects that makes his work so brilliant. Herzog is always his own subject. And his subject never fails to both illuminate our world and force the viewer to uncomfortably examine the ambiguity Herzog examines. He has been, at times, a brilliant filmmaker, too. "Fitzcarraldo", "Stroszek", and "Aguirre: The Wrath of God" are masterpieces. Two of these, however, are aided greatly by his dysfunctional personal and working relationship with the insane (and insanely talented) Klaus Kinski, his "Best Fiend" and the greatest actor Werner ever worked with. The majority of the rest are utter shit. I know many of you will disagree. I respectfully (sorta) disagree with you. "Rescue Dawn", with it's plot lifted directly from one of his own documentary subject's actual experience as a POW, couldn't even be salvaged by Christian Bale's central acting role. "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" is simply terrible. That's all on that one. And "Nosferatu"? Even Kinski couldn't salvage that turd of an idea. Anyone who knows me, though, knows that I love Herzog's work deeply, though. So it's with great difficulty that I criticize him at all (notice how much I wrote about the dude?). I mean, this guy literally ate his own shoe on film in front of an eager theater full of people to make good on a promise. This guy is the real deal. But when he falls he doesn't catch himself with his hands. He hits face first. Really, really hard.
"Anyday"
Derek & The Dominoseric as derek = genius.
A German dude reading from Pynchon's "Against The Day".
A shitty book read by a German guy with some serious teutonic toughness.
I am begging you to just watch the first ten or so seconds. Hilarious.
Must I say anything else?
Werner Herzog eating his own shoe.
A man of integrity questioning the idea of integrity.
Why I love Werner:
I must have missed the part where Herzog explained why he was eating the shoe. What was the reason? Oh, and great blog. Fine work, John. I'm in full agreement; we quell our emotions too often for too cheap a reason-(myself included.)
ReplyDeleteHe made the promise to eat the shoe if Errol Morris ever finished "Gates of Heaven", a documentary about mortality via the use of pet cemetaries and those who use them (great documentary, too). He ate the actual show he was wearing when he made the bet/promise, and Alice Waters of Berkeley-gourmand and Chez Panisse fame cooked it up for him. Amazing guy, that Werner. Here he is doing an interview and getting shot by a pellet gun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXqc8TQ15w. Utterly unremarkable if it had been anyone else. Instead it becomes Werner's commentary on the media and violence and what getting shot at really meant (he doesn't act a bit like a victim of it).
ReplyDeleteHe didn't eat the "show"... Sorry... The "shoe", as you obviously saw, Mr. Haskins...
ReplyDeleteThat was interesting. I must watch a Herzog film soon. I've never seen one, but you've made me interested.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with you about post-modernism. Not that I enjoy seeing the world through that lens, but I believe it does have some elucidating explanations of our current situation. Some that seem useful to me anyway. In fact, regarding passions and emotions I actually think it has a lot to say. To me, it offers an acceptable explanation as to why many people now find their passions fickle and their emotions often inaccessible, or otherwise find them overwhelming at very inappropriate times. I wouldn't consider myself a "postmodernist" entirely, but whatever my philosophical position is, it's in such constant flux that attempting to brand it seems useless. However, I think the phrase may also have different connotations for the two of us, and we haven't really talked at length about it yet, which I would like to do some time.
@Daniel: I figured you would. My point, though, is that I believe the human condition never changes and hasn't changed. What we do and how we act in relation to it has, though. What's "acceptable" has certainly changed since Victorian times. We aren't required, though, by any external force, to do anything. We may be influenced, and influenced quite heavily, but we are not required to do anything. My belief, of course. I believe the impact of the idea of post-modernism is far more relevant than the "truth" of the philosophy. I believe post-modernism is in great part responsible for our fickleness and faux-stoicism due to it's influence and that is isn't an explanation of it. We choose fickleness and disconnection regardless of any philosophical idea. And most people could give a shit about post-modernity one way or the other, much less have ever heard of it. They still act as they do because it's oppressive nature as a philosophy is propagated by Hollywood, kid lit, television, etcetera ad infinitum. And I do realize that's almost a reverse use of the classic definition of post-modernism (i hope it is, anyway). "Nothing is new under the sun".
ReplyDeleteJohn Murry
And Georg: what the hell is wrong with you. This is John Murry vs. post-modernism ground zero. Wuss.
