Song title of the week

“All the Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (Will Realise the Minute They Die That They Were Suckers)” [Julian Cope]

writing for artopic.org

My first post about Portland art, etc. is up at Artopic!

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The Road

Went to see “The Road” with my friend K. last weekend. A matinee too. Kinda goes with the grimness of the film to enter in the day and emerge into the dark. And it may have been that first day it was ass-crackin’ cold. Though I found the book, and the film, slightly hopeful. Actually very hopeful. We had a good talk afterwards and, being both artists, K. and I, we at least understood that the grimness had a point and a precedent. (Like gladiators in Rome writing their names on the floor of the Coliseum with the blood dripping from the severed heads and limbs of the vanquished.)

In talking, I finally pinned down why I find “The Road” more hopeful and compelling than another book I read recently, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” which was incredibly depressing. (One aspect of the feeling it left me with is that there’s no solution to the so-called “existential questions” but to play frisbee.) “The Road” isn’t about the apocalypse and the fact that it takes place after the (again, so-called) apocalypse is even incidental. It’s about survival and society, specifically about living on the line between being human, i.e. social, and inhuman, i.e. getting in touch with your lizard brain. This distinction isn’t clear, especially given that the Man and Boy are threatened by a band of cannibals, who have obviously preserved a sort of society, even if only for mutual protection and pooling resources. (Which would be one of the two major concepts of society.)

It may be that a descent into inhumanity has caused the landscape in which the film takes place, which is ashen and infertile. This is never explained. And does it matter? No, because we live in a world that we’ve created and the exact cause of the failure of the book’s world is moot. This is the book’s great jumping-off point. Contrary to the way we face problems in the comfort of a working society, which is to talk them to death and act virtually not at all, the setting of “The Road” is one where talk will achieve nothing, where the Man has been reduced to surviving and thinking mostly survival-thoughts. The mental deadness of the fatigued, hungry, and cold pair is more bleak than the grey landscape. And so one of the strange things I realized later in the film is how much the boy lacks personality. He doesn’t laugh, he doesn’t talk much, he doesn’t have any stories to tell: he’s grown up, after all, in this landscape his whole life.

But the Man, as played by the always-superb Viggo Mortensen, refuses to give up his humanity. He’s ready to die at any moment rather than act inhumanly. (Granted, “human” is a tricky term, and his force of will doesn’t turn out to make him perfect.) It’s funny to know how artistic Mortensen is in real life (a poet, photographer, musician, and publisher) and to see him play a character whose mind has no place for that kind of creation, and who is even forced to chop up a piano for firewood.

Whereas, in “No Country For Old Men,” Chigurh was the essence of everything dark and irrational and brutal about the world embodied in a specific being, the landscape of “The Road” is sort of like Chigurh exploded outward. Instead of being faced with a figure to focus on, an enemy, the world has become the enemy. The Man and Boy are surrounded by beings and lands that are either indifferent or hostile.

So it might be, in McCarthy’s allegory, that the life well lived is basically the struggle to remain human. The pre-apocalyptic landscape of his other novels, like “The Crossing,” certainly isn’t much more forgiving than that of “The Road.” But is survival enough? Is the desire to remain human simply the need to preserve the edge that we’ve gained over animals through evolution? Is society itself anything else but a structure for human survival?

Some are unaware of their talents

This may be a re-post. Anyway, it bears repeating. My brother Win, who is not a poet, nor even a writer, entered a poetry contest. Very curious, I asked him what he’d written. To wit:

“Re: This is the poem I submitted.‏
From: Win Nelson (themindceasestoexistwhenthebrainstopsfunctioning@_______.com)
Sent: October 21, 2008 1:48:02 AM

I ate it.

I ate the whole damned thing.

Just like that I ate it.

Not fresh or sweet like a clementine.

Unhealthy.

It killed me a little bit.

Then I blew it out of my ass.

Just like that.”

The Stride of the Valkyries

Our new upstairs neighbor must be a shoe-tester or something.

If Isaac Newton couldn’t tell the difference between a chiliagon and a circle, neither can you.

Enough.

Haven’t we all had enough of hearing people spout bullshit? It’s time for people who have nothing constructive or rational to say to shut up. Starting with morons like Beck, Hannity, et al and–the people who are even worse–their followers, who go around parroting talk show soundbites that they cannot defend as arguments, because they are not in fact arguments but talking points that are meant to boost ratings which then sells more advertising for tv and radio stations. Enough with politely letting people talk shit in the name of free speech or democracy. Yes, everyone should be allowed to talk their shit, but when they are finished, these people should be told that what they are saying is nonsense. Especially when this nonsense, again, originates solely in the need to create and preserve power. That’s, ultimately, the problem and danger with the talking of bullshit, it’s not there to solve any problems or be part of a dialogue, it’s there to win someone an “argument”, to preserve a norm, or to satisfy the ego of the spouter.

Although bullshit speech is particularly obvious in politics, clearly it’s being practiced rampantly in the private sector. So please join me, starting today, in rejecting verbal power-plays by saying to people who are full of shit: “You’ve had your say. Now defend what you’re saying with your own reasons. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.”

Lyrics of the Week

“Round and round like hamburger
Layin’ in a splat.”

–Moby Grape

Genius?

For the 13,700th day in a row, I did not receive the MacArthur genius grant.