CultureHack

The Narcotic Blessing of Forgetfulness

An excerpt from a work in progress . . .

I see the shapes,
I remember from maps.
I see the shoreline.
I see the whitecaps.
A baseball diamond,
nice weather down there.
I see the school and the houses
where the kids are.
Places to park
by the factories and buildings.
Restaurants and bar
for later in the evening.
Then we come to the farmlands,
and the undeveloped areas.
And I have learned how
these things work together.
I see the parkway
that passes through them all.
And I have learned how
to look at these things and I say,
I wouldnt live there if you paid me.
I couldnt live like that, no siree!
--Talking Heads, "The Big Country "

Though Beatrice doesn’t live at the end of the world, this is beginning to seem a technicality. Because so far it feels like you’re driving through an early Springsteen album: leather, denim and baseball caps inside too many tricked-out cars. And the endless succession of skinny kids hanging around on every corner, like that one, with his upended bike, kneeling next to the ratcheting gears. The town exudes a civic pride in being a kind of Wayne’s World simulation, and this guarantees the wink you’ve been waiting for is never going to come: each one of these chop tops is aspirational instead of a John Waters reference, and you’ll need to think hard about that tonight, with scotch and a long journal entry . . . .

Something never thought about; something almost forgotten: The whir of a push mower and the play of sunlight on leaves that will be gone in three years’ time. Which makes you what? Seven years old? Or very close to it.

Your father's mower whirring in the front yard, under the canopy of limbs that will soon be diseased. But all the memories of him have been too-long packed away, and so you have to make do with impressions: He’s conjured up as short, with darkish hair; in a white tee shirt, inappropriate pants and the smudgy suggestion of work shoes. All of this Sears-Catalog neat; it’s almost conceptual clothing. Because you can’t recall if he sweats while working out there--or if he perspires at all. Which, it now becomes clear, is also the reason you’ve parted and combed his hair.

Another season’s whirring, across a less-shaded lawn, as the last elms in the neighborhood begin their rapid decline. The kitchen’s still there; it can still be imagined, complete with its strange dimensions: too narrow and too long and then all at once wide in a way you remember as momentary. It's where the savage intimacies of the family had most often been exchanged; collisions leaving many more scars than that dangerous drawer full of loose German knives. In the kitchen the family had been too distant and at the same time much too close; it had been a place where acceptance widened-out, only to narrow and close ranks again. The dining room, however, has become theoretical--as detail-free as the interchangeable dinners that had marked each holiday and celebration. Reduced to an essence half a lifetime later, this room’s revealed to have been the kitchen in a chandeliered Sunday Best; where weekday dictates and intolerance had been served up on good china. But its mislaid appearance has also faded these uneasy memories: the narcotic blessing of forgetfulness, though late, has at last arrived.

Still later, on a stifling night long before there’s any air-conditioning, a spray truck whirs past your tight-shut window, fogging yellow-lit neighborhood streets. This last-ditch rescue of the trees comes at the songbirds’ expense, because the insecticide kills many more robins than the number of elms it saves. The Midwest, however, is equal parts of momentum and determination--there once something is put into motion, no price seems too high to pay. Which isn’t surprising, because a comfortable rut is the most costly thing of all.

And then your father’s mower, blades glinting in the bright sun, trims around the new birch, avoiding the stakes. But the whirring this time is your childhood receding, leaving you earthbound, stranded and ten.

A Unified Theory of Me

In which the Author tentatively
integrates his distributed cyberself . . .

Clearly you can see that I am bleeding
Clearly you can see my clothes
are torn
Clearly this demands an explanation
Only I can offer none
My other life . . .

Analysis has failed to find a motive
Hypnotists have failed to beak
the code
Journalists are camped out on my doorstep
Perchance that I might slip and drop
the key
My other life . . .

I slip away to my other life
With no regret or remorse
Happy and gay in my other life
No need to wake me Monday morning
From my other life
--Lloyd Cole, "My Other Life "

In case it isn't noted, your attention is called to the new additions at the top of the right-hand sidebar. There you'll find both daily and occasional updates that feature material that (to me) doesn't necessarily fit into whatever it is this blog does. (Posts like this or maybe even this one.)

Through the interleaved coding ju-ju of RSS, HTML, Javascript and CSS, I'm dynamically dropping into CultureHack the five most recent items from my Twitter and Posterous manifestations. See the daily Twitter content (dubbed "Observations") as CultureHack Haiku-ed, and the less-frequent, more complex Posterous material (christened "Tangents") as CultureHack At Large.

I've also added "Playlist" to the right-hand sidebar, which links to my selection, programming and annotation of songs over at Blip.fm. This list of tunes will be growing--thus, if you're interested in my Other DJ Life, periodic visits to "Playlist" may be indicated.

Currently there remains artifacts of cross-posting between this blog and the Posterous account. This represents a period of testing to make sure this integrated scheme would actually work. Going forward, new and exclusive Posterous material will dynamically push the cross-posts off the sidebar and three distinct types of content will be displayed, each according to their own posting rhythms. At least that's my hope. If in practice creating a link-hub to Distributed Me proves not as intriguing as it initially appears, then I'll simply pull the plug and the song demos will once again take their place at the top of the sidebar.

