Our old buddy Damian provides some healthy food for thought here. All of us get caught up to at least some degree in this friction of being in the world, of staying alert and aware of the depredations and injustices that occur every second, but also trying to not be too much of it, being a reed that follows every direction of the shifting winds.
I find myself doing exactly that, more and more, as I attempt to phase things out here in our little comedy treehouse, and move on to more fulfilling pastures (at the end of this year). Where I find myself getting snagged is that it is fulfilling to find perspectives on current events, and challenge myself to come up with observations that are interesting for me to write and for you to read.
As the world and its inhabitants become ever more baffling to me, this becomes more and more of a challenge, and it can at times feel like pissing in the wind. There are only so many variations one can muster for "[So-and-so] sucks."
But Damian's analogy works very well for me, as I am just a few years older and so am going through the same sorts of personal changes and realizations. It began physically, with eating better and exercising and sleeping more, and has spread to the more abstract life of the mind, this notion that we are what we eat, that physically and mentally we shit what we consume. Garbage in, garbage out.
Bread and circuses are fine as a sometimes food on your cheat day, but as the only meal it is obviously unhealthy. The problem is that it's cheap and easy and convenient, and everyone consumes it. It makes it that much harder to change your diet, and for some, going cold turkey actually works, while most people have to make gradual, committed, consistent changes over time, and stick with it.
I used to be a huge Frank Zappa fan, not only for the instrumental virtuosity and the doo-doo jokes, but I loved that he envisioned his crazily diverse catalog as one gigantic masterwork, which he referred to as Project/Object. Zappa's thesis was that despite all the different musical styles under his unique umbrella, there was "conceptual continuity," a unifying theme.
The nearest cultural comparison I can muster to it might be The Simpsons, where rather than focusing on individual episodes, taking the "helicopter view" of the entire body of work shows a well-realized miniature parallel universe, with fully fledged characters, and arcs and narratives that mirror real-world counterparts. Behind the barrage of pop-culture takes is a truly devastating insight to how human beings actually function -- dumb, short-sighted, messy, hypocritical, occasionally blundering into doing things that aren't completely selfish and venal.
The silly guessing games as to which state "Springfield" is "really" in miss the point -- Springfield is America.
When I do check in here these days to pound out a few missives to the virtual abyss, I am in the back of my mind teasing around for that common thread -- well, after fifteen years, it's more of a rope or a cable than a mere thread -- that describes whatever conceptual continuity exists here. I think it does exist, even though it's only occasionally on the tip of my brain just what that common rope might turn out to be.
Venting is important, and we all have our own ways of expelling those ill humors that collect over time, the mental chaff that results from the daily friction of being engaged with the machine. Maybe we have to reach a certain age or stage in life to come to our individual realization that there is an "equilibrium of engagement," for lack of a better term, that differs for each of us, and that that equilibrium moves as we move through our lives and things happen, people come and go, careers change, etc.
Ultimately, though, while the personal metrics are customized, the principles are more or less universal, and we can all stand to eat a little bit healthier. What we get out of it in the long run is a better perspective on ourselves, and what our expectations are out of our own thoughts and deeds, rather than frantically worrying and reacting to everyone else's. I have to remind myself of those things periodically, and I bet I'm not the only one.
It's already a weird, interesting year, and it's only going to get more so. Stay thirsty, my friends.
I find myself doing exactly that, more and more, as I attempt to phase things out here in our little comedy treehouse, and move on to more fulfilling pastures (at the end of this year). Where I find myself getting snagged is that it is fulfilling to find perspectives on current events, and challenge myself to come up with observations that are interesting for me to write and for you to read.
As the world and its inhabitants become ever more baffling to me, this becomes more and more of a challenge, and it can at times feel like pissing in the wind. There are only so many variations one can muster for "[So-and-so] sucks."
But Damian's analogy works very well for me, as I am just a few years older and so am going through the same sorts of personal changes and realizations. It began physically, with eating better and exercising and sleeping more, and has spread to the more abstract life of the mind, this notion that we are what we eat, that physically and mentally we shit what we consume. Garbage in, garbage out.
Bread and circuses are fine as a sometimes food on your cheat day, but as the only meal it is obviously unhealthy. The problem is that it's cheap and easy and convenient, and everyone consumes it. It makes it that much harder to change your diet, and for some, going cold turkey actually works, while most people have to make gradual, committed, consistent changes over time, and stick with it.
I used to be a huge Frank Zappa fan, not only for the instrumental virtuosity and the doo-doo jokes, but I loved that he envisioned his crazily diverse catalog as one gigantic masterwork, which he referred to as Project/Object. Zappa's thesis was that despite all the different musical styles under his unique umbrella, there was "conceptual continuity," a unifying theme.
