Scenes last. Shared memories are powerful enticements to keep on keeping on. I’d say Dylan was co-opted long before Carter got to him. It’s not that important. Singer/songwriters are journalists and if they report honestly, if they are fair witnesses, they’ve done their job. They don’t need to be on the front lines and they surely don’t want to be bait to increase the crowd of innocents at a riot.
If they get wealthy and famous, they get to play that same dangerous game of survival all such must. I’ve seen the A-listers who have to watch every conversation, investigate every contact, go insular because the edge of the crowd always has a lot of desperate well intentioned but it ain’t happening wannabes and at least one or two lost whackos who might just hurt somebody.
It’s a fragile life and not just a little risky.
I looked at my neighborhood riding in from church with my daughter and wife, looked at the nice middle class houses new and brick, the beautiful country scenery, the neighbors waving and I breathed a deep satisfaction knowing I have achieved the real merit badge of the family man: I’ve provided a good life for them and to this point, they have not disappointed me.
It’s rare. It’s good. It’s real. Praise be.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine
Props to Simon St Laurent for passing this along. I recommend this site for anyone who needs a shot of fake schadenfreude.
Though I've never been hip or a hipster, lately I've begun to reflect on the fact I've spent most of my life naively and blissfully unaware of the extraordinarily large percentage of things I've admired, believed or followed that turned out to be fake. It seems to me that a creeping awareness of this was part of the early Sixties kick to the collective head that was quickly put to sleep by the market's astute filling of the void with new fakesters saying all the sayings that made us feel collective about our insights, thus faking us out once again.
I wonder how long any culture can tolerate being awake and aware of it's own state of fraudulent flatulence. We learned lucid dreaming only to realize that lucid wakefulness is really very painful. We self-medicate with purchasing power and will break any moral code, any promise made, any self-assurance of our own coherent being to increase our power to purchase another dose of cultural homeopathy, quack grunt control.
As Paul Simon sang, "a big bright green pleasure machine".
Though I've never been hip or a hipster, lately I've begun to reflect on the fact I've spent most of my life naively and blissfully unaware of the extraordinarily large percentage of things I've admired, believed or followed that turned out to be fake. It seems to me that a creeping awareness of this was part of the early Sixties kick to the collective head that was quickly put to sleep by the market's astute filling of the void with new fakesters saying all the sayings that made us feel collective about our insights, thus faking us out once again.
I wonder how long any culture can tolerate being awake and aware of it's own state of fraudulent flatulence. We learned lucid dreaming only to realize that lucid wakefulness is really very painful. We self-medicate with purchasing power and will break any moral code, any promise made, any self-assurance of our own coherent being to increase our power to purchase another dose of cultural homeopathy, quack grunt control.
As Paul Simon sang, "a big bright green pleasure machine".
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