Time for a reset. Our new digital compact is as follows: I will type whatever pops into my head, and you are free to ignore it.
True, this is actually the same as the previous compact, except sometimes I forget it, which becomes wearying on my part. This is because I begin to imagine 1) that I have an audience, and 2) that I must somehow satisfy the expectations of this audience. The first is untrue, the second impossible. Still, from time to time I must rediscover the obvious.
By the way, I used to have more of an audience, and the audience used to grow at a measurable rate. I wonder if this flatlining has something to do with those google algorithms we hear so much about -- the ones that bury conservative opinions under a sea of correct ones?
I doubt it. Rather, I have to believe that if I were more popular, I'd only be less popular. People can only take so much. Or to be precise, there are only so many people who can take so much of this, whatever it is. You'll see: most of you will give up before this post finds its way to the end, and I don't blame you.
Which reminds me. President Trump has even some Democrats marveling at his superhuman level of energy as we approach Tuesday's singularity. How does he do it? How can a 74 year old man fly to four or five major campaign events and fire up the crowds, when Joe Biden can barely shuffle to the mailbox, nor would he be capable of conversing with the mailman without a teleprompter. How does Trump do it?
I know how. It takes a great deal of energy to pretend to be someone and something one is not. President Trump expends zero energy on that. People call it "vulgarity," but it's actually quite the opposite. For vulgarity, in the words of the Aphorist, consists of pretending to be what we are not.
Say what you want about the president, but he never pretends to be someone he isn't, whereas nearly all skank & foul politicians -- not to mention journalists, academics, and "artists" -- never stop pretending to be what they aren't. It's why most Republican politicians only pretend to be conservative, when they really crave to be accepted by the Right People, i.e., fellow vulgarians.
President Trump is like your host, in the sense that he just says whatever pops into his head, the difference being that lots of people truly love what he says. He is the most transparent president ever. Imagine what it would feel like to be totally spontaneous and to be loved for it. It would be like pouring out a kind of energy, and the energy coming back to you multiplied by a factor of 10 or 25 or 50,000. Bracing!
Most people have to fake it in order to appear likable, and this takes a great deal of energy. The pretense must be exhausting for someone as repellant as, say, Kamala Harris, or Obama. Now, there is a vulgar man. Imagine pretending to be unusually intelligent, articulate, a statesman, a literary man, when none of these are remotely true.
Going back to the president, the spontaneous adulation must resemble what it felt like to be Elvis or the Beatles. The remarkable thing about early "rock" (the reason I put it in scare quotes is that Elvis, or Jerry Lee, or Bo Diddley, weren't trying to fit into some preconceived genre or satisfy any existing audience) is that its practitioners weren't consciously manipulating anyone, nor were they imitating some cultural- or corporate-approved fashion.
Rather, they were spontaneously expressing something from deep within, and the public (equally spontaneously) loved it -- not just in America or the UK, but all over the world. This is true multiculturalism, in that it speaks to all cultures (as opposed to the bogus multiculturalism that pretends we should all be moved by Guatemalan lesbian poetry or infrahuman urban graffiti).
Eventually the art form becomes self-conscious and therefore cut off from the archetypal nonlocal energies that animated it, which is what contributes to its gradual death. Which goes back to the blog. Rest assured: I will never try to please my readers. Nor will I ever pretend to be something I'm not, including scholar, expert, academic, theologian, or writer. Just a blogger, which is more than I ever dreamed.
Success is a trap, isn't it? Few musicians can survive it with their artistry intact. It's not that one can't be popular and artistic, only that one must work hard to ignore the former unless it reflects an appreciation for the latter. The Beatles were the quintessential examples of this. (Others who overcame their own successful formulas include Van Morrison, Miles Davis, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Scott Walker, and not many more I can think of.)
I know, I know: okay boomer. That's not what I mean. I'm not talking about nostalgia. Rather, how, up to that time -- 1965 -- if one were lucky enough to stumble upon a successful musical recipe, one did not f*ck with the formula. This is precisely what the insufferable Mike Love said to poor Brian Wilson upon returning home from a tour and hearing the innovative tracks for Pet Sounds: Don't f*ck with the formula, Brian! No wonder he went crazy.
Here's the formula: even if you're an 80 year old self-beclowning parody, never stop singing about high school, surfing, cars, and teenage chicks, so long as it brings in the cash. It's only cynical in the sense that pop music is always cynical, because it's consciously designed to appeal to the mob. It's a cash grab. That's why it exists.
No one imagined Louis Armstrong was producing art in 1927, which is one of the reasons why it is art. No one, least of all Elvis, imagined on July 5, 1954, that That's All Right was a timeless classic. For that matter, it didn't occur to Ray Charles that he was inventing soul music on November 18, 1954, with I Got a Woman.
That was a lengthy prelude. I had wanted to clear my desk in anticipation of Tuesday's election, which will clear off everyone's desk, like it or not. As they say, you can accept your fate or be dragged there anyway, kicking and screaming. You know, amor fati. Doesn't mean you have to love it.
At any rate, I do believe Tuesday -- Tiu being the ancient Germanic God of war, but that's just a coincidence -- will be Cosmo-Historical, and that's no exaggeration. But I'm just a guerrilla blogger, so what do I know?
Petey, on the other hand, spontaneously knows (in the usual manner of discarnate beings) a great deal, and he assures me that this is no ordinary affair. He can peek behind the veil and under the rug, and he insists that it will be catastrophic. In the best sense of the word.
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