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Religion and Politics

10/29/2020

So, one morning I woke up and realized I had lost interest in most everything. And it was the most enlightening moment of my life. I hope I never go back. The truth is I feel it's impossible to go back. I wouldn't recognize myself there mainly because my 'Self' was covered in distraction and impression management. And if I did go back and were to remove all that I would find no self there at all. And that is the greatest of all fears and the thing to be avoided at all costs. Hence the fascination of Everyman with distractions and impression management. However, the reason I lost interest is due to the realization of no-self anyway. It's like all the running around was for the sake of running around. No, it's not "like" that. That's how it was, how it is, how it will be.

Of course that doesn't make sense, right? And it's not supposed to--unless it does. And if it does then you get it. If you don't get it, that's OK too. It's perfectly fine to write this all off as the ramblings of a madman. That fits perfectly within what I'm saying.

The thing is, all the passion and drive over such seemingly important things as religion, politics, sports, news, and weather are only just that much more of the dog chasing his tail. The real trouble starts when the damn thing actually catches it.

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Waiting

10/24/2020

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I sit and read on a Saturday night, alone. My eyes gathering in the words of a madman written nearly sixty years ago. In the background, the Rolling Stones play the soundtrack of my life--also some sixty-odd years. One of the songs announces that time doesn't wait for us. As I hear this, I read Kerouac's thoughts as he sits alone in a fire tower on Desolation Peak dreaming of being in the company of others, getting drunk with friends, eating out and bumming around. Which is nothing more or less than daydreams because he is, as noted, stuck in a fire tower, alone.

I am reminded of military assignments where time seemed to drag and all I could think of was what I would do once I got back to the world. I know the feeling Jack is describing. I also know the existential truth that Mick is carrying on about in the background. We all know these things and COVID has made them all the more cogent. Being alone has the same effect. As we are forced to deal with our temporal restraints and physical restrictions, we accordingly come face-to-face with the limits of our mental creations and physical distractions. Wherever we are is where we are doing whatever it is we are doing, even if it's nothing. The option to engage in distractions and entertainment is not on the table.

As I have noted before, I don't think this is all bad. This is an opportunity for growth, perhaps a blessing even. We just need to read between the lines and breathe.

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Time

10/15/2020

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In the mid-sixties, Jack Kerouac foretold "the ghostly day when industrial America shall be abandoned and left to rust in one long Sunday Afternoon of oblivion (Desolation Angels, pp34)." It has been obvious for some time that day has long arrived. Oh, there's still an industrial America, it's just not the one we grew up with, not the one that laid all the post WWII foundations of prosperity and growth that we have only tossed aside like empty soda cans along pre-interstate surface roads before polluting was thing. No, the industrial America of this day is a corporate monster fed and maintained with what should have been worker pensions and pride of workmanship, but instead is bottom-lines and gentrified gambling. The rust is there for all to see, the deterioration not so much in falling beams and cracking foundations, but in no foundations whatsoever and growth beyond anything any so-called beams could ever contain.

To paraphrase Jim Dandy Mangrum, who crudely paraphrased Nietzsche, who was likely paraphrasing some apocrypha: by striving to become stronger, we ended up being the monster. We seem to always find a way to soil our nest, whether that nest is our government, our industries, or our literal nest, the planet. And then we either ignore it or blame it on someone else. In the meantime, we have lost touch with a definition of work that isn't pejorative. There are few left who understand, really understand, craftsmanship, customer service, service with a smile, hell, service period. So what then?

To not be the monster means to either slay the monster or to live where the monster doesn't. And slaying the monster only makes us yet another monster of a different mind. But perhaps we can live without the monster right here in the monster's midst. Maybe we can just ignore the damn thing and carry on. I feel sure the monster is right clever, its traps are well-set and hidden in plain sight. I propose we tell the monster to go to hell, that we live like it was 1963 and all that is missing is the sunrise, or ice cream. At least we can enjoy the ride.

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Listen

10/14/2020

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The proper definition of apocalypse is that of an unveiling, a disclosure or revelation of great knowledge. There are those who might call our current pandemic as an apocalypse so as to blow it out of proportion, as if to say it is the beginning of the end. And maybe it is. Either way, I feel certain we can see it as an unveiling, or at least a major part of an unveiling.

We are discovering that we maybe we don't need all the distractions, all the various covers we use to define ourselves, all the senseless activity that often serves as nothing more than a vehicle for the burning of hours and days in order that we aren't left face-to-face with our true selves. We are instead finding something that has been here all along--emptiness, the Void in all it's vacuous reality.

They are saying there's no going back to 'normal', whatever that means. I suppose there are those whose lives haven't been altered at all, but I doubt they are many. As for myself, the further we get from normal the less I miss it. I am finding something personal in the loneliness, something familiar in the fact of time, something reassuring in the uncertainty. I have to say, this is the strangest time I have ever encountered.

I have a feeling that we, or at least some of us, will actually progress in the seeming regression. I think time to sort things out, to re-prioritize, to scuttle what no longer serves us and remember, and indeed again live, simpler lives is truly a blessing in the midst of suffering and upheaval.

I don't mean to downplay the severity of the situation or to ignore the very real pain and suffering it causes. I am only acknowledging other aspects of this situation. I think some of these changes are long overdue but would have occurred with or without COVID. This just happens to be the catalyst, the ignition of unveiling so to speak. Something in all of this is speaking to us. Listen

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In the Land of Guitar Gods

10/8/2020

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So, just the other day, Eddie Van Halen died. I was never a big fan of the band, outside of a couple of albums, but I really appreciated EVH. In fact, I don't think I know any serious fan of rock and roll from my generation (1970s) who didn't.

I can still remember being a senior in High School, 1978, and a drummer friend of mine asked me if I had heard of Van Halen, as his band was doing their version of an old Kinks song. At that time I hadn't. So I bought the first album and was quite impressed. They were for a short period of time (that first album, actually) a part of the new wave of late-70s hard rock/metal, along with AC-DC, Motorhead, The Scorpions, etc... But beyond that, there just wasn't any music at that time that sounded like "Atomic Punk", "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love", and of course, "Eruption"--Oh My God, Garth.

Over time they left their metal roots and fulfilled the destiny of all or most LA bands, bright lights, swimming pools and movie stars, rather than hot rods and punk decadence. In my opinion they became another 80s pop band, albeit with an awesome guitarist. Over the years they did return a couple of times to those blazing roots, notably the "Mean Street" and "Diver Down" albums, at least to some degree. But I have always thought they would have been a completely different band had they followed in the style of that first album, but alas... I suppose that was not what they wanted, and they were awfully successful anyway.

In the meantime, Eddie was one of the few real innovators of rock guitar. Nobody sounded like that before he came along, and no one has really topped him since. I give him all the credit he deserves and appreciate being alive in his era. If you never have, or even if it's been a while, take a listen--a real listen--to that first album. Listen to it in light of it's place in history. 1978 was a change year for rock and roll. People were losing interest in the music that had defined the generation, with the exception of the above noted behind the scenes new metal bands. Van halen abandoned that track, but this album is steeped in it. It is awesome and unique in history, that of rock and roll in general and Van Halen in particular. RIP, EVH.

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