ReplyDeleteI went to a movie at a theater yesterday. We got there early and had to sit through all the BS advertising and announcements they show before the previews. Shop here, shut up, turn your phone off, take a piss now...please help Haiti just send a text message to...
ReplyDeleteThen the previews come on and everything is loud and huge and looks kind of creepy because it's all going to be in 3-D and LAUGH NOW and FLINCH HERE don't even think of waiting for the DVD you fucking hick.
We end up mocking so much around us out of basic self defense because, like Herzog said we are at war.
Love,
Reno
Well, I think in order to understand what you're saying I need to pin down what you mean when you say that the human condition never changes and hasn't changed. Do you mean psychologically, philosophically, socially, biologically or all of the above?
ReplyDeleteI think the rise and awareness of postmodernism in art, literature, etc. has probably had some dubious effect on the population at large. I was thinking of more along the lines of the kinds of things post-modernism attempts to examine. Maybe I am thinking only of a particular vein of it. I don't think anyone is a true relativist. I just think our lives now offer a rather inundating amount of perspectives to be entertained. I guess to generalize, I think that many of the social circumstances people now find themselves in are new and not yet understood. We are more technologically advanced than we have ever been, more crowded. We know more people, have more relationships. We're processing more information from many places at once. Simulated experiences have become integrated into our daily routines, with myriad implications we couldn't possibly be aware of yet. I find the post-post-post jargon obnoxious as well, but in a way it makes sense. Because of our emphasis on immediate technological advance, the environment we find ourselves in is causing significant social changes to occur so much faster. So maybe the contention that lived through, say 4 different eras since 1930 is one way of looking at.
There's probably really no way to know whether what's referred to as "postmodern fragmentation" occurs outside of our current setting, or whether it really is a result of a massive increase in stimulus, complexity and information. Perhaps the complexity of simply being human and alive dwarfs anything we could pile on top of it ourselves. Maybe some isolated tribesman somewhere out there has a brain playing television static every time he tries to concentrate just like me.
Reno, I think we saw the same movie. Seriously. We saw alice last weekend and the dragon one last night. Indeed, we do mock out of basic self defense. And we are at war; a holy war as Werner said. But we couldn't fight, much less be at war if we were as controlled as the post-post-somethings said we are. Else we'd have become automatons. And you, sir, are as far from those as dudes get. As Chas and I have often said of you (and I'm not kidding), "At least Reno's still around". Keep kicking against the prods, my friend.
ReplyDeleteDaniel, I often wonder about the static, too. I agree, our lives seem much more convoluted and confusing compared to those of our forebears. But we've made it so. And we continue to make it so. The basics remain the same, and sadly the basics will ALWAYS remain the same: we are born, we love, we hate, we die. No theory can create any level that builds above this. It's as foolish as the tower of Babel and is frankly no different in arrogance. If we can't SEE God then he doesn't exist? Then we become God? Horseshit. Nietzsche did say God was dead. And he may have been an atheist, but he was never arrogant enough to mean God actually died. He meant our own arrogance had killed his presence in this world (if it ever existed). Just as Dostoevsky said "When there is no God all things are permissible", he didn't mean all things were indeed permissible. He meant no fear of a God (or even of a potential God) allows man to act as he wants with no remorse. Meta-jargon semantic bullshit does the same. In lieu of examining life and death we examine what we've created to ignore it. I'm not saying the world isn't a very different place and that we don't have very different technologies, cultures, etc. I'm simply saying that regardless of all of that (every tiny bit of it) we must all die. At the end of the game the pawn and the king go back into the same fucking box. No matter what we create this will be true. Ignoring this basic truth and focusing instead on "simulacrums" and nonsense like it is a cop out. Of course, repression is a necessity in order to survive. Constantly considering mortality leads to madness. But ignoring it all together leads to something much worse than either madness or death: self-obsession and narcissism based on nothing interesting, but instead fraud alone. Though the post-post-post-pissed-morons may claim they are not creating or systematizing, they are. The simple act of examining meta-level-upon-level is like building a house with no foundation. It's a tower of Babel. Blah, I think I hurt my eye..... John
Seriously, though: does no one think that German doofus reading Pynchon is hilarious. I beg you, just watch the first 15 seconds....
ReplyDeleteReno: How far are you from Bob's Bait Shop aka "The Master Baiter"? Jimmy Finch took me fishing right by there in Nov., picked up cut bait there...