The nearest cultural comparison I can muster to it might be The Simpsons, where rather than focusing on individual episodes, taking the "helicopter view" of the entire body of work shows a well-realized miniature parallel universe, with fully fledged characters, and arcs and narratives that mirror real-world counterparts. Behind the barrage of pop-culture takes is a truly devastating insight to how human beings actually function -- dumb, short-sighted, messy, hypocritical, occasionally blundering into doing things that aren't completely selfish and venal.
The silly guessing games as to which state "Springfield" is "really" in miss the point -- Springfield is America.
When I do check in here these days to pound out a few missives to the virtual abyss, I am in the back of my mind teasing around for that common thread -- well, after fifteen years, it's more of a rope or a cable than a mere thread -- that describes whatever conceptual continuity exists here. I think it does exist, even though it's only occasionally on the tip of my brain just what that common rope might turn out to be.
Venting is important, and we all have our own ways of expelling those ill humors that collect over time, the mental chaff that results from the daily friction of being engaged with the machine. Maybe we have to reach a certain age or stage in life to come to our individual realization that there is an "equilibrium of engagement," for lack of a better term, that differs for each of us, and that that equilibrium moves as we move through our lives and things happen, people come and go, careers change, etc.
Ultimately, though, while the personal metrics are customized, the principles are more or less universal, and we can all stand to eat a little bit healthier. What we get out of it in the long run is a better perspective on ourselves, and what our expectations are out of our own thoughts and deeds, rather than frantically worrying and reacting to everyone else's. I have to remind myself of those things periodically, and I bet I'm not the only one.
It's already a weird, interesting year, and it's only going to get more so. Stay thirsty, my friends.
Very nice piece. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I appreciate that!
ReplyDeleteAll of your essays that I have read since I discovered your blog have been very good. They have been well thought out and well written. Of course as is always going to be the case, there are some better than others and subject to subjective opinion as to the degree of comparative greatness.
ReplyDeleteAmong other bloggers I read on a regular basis are Ian Welsh and Jim Wright @ Stonekettle. I consider you to be in the same league with them and others I fail to mention. Should you decide to slow down or quit blogging I for one will miss your insight and writing.
I will also add that I have been surprised at the lack of or how few comments are left behind on your efforts.
I hope you will keep up your good work, but wish you all the best should you decide a different path.
Where I find myself getting snagged is that it is fulfilling to find perspectives on current events, and challenge myself to come up with observations that are interesting for me to write and for you to read.
ReplyDeleteAnd therein lies the rub. It reminds me of that cliché about how "you're the average of the five people you spend the most time around," or however it goes. In the social media environment, it's all too easy to fall in with a bad crowd. But at the same time, I don't want to entirely retreat to what I think of as the old bloggers' home, where senior citizens sit amongst their leatherbound copies of classic authors and sigh regretfully about the good old days. There are some good sites which focus almost entirely on poetry or literature, but sometimes, they can be, well, a little boring, a little fusty. I still feel too...curious, I suppose, about contemporary events to become a complete curmudgeon. Not in the sense of being a pundit commenting on political minutiae, but just in the Montaignean sense of "nothing human is alien to me." Social media, ancient writers, personal anecdotes, universal themes, the here and now, the way-back-when — they're all part of the stew. How can I mix them all together and make them palatable? That's my own ongoing project.
Plus, it's unfortunate, but true, that it's much, much easier to write in opposition to something, with anger or sarcasm, than it is to write something more positive. I hate to go more than a couple days without writing something, but what if my current reading material doesn't give me any inspiration? All I have to do is check social media and find someone saying something offensively stupid, and boom, instant post. Even that, I've come to accept, is fine as long as I can make it genuinely funny. But I don't want to write with bitter cynicism, because that feels almost as bad as eating junk food. Too many entertaining cynics, from H.L. Mencken to George Carlin, sometimes erred on the side of bitterness, in my opinion. I'd like to be able to write entertainingly about Springfield Nation while making clear that I'm not exempt from human nature myself, let alone give the impression that I have some grand improving scheme for anybody. I haven't read enough Tom Wolfe to have an opinion on whether he was too embittered or not, but I like his line about "The human comedy never runs out of material! It never lets you down!" To genuinely celebrate the human comedy — that would be the trick, I think.
