Our Oldest Friend
Posted on | August 17, 2006 | No Comments
One purpose of this project is to chronicle the experiences and ideas that have come into my field of perception and stuck. Things that have made a home in my concept of self so interconnected that I can’t tell whether I changed because of them, or that they were so resonant in the first place because they reflected some part of myself I may not have ever known was there. But in any case, I want to highlight these things – and go out looking for new ones – because I think a) others may get something out of them and b) I think it may just lead me to a better understanding of myself and, hopefully, by extension, the rest of you out there who aren’t me. Like particle physics – I hope to understand the subject better by its path through the chamber and the effect of objects upon it.
But as with any creative project I have undertaken, I haven’t gotten very far before and I feel my momentum dropping away. Usually I attribute this to an inherent but hitherto unrecognized lack of interest in whatever I was doing: I didn’t like that play anyway, that story idea was awful, that nascent improv troupe was made up of the wrong group and besides, who needs one more improv troupe? And while I pondered the inherent paradox of my seeming inability to maintain interest in an endeavor whose sole characteristic was that it was made up of things that I am interested in, it hit me:
I’m afraid.
Why contribute to an already bloated and self-centered blogosphere? You have nothing interesting or novel to say. (And, paradoxically,) if you write anything good someone will steal it. You don’t know enough about any of the things you want to write about. Your parents will read it, and they will heap guilt on you for inadvertent comments that seem to condemn their parenting skills and worth as human beings. Ex-girlfriends will read it and will find in it confirmation of all the things that made them sick and tired of you. Smarter people will read it and mock you. Crazy people will read it and think you are a kindred spirit and will hunt you down. While you think you are reaching out and connecting to something bigger than yourself, you will be reaffirming at the foot of the Universe what a tiny, insignificant and limited speck you are.
And I recognized that voice that has plagued me any time I have had the urge to venture outside the well-worn paths of habit and convention.
Which got me thinking – if this is a chronicle of the things that profoundly affect me – which I think are linked some way to the fundamental stuff of our existence – I’m staring right in the face of the biggest one of all. The flip side, really, of everything else I want to talk about.
Ira Glass once talked about the tendency of all works toward mediocrity, and how achieving anything more than that takes such a “fucking act of will.” The mighty gravitational force that attracts these objets is Fear. Fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of being wrong. It all leads us, tempts us, deceives us with the cliché, the safe choice, the go-to bit.
And, I have to say – if I am going to posit what the things in this chronicle represent in the wider world – Fear is my Devil. I see fear at the root of everything wrong with the world. Wars and famine, bad movies and unfunny sitcoms and reality TV, the moribund torpor of poltical systems and political rhetoric, global climate change, sneering conservatives, shrieking liberals, and worn-out people who don’t vote.
And I’m not talking about big fear, like fear of a rocket hitting your house. Fear of things that will, by any estimation, end your existence is a good thing. I mean everyday fear. Routine fear. More like the stuff I talked about a minute ago: the same basic things that keep me from writing – fear of being singled out, fear of being alone in the world – is what drives people to make groups to solidify their sense of self, encourages them to draw lines around themselves based on race and creed and geography to keep some people away so that some other people can always be close, pushes them to use their logic to justify their illogical feelings. That’s where it starts, if you ask me.
And except in rare cases, whenever something novel or strange or unfamiliar threatens to happen, there it is again, pulling us back to the same old bullshit. Humanity’s Cosmic Cock-block.
So, here He is again, like some hyper-critical Ganesha, at the start of this new venture. Well, welcome back, you bastard. Now please go sit over there and try not to make too much noise.
Buy me a beer?Comments
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