It's difficult because the term "postmodern" has never had a hard and fast definition( just look at the jumbled mess of it's wikipedia page). In philosophy alone there are a veritable bazillion writers one might refer to who contradict each other or outright disagree. Many of them are working in areas that seem worlds apart sometimes. Some of the ones I'm fond of might not necessarily think of themselves as such, but are broadly viewed as being somewhere within it's bounds. So when I think of postmodernism I guess I'm not really thinking of any particular theory or set of theories. I'm thinking of a vast social shift that began at some indistinct point in the early twentieth century. I associate it with the dominance of mass production, mass transportation, mass communication, late capitalism, mass media, the imminence of the digital age, etc. To my interpretation at least, any art, literature or philosophy that attempts to deal with these subjects falls somewhere under the vast dome of postmodernism.
ReplyDeleteI would definitely agree that the human condition is constant, though I do think that these outside influences are extremely powerful and important. I don't believe we are capable at this point of choosing to ignore or bypass them, and that makes it crucial that they are examined somewhere. I am not saying that I think there is some monstrous conspiracy but that the machine is now so big that no one could possibly be at the wheel. The semantic debates do get tedious at times, even when I'm interested. But most of the works I'm fond of I find useful in a very practical sense. These examinations of culture are every bit as profitable as psychoanalysis. In fact, they are psychoanalysis. Just on a larger scale. In a way, something like the study of ethics is far more vague, because instead of trying to decide how we should live these works examine how we ARE living. As I said, I don't think anyone really believes in complete relativism. I certainly don't intend to abandon my own sense of morality, and I doubt I could if I wanted to.
I guess we've meandered pretty far afield of your original topic. I hope I don't sound to cut and dry, my ideas are really anything but. Philosophy is interesting and sometimes useful, but belief doesn't really enter into it for me. Philosophy does even lousier as dogma than religion, and it's nearly all conjecture anyway. Very few of my Memphis friends have any interest, so that's why I'm writing 9000 word responses. It's much more fun than discussing politics. No one gets too emotional and throws up on you.
Also, I do get what you are saying. I think we were talking about two different things at first. I think you were expressing distaste for the postmodern, and I was defending the study of it. I think it's only the places where the lines between the two blur(simulacrums and such) that we disagree.
ReplyDeleteYeah I'm still here John but I can't listen to the German guy now, Mrs Sepulveda is fast asleep and by the time she wakes up I'll be at work. Tonight for sure.
ReplyDeleteBob's Bait is about 2.5 hrs north of me. I fish cutbait too, channel cats love it when the water is cold. I usually get a fresh mackerel I buy from the Vietnamese fish market in Fresno and cut it up as I need it.
Reno: We were using frozen herring, cutting and wrapping it as needed, looking for cats, too. Came up with lots of smaller stripers. Funny fish, those. They only seem to bite when the bait's on the way down. It's strange to a Southerner to try and feel for a hit on a bait on it's descent (being pulled down by a heavy ass weight on a slider, too).
ReplyDeleteFeeding the baby stripers! When they're hitting like that you can toss a plastic grub on a small lead-head jig. Fun for awhile on a light trout rig. That's why I like buying a big fresh Mackerel, you can cut the chunks bigger and the baby stripers can't swallow it.
ReplyDeleteThey still try, but you just ignore them. What you're looking for is a deep bend in your rod or a a quick tap- tap followed by your line actually moving around. Let those catfish really swallow it then set the hook.
Hey don't tell anybody this, but I bought Pynchon's Inherent Vice for my sister-in-law for her birthday last year. She likes all that Mitch Albom, Nicholas Sparks stuff. She read it but thought it was weird and..re-gifted it right back to me for my birthday! It was weird but I liked it.
It really does start to feel like yer just feeding the stripers, for sure! The mackerel idea is a good one since the meat you can cut off a herring is only so big. Back home you don't worry with the bass. The catfish bite on cheese, blood, livers, etc. and where they live the bass don't visit. That tap-tap is a weird thing. It feels so misleading once you start hauling those hogs in. A ten pound+ fish that, like Springsteen says "dances on the end of my line". Lil' grubs on a lead jig? Sounds like fishing for crappie back home. Man, everything is backwards here... Not always bad, just rearranged... Glad to hear you read the Pynchon. I don't feel quite as alone now. I liked it too, and have harbored a bit of self-loathing ever since...
ReplyDelete