So you've been taking care of your physical health too? My wife and I joined a gym last year and started working with a personal trainer/nutritionist, and man, how I wish I'd done it a long time ago. I'd always worked out on my own at home, partially due to frugality, partially due to a snobbish attitude of "I'm self-motivated enough to not need to belong to a gym!" But I finally decided I'd like to benefit from expert guidance as I age, and it's been absolutely great. And the nutrition expertise has been amazing. I highly recommend it to anyone.
A big fan: Thank you for the kind words, that means a lot. High praise indeed -- I enjoy Jim Wright's acerbic humor and righteous anger a great deal.
ReplyDeleteThe relative lack of volume in the comments section used to frustrate me a bit early on. But the people who do comment here are always thoughtful and supportive. Also, I have a small but deep-seated suspicion that I may be one of those writers where, if there were a ton of commenters, I might subconsciously start writing things to and for an "audience" that may or may not really even be there for that, or like it as much.
Thanks again for reading, and while it's likely that I'll close up shop at the end of the year, nothing's set in stone. Life moves pretty fast, and things can change.
Damian:
ReplyDeleteI'm beginning to think that here, my writing has become the average of the five things I write about the most. Obviously for anyone who likes writing about politics and current events, that doesn't always pencil out so well these days, because You Know Who has taken up all the oxygen (and slapped a label on it, poisoned it, and sold it for a profit to idiots). So the ratio gets skewed and you start to feel like you're running in place sometimes, covering well-trod ground that doesn't change.
But I review my recent posts periodically, and much of it still feels like it holds up well. It's like anything else, and I suspect it happens to most creative people -- you look at something you did a few months ago, and one day you think that's shit, and then you look at it again some time down the road, and it flows much better, the rhythm of the prose and the turns of phrase come back to you in the way you originally intended.
Conflict and opposition are certainly richer and more interesting to write about, and if you can make the whole thing more palatable with a pithy turn of phrase, or make someone laugh about the world o' crap in spite of themselves, so much the better. But you're right, there can be a "junk food" mentality to it sometimes. I like a good cheeseburger once in a while, but every day would obviously be deadly.
Mencken and Carlin did have an extra dose of bitterness, you're right, and sometimes it seemed like they had been playing a character before, but that character had taken over, à la Mother Night. The thing is, I actually do despair for the future of the country and the planet, and it is frustrating to watch people collectively shoot themselves in the foot over and over again, when they really don't have to. It doesn't have to be this way.
As my daughter becomes an adult and prepares to set out into this world, I worry about what kind of place she and her generation will inherit. In the end, all she can do is what I've told her to do from the start -- pay attention, and try to spot the humor and absurdity in the mess, as much as the stuff that repels or frightens you. People are funny, if you watch them for long enough, even terrible people. Every time. Don't let the bastards get you too far down.
I thought about introducing some of the personal creative projects (music, fiction, poetry, etc.) that I work on into the mix here, but that felt like it should be an "all or nothing" pursuit -- in other words, if I was going to write about that stuff or link to the project outcomes, it should be on a fresh slate where that's all that's going on. Mixing it in with weekly rundowns on the clowns and criminals wrecking this country would be a disservice to both.
My wife and I did look into a couple of local gyms at first, because it would be nice to have the coaching and guidance. But it's expensive, and we figured we could recoup that in a few months with the right equipment, and pushing each other on sticking with the nutrition and exercise. So far so good. Mostly I do bodyweight exercises, with some weightlifting to target certain areas.
The main thing is that after dropping 25 pounds so far, my back and knees and joints feel 100% better, I sleep better, and end up with more energy overall.
Always good to see you drop in for a spell.
I habitually click on your blog for a fresh entry, and am never disappointed. Regarding lack of comments; could be you have many reader/fans like myself who simply feel there's nothing to add. I have commented a few times, but mostly I find myself thinking "Yeah, what he said!".
ReplyDeleteAnonymous:
ReplyDeleteRegarding lack of comments; could be you have many reader/fans like myself who simply feel there's nothing to add.
Could be. I have heard that one many times from commenters over the years, so I believe that is a big factor in it. I can see from the hit counter that there are a lot of readers, and a lot of frequent, regular readers, so that's a good sign.
What I usually encourage people to do is to just spread the word, if they're finding things here that present any sort of valuable insight or perspective on things. To me, that's a lot.
I don't make any money doing this; it's not a side hustle or anything like that (though I'm certainly not opposed to that, and think it's awesome that some folks are able to make a living or supplemental income doing this sort of thing). More people reading and discussing these ideas is better, just on principle.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Thanks for one remarkable posting! I enjoyed reading this website; you are a great auther.I want to encourage that you continue your great post.
ReplyDeleteCheck here
Visit here
Additional info