This integration isn't really about visitor convenience or online brand management; I'm operating on a more intuitive level--feeling my way to something I can't quite articulate. Perhaps, since the material really does differ in each source, I'm hoping to create the cubistic 3-D of a Hockney polaroid montage, hoping that epigrammatic daily observations juxtaposed to less-frequent, Tumblr-esque notes, links and media and then parked next to the longer, improvisational essays here might create a kind of triangulation that could be interesting. Or not. We'll just have to see . . .

Update: I've also added "Bricolage" to the right-hand sidebar. It links to CultureHack, Tumbled--a digital commonplace book for stuff that catches my eye as I careen through the InterWebs.

The Nature of Nature

Being the Author's contemplation of the
anti-pastoral and reconsidered through-lines . . .

I saw you this morning.
You were moving so fast.
Can’t seem to loosen my grip
On the past.
And I miss you so much.
There’s no one in sight.
And we’re still making love
In My Secret Life.
I smile when I’m angry.
I cheat and I lie.
I do what I have to do
To get by.
But I know what is wrong,
And I know what is right.
And I’d die for the truth
In My Secret Life.
--Leonard Cohen, "In My Secret Life"

Do not say the moment was imagined;
Do not stoop to strategies like this.
--Leonard Cohen, "Alexandra Leaving"

Prior to settling into my recent season of doctors and campaigning for Obama, I was on extended holiday in the American Rocky Mountains. Being Otherwise Engaged on multiple fronts is the reason for the lack of posts to this blog and also accounts for a recent sense of intercut reality. The past few months have smudged together in interesting and surreal ways: impressions of myself holding a kind of meta clipboard containing hybrid medical/political/revision questions (Does your family have any history of internal bleeding while convincing uncommitted voters to go Democratic in a perhaps-too-confusing and staccato flashback sequence?). That sort of thing. The culmination of this oddly recombinant period was waking up in the recovery room demanding assurances that (a) Obama was still president-elect and (b) fucking Chapter Seven remained finalized . . .

But back to the vacation: It worked liked a charm--much-needed distance was inserted between me and the book (especially fucking Chapter Seven); despite appearances, I actually feel recharged, though slightly worse-for-wear.

And since I can already sense the uncomfortable shifting, you have my word that this isn’t the preamble to an endless sharing of holiday snaps (As you can see, this picture of the Rockies is slightly bluer and less hazy than the previous vista of mountains--but a lot grayer and more distant than the range in the next shot). Rather, I’d like to explore a variant of that Arthur Conan Doyle passage about a mute canine:

"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

"The dog did nothing in the night-time."

"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

In my case, the curious, attention-worthy incident is the non-inspirational nature of--er--nature: All the splendor had absolutely no affect on my writing. There was, of course, the obligatory amount of Wonder, Scale and Taking-of-Breath. As a civilian, I respond to nature (though I suspect in a more clinical way than most people), but as an artist, well, not so much. However, this still seems too cagey, so know this: In terms of art, I’m completely disinterested in the natural world.

With the exception of Turner, my appreciation of painted landscapes is entirely technical; minus my fascination with brushstrokes, composition and light, Monet haystacks would die in their amped-up attempts to Make Us Notice The Literal And Spiritual Benefits Of Rural Life In A Way That We Would Otherwise Entirely Miss (And So Thank You, Claude). I remain unmoved by landscapes in the same way I patiently wait for Springsteen songs about The Myriad Aspects of Blue-Collar Life That We Would Otherwise Entirely Miss (And So Thank You, Bruce) to finally end. In each instance, the very obvious has been made epically intense. And, because of the narrowing affect of the obviousness, it’s also about mind-numbing redundancy. (Pop Quiz 1: Explain how “Thunder Road” is in anyway different from”Born To Run” with the exception of tighter focus. Pop Quiz 2: Thematically differentiate three of Monet’s haystack paintings. See what I mean?)

My disinterest in Artistic Nature extends to other disciplines. In most cases, I’d rather saw off my leg with a dull butter knife than read pastoral poetry. Again, it’s the sheer predictability--despite all the passionate attempts to find the new, surprising and oddball detail-cum-angle. I get it--mainly because I got it: a long time ago, reading 400-year-old poetry. Nature is Big. I am Small. Natural Metaphors for What Is Churning In My Soul are somehow more resonant for being externalized (though no one really explains why nature-as-mirror is inherently better than self-examination). Nature is Authentic, whereas Civilization Is Artifice.

(Full disclosure: I have been a hypocritical enabler. At one point, I critiqued some pastoral poetry as a politely down-played but huge favor. What I still remember is the dumbfounded respect of the writer--as if it took special intelligence to discern that, yes, geologic time was being used as a metaphor for a relationship; that, um, Things Change Just Like In Nature. Whatever. My critique was in no way brain surgery, and yet I was deemed Yoda-like for the “insights.” However, the real reason for my carefully chosen, seemingly Zen-like advice had much more to do with me being too polite to explore the author’s psychological reasons for projecting personal feelings onto geological forces. The resulting deflection, disguise and avoidance produced the opposite of truth, which, I finally realized, had been the unconscious intent of the pieces.)

