Rise

PiL is going to be in Atlantic City within the next two months and I'm torn over whether it's worth the effort to see Mr. Lydon in person. I don't like Rise, which is the only PiL song I've ever heard, but I also don't dislike it. Of course I won't see them, Atlantic City is so far away and the tickets will be expensive. Still, it would be something to etch my eyes into the ranks of Mr. Lydon's live audience. Especially after an eighteen-year hiatus. No, the tickets will be too expensive.

The Buzzcocks play here, too, halfway through May, and they're probably a better show. Speaking of, the Psychedelic Furs are playing at the Cube in the coming weeks. It's really a tiny little venue for such a reputable act and I'm not sure how the show is going to play out. The Cube may actually be in for it this time. I'm more worried that they won't let me in after I get off of work, I suspect security will be pretty tight. We'll just have to walk a block or so more to get to another bar...

Baseball season started again, let's go, let's go. Phillies are up two games and down one, the sons of bitches. It's only the Nationals!

I want to write something smart or insightful now, something inspired, to get away from the dumb problems that affect my life, the same problems you have, and give somebody a real reason to check this page every few days. That's what we all want, though, isn't it? Validation...

In class last term, The Philosophy of Sex and Love, one of the concepts that we discussed that I've become quite taken by is the idea of existential crisis, call it Soble's Existential Crisis; the idea that we are more than comfortably aware of how fragile our mortality is becoming. We live day-to-day, sure, but in the shadow of this naggy little feeling somewhere in our head that the present is tainted by the terminal of the future. That's one thing I've really come to hate about college, is how irrelevant the process seems to be becoming, and how expensive it's finally going to be. It's an STD.

But, about the terminal of the future. Of course, this has really always been a problem with the human condition, but the technology of our age has done two things to complicate how we console ourselves each and every one, both mentally and emotionally. Hence, a short list of generalized solutions to cope with EXISTENTIAL ANGST. A thousand years ago, with the golden age of human civilization swept well under a thick rug of strict monotheism, certain widespread mortal crises like, I dunno, Feudalism, and the Plague, were most simply countered theocratically, which is why all of the art from the time is such a drag. Religion was one self-definition that made the mortal coil tolerable. I'd say that the Military was another, which explains a lot arbitrary war decisions made at the time--seriously, the Crusades?

Of course, in the last three hundred years the Enlightenment has made short work of spirituality, and now it takes a certain mentality to put so much unemaciated faith into a singular, greater power. For some people, religion still works.

One modern complication on the crisis of Existential Angst is the lack of any relative manifestation. Plague is plague: you're surrounded by it, your friends and family are falling to it, and either you are or you aren't. You rely on your God to spare you or hightail it away to somewhere else, likely following a trail of enlistment papers, assuming your government and culture consider you of a proper genealogy to fight. Since the fifties, we haven't been able to keep such a close watch on the things that threaten to end our lives HERE and NOW: the Bomb, particularly, but AIDS too, remain distant and/or microscopic. An exception, maybe, is the FOX news network.

Another complication is the future we don't really seem to have. Between Soylent Green and Idiocracy there are a number of imaginatively stark portrayals of a time-to-be where ignorance and inactivity have pigeonholed the human race into a bleak, meaningless existence. Soble cited Rachel Carson's work, which ignited a race of environmental activists who were just as irritating then as they are now. Of course, they're right in what they do, and we ignore them because we simply don't enjoy being reminded of how irresponsible we're being. And, we don't need to worry about the future now because people years from now will have plenty of time to do it then, and all the more need. The American Forefathers, as they were drafting the Constitution, decided to sidestep the issue of Slavey and Slave Ownership--we all know how cleanly and nonconfrontationally the deciding generation handled that. Philosophers Stone and Parker treat the idea well in their chapter on "Goobacks".

Essentially, we wander about our days waiting for an unexpected nuclear attack to completely annihilate life as we know it, so we don't worry so much about the future, which is also shaping up to suck pretty royally. We want a shoulder to cry on, but the consolatory methods of religion and militarism have become archaic compared to the accessibility of what's available NOW: Drugs and Sex. And, these feel much better compared to the flagellations of the former. Thank you, '67. But, drugs and sex render irresponsible followers (read: most of them) quite useless, for reasons that should be pretty clear.

In class we also discussed Love as a reaction to Existential Angst and this of course made all kinds of sense. The discussion is deep, complicated, and philosophical, and can be tied up on one end as the pursuit of immortality. There are a lot of different ends, of course.

Immortality is achieved, most literally, in the conception of offspring, which carry your blood through the generations. For some Lovers this is not a biologically viable option, but the Greeks were creative: they endorsed art for just the occasion.

I'm reading Please Kill Me, an oral history of the World's most misunderstood Pop movement, and Ron Asheton, the recently-deceased Stooge, quite accurately sums up the Artist's condition: he's a lazy son-of-a-bitch who doesn't want to do anything. Of course, he's got to make his way through the world, which he does, like all successful artists, by convincing every body else that his contributions possess meaning. Meaning which deserves financial reward, naturally.

*

This post is scatterbrained and loaded. In the last month I've been home, done this and that. I'm flirting dangerously with my school status. I want to quit, but know damned well if I do that I'll regret it sometime in the next two to twenty years.

But, bitching about my life when I want to be taken seriously is no way to convince the rest of you that my contributions possess meaning, is it? I'm facing my own Existential Crisis, though--To be or not to be--

I remember this exchange every time I don't want to want direction, it's a few of my favorite lines ever written:

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where –" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"– so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Just keep walking, I guess.

V'had loads of great dreams, so those will be up here pretty soon. Let's start with that.