RUDIMENTS, pt. 19
Making Cars
Well then, I guess, the dust-off comes.
I always wanted to use that as an opening
line, for something. And I just did. Things
such as that come winging through my mind
at any hour. I did used to try and figure where
things like that came from, when I was young,
and most people, instead of just tending to
laugh it off and just say accept it, no matter,
be glad, as I did, they'd instead get all contentious
about it being a gift of the muse (what the heck is
a muse?). At first I didn't know. At 12, say. Then,
with a little comrade-less studying, I find out
that amuse, amusing, and amusement too all
come from the root of 'muse' - which is also
something you do, as a verb, when you think
about, or consider, something. And then, go to
find out a muse is one of the 9 goddesses
in Greek mythology who 'preside' over the
arts and sciences. Daughters of Zeus and
somebody. (All that Greek mythology material
always mixed me all up). But it all gets too
suspicious too quickly because, as Westerners
all these years later, we pay no mind whatsoever
to any of that stuff and we just laugh it all off
thinking we lead and can lead better lives by far
than any of those people ever did, mainly because
we have TV and cars and communication and a
Society that fosters.....well, I don't know what it
fosters. Maybe it just fosters Foster's, which is I
think an Australian beer. But, before I get too
amusing let me think that over.
Let me 'muse' on it.
-
When I was growing up I had to make my
own humor because everyone else was so
deadly serious about everything. They made it
all so serious for no reason except - as I surmised
- when your life is really crummy I guess the best
thing to do is take it serious - not to increase the
pain but to alleviate it. At least then the 'feeling'
of being caught up into something gathers you in,
gives you a sense of active participation. Which
is actually too the complete opposite of the reality.
I could never tell anyone that because I'd get slapped
down for being an idiot and not being part of the
program. Which I never intended to be anyway.
One of my first friends, as a young adult, let's call
it, was someone who just laughed at everything. By
that - as maybe as belittling and facetious as it may
seem - it lent a grand sense of absurdity to everything
that I realized I'd been missing all that time. Once that
missing ingredient as located, my whole life became
a whole lot better. I'd want here to say it all became
'amusing' but now that brings in again that whole
other subject I just went over. Greek Gods. Greek
Mythology.
-
If you come to the conclusion that life is finite,
what do you do? Or, on the other hand, if you
come to the conclusion that life is unending and
spacious and wide-open, what do you do then?
One of these ways keeps to all the rules (I'd think),
and the other way takes exception to all of them.
I never knew the difference, but I knew I was,
for sure, a rule-breaker. Twister. Ignorer. I was
Absurdity itself. And now look at me. All I
know is that I never have seen any reports of
mass-murderers and/or crazy killers who were
just crack-up funny or absurd. It's all that deadly
seriousness that whacks them out.When I first
went to New York, it was to get out, to break fast
the chains which held me, to find and make sense
out of an absurd-at-base life which just wasn't
being addressed anywhere I saw. Once I got there,
lo and behold, I learned that Absurdity, in and of
itself, was an entire school of thought and art and
being that had long ago been well-addressed. Red
Skelton, laughing at his own jokes? Who did he think
he was? And the audience, roaring with laughter more
than the usual, was just as much laughing at him
laughing at himself while delivering the punch-line
to them. Occasionally someone like Lenny Bruce
would be performing somewhere - the Bottom Line
maybe, the Kettle O'Fish, wherever, and he'd be
angry, crazy angry. People quickly got scared of
that stuff, and once they got over the fact of him
NOT being funny, the anger became the attraction.
Who the hell else was 'angry' in 1965? Not too many
others went there. Bill Cosby, his stage shtick then
was a routine called 'Why Is There Air?' Ok, ha ha,
funny. It was an attempt at boisterous, black-boy
reminiscent humor, but after ten minutes it was just
boring. Boring because all it ever aimed towards
was normalcy and acceptance. He just wanted to be
laughed at as a 'cute comedian guy,' and no more.
No trickle of anger down his leg. Meanwhile, at
lunch counters and in Selma and such places,
compatriots are being hosed and shot and killed
and lynched, chopped and buried, while Bill
Cosby is just 'funning' his ass off. That's where
the early/mid 60's fell flat and died. It was
killed by fear, and there were but a few who
braved the peril of going past that.
-
My whole life had been fear. All that seminary
stuff, and all the peddled religion, it was all
fear. The entire basis of any of that was the idea
of rank and privilege, accepting what others say,
following orders and dictates. Which is the same
as the military; which is why the Jesuits were
called god's Storm-Troopers, or whatever the
word was. Zealots. Crazed maniacs in the
service of something which had been made
out to be way larger then they were. It wasn't.
As soon as I hit the streets of New York it
dawned on me what God was. God was small,
and humble. God was smaller than Mankind,
and willing to accept betrayal, and forgiving
of it. There wasn't any pride involved. It was
Man who was the problem - entertaining
thoughts of greatness and might; unforgiving,
war-like, mad-crazed with lust and power, in
an enslavement to the devil and to lucre, to
false gain and money. The happiness I saw
came from the happiness I saw on the small
faces of the poor and the humble, the broken
or the indigent. Certainly NOT the indignant.
I realized I could be on my way to breaking
the back of Pride, by being nothing. Now
that was a comical paradox indeed!
No comments:
Post a Comment