For me, nature-based art is inescapably hackneyed in terms of theme; the metaphoric natural world has been stripped-mined of meaning. Which places it in the same relationship to me as the Blues--so rigorously ritualized in both form and topic that any relatively recent stuff can only be significant in terms of bravura performance. (And, as I learned in my season critiquing pastoral poetry, talented nature poets are as rare as Glenn Gould caliber pianists--journeyman versification of cliched beaches/clouds/flocks of birds/rain/waving grass is as deadening as a cocktail-lounge piano player vamping his way through predictable pop standards.)

All this is a very circuitous way of saying that I inserted myself in the Rocky Mountains to get away from my writing, and not for inspiration. Artistically, I thrive in big cities and interstitial neighborhoods: Fringe-dwelling urban neurotics--my inescapable tribe--give me the ideas and energy that make the words flow.

In this Age of Palin, where “elitist” is the new sneering code word for being smart--dismissive of intelligence in the same way “faggot” denigrates gays-- Blue-Collar Authenticity is all the rage. And, being noble savagery with a new coat of political paint, Blue-Collar Authenticity is especially shrill if the Proudly Uninformed also happen to live near equally Authentic Nature (cough--Alaska--cough). My problem is that I don’t see authenticity in the leading of a patently “low-information” life, and the Rockies are no more or less authentic than Manhattan. (And with a scotch in me, I’ll probably confide that Manhattan is actually more impressive, being the product of human aspiration and design rather then entropy and tectonic plates.)

I also went on a walkabout through the mountains because I’ve been forcing myself to do things I otherwise wouldn’t: Ranked absolutely on my personal Things To Do Before I Die list, the Rockies don’t even figure in the top 100. Which made them a perfect choice because they were sufficiently outside both my desire and comfort zone to be perversely intriguing.

She Blind-Sided Me With Search Strings

Wherein the procrastinating Author discovers
a deeply disturbing piece of website design . . .

I'm not gonna feel
bad anymore
'cause I never have
to see you again;
I'm not gonna feel
sad anymore
'cause I never have
to see you again . . .

I'll tow you out to
the side of the road
and I'll shake you once
by the hand;
Wait 'til the bus comes
rumbling by
to scoop you up off
of my land . . .
--Robyn Hitchcock,
"Never Have To See You Again "

I have a first-cup-of-coffee tradition that I try to observe every morning: The search for a delaying tactic to keep me from entering Writing Mode; something that prevents me from wading waist-deep back into The Book while my caffeine level is optimized. Today I decided it was of utmost importance that iGoogle, Popurls and Inquisitor for Safari match each other--as in each service being the same shade of gray. Before any further manuscript revisions were possible, it suddenly seemed essential that a cross-service, monochromatic harmony had to be established. I figured this would buy me at least 30 minutes before I had to start channelling The Author--and I was right. (Since I've been writing the book, I've discovered in myself a hitherto unrealized-but-inspired talent for delaying tactics. Who knew? And so yes, matching my Google home page to both my news aggregator and expanded function search pop-up seemed whacked even to me--thrilling so, in fact; the sort of behavior that would cause friends to cross to the other side of the street on mere suspicion of the project.)

Anyway, after some geeky dicking about with the appearance preferences of Popurls, chromatic parity was established with Inquisitor. Which meant that I'd only need to find a complementary gray theme for Google and my sad little plan for temporary desktop domination would be realized. Mwah-ha-ha. Or something like that--whatever a procrastinating, bush-league Dr. Evil might say in similar circumstances. Thus I zipped up to the Google theme directories where I eventually settled on Chroma Pencil Lead as the gray that would make writing once again possible.

But that's not what this post is about; it's just writerly backstory. I already know I'm eccentric, so there's no need to solicit your feedback concerning my various tics. Rather, I want to share what I stumbled across during my latest instance of Putting Off Writing: A Sarah Palin theme for Google, the major portal to the world's assembled knowledge and opinion. Here, have a look:

My cat has become impressively adept at miming WTF? and in this case, I second that emotion. The massive cognitive dissonance of linking Palin (a) to knowledge of, well, any kind, and (b) to inherently divergent opinions is best conveyed by this simple thought experiment: Imagine Fred Flintstone and Dino as mascots for Cincinnati University's School of Paleontology. Like Gloria Foster said in The Matrix, 'it bakes your noodle . . .'

Full disclosure: I just took down my Obama lawn sign; I'd left it up for a full post-election week as a sort of motionless victory dance. However, my horror at the Palin Google theme has little to do with politics or partisanship. Palin, the the Far Right's Mean-Girl Chauncey Gardner, has declared war on The Smart--here carefully defined not as the opposite of Dumb, but, rather, as the rejection of Willful Ignorance. (Or, in the manner of "Low Information," that appalling, politically correct description of those who won't pull themselves away from television reality shows, let's simply say that Smart can seen as the state of being "Informed.") And so it follows that Smartness transcends political party.