10,408. RUDIMENTS, pt. 196

RUDIMENTS pt. 196

Making Cars

There are golden roads and

there are really crummy paths

and byways. I remember sometime

about 1967 or so, the early Grateful

Dead  -  back when they were still

a bit more hard and electric than

they ended up being known for -

had a tune called something about

'The Golden Road To Unlimited

Devotion.' Boy that phrase caught

me up good; I really loved it. The

rest of the album too  -  it ended

up representing something for me

that I could never really put my

finger on; a sort of hip reciprocity

of the times with San Francisco

psychedelia, and Hell's Angels

too, unwittingly. (They were

early on the 'house band' for

the Oakland or San Francisco

Hell's Angels, and, once

established, stayed that way,

previously having been Mother

McCree's Jug Band or something,

and then, just previous to being the

Dead, they were the Warlocks). I

didn't know any of that stuff at first,

and it wouldn't have mattered to me

anyway. Years later, when they hit

the big time really big, their music

changed to a sort of feminine version

of that whole scene  -  nothing I ever

really cared about, except for any of

20 bar bands that stayed with the

Dead tunes in all their incarnations.

I hung onto that album for a long

time, and listened. Running a close

second to that for me was Country

Joe and the Fish, and their really

cool debut album  -  'Electric Music

For the Mind and Body.' They had 

some grand music on there too. My

problem mostly was in only have

the most meager audio equipment 

to play it on  -  something akin to

a car radio but not in a car. All that

treble and high scratchiness, no 

depth, and little resonance. Oh 

well. Audio listening equipment 

back then was really pathetic  -  

these little 12 dollar (maybe) things 

with one speaker probably about 

the size of a silver dollar, built

into a plastic-crap body that folded

down on itself, kind of suitcase like, 

when not in use, and which was 

activated by picking up the toner 

arm, or needle arm, whatever it is. 

That was what started and stopped

things, and at the end of the LP

I don't think it returned automatically

either. A real mess. But that was my

introduction to this stuff. The stuff I

liked at the time. In that sort of 'rock' 

music nothing has to matter anyway  -

a sot of non-specific theme-ocray rules.

Road? Golden Road? Devotion?

Unlimited Devotion? What any of all

that was really supposed to mean I

never knew. It's still a lot like that

even in regular writing (or maybe

'irregular') writing; the idea being

suggestion more than specificity. It

was all bundled together in that time

with the entire alternative-culture

thing : swirls and swoosh, feeling

good and touching, and nothing

very specific at all. If you wanted

to be a right-winger and shoot these

people down all you had to do was

ask any one of them to 'specify' what

in the world it was that they were

trying to do or change. Pretty weird.

-

I spent some time thinking about work.

Not that I ever wanted to do it  -  (I did,

within  a few years, end up as a Monday

to Friday nine-to-fiver for a long time).

I hated work. I had a friend once whose

mission it was was to go through life

and not work. He detested it worse

than I did. It wasn't the work that I

disliked, it was all the stuff you had

to do along the way  -  all that talking

and bonding and pretending to care

and pretending to wish to advance. It

was all a crock, and whoever invented

that treadmill, and money too, I hope

they got shot dead real soon after. In

my way, I made it work, doing what 

I had to and keeping ahead of the 

boulder always ready to run me over

from behind. Some of the work I

got involved with was real dog-ass 

stupid stuff. Business printing and

deadline stuff, running back and

forth with things I had to get or 

bring or do to people I know 

admit to really detesting. I honestly

don't know how I did it; it was

painful for me, and quite dishonest 

too. It doesn't come until later in

life that you can tell other to go

schuck it and get lost.

-

Dancing and singing, if it occurs,

is supposed to come from within  -

singing joyfully maybe to oneself

about the sense of one's worth and

happiness. It requires no  concern

for others. Work is just the opposite

of that  -  singing and dancing FOR

others, in duress, as a form of wage

slavery. Valuing oneself with no

comparison to others, for the simple

sake of living freely, now becomes the

drudgery of doing what's told to you,

following order and routine and, lastly,

pretending. Singing and dancing FOR

others, and against your own better 

judgment. We find ourselves miserable

in ruthless competition, with contempt

and inequality of situations killing us.

Once I began writing, I became quite

conservative in my ways, for the love

of the familiar ordinariness of civilized

life and the hope of enjoying it longer.

-

I ended up figuring that if the world is

really in all the trouble it's said to be in,

with warming and pollution and poisons 

and toxins, we should all be allowed to

voluntarily do our part by being paid to

not work, somehow. To NOT be adding

to the general over-production mess. 

Who really needs 50 kinds of paper 

towels, and 70 different, and redundant, 

kinds of toothpaste and the rest. You 

tell me? Who needs stores 40 acres 

large from which to buy all this 

over-produced crap and then yell 

about, or be yelled at for, the waste 

and overproduction and consumption 

WE are then accused of? How twisted 

for profit is any of that? Gross National

Product is just that.

-

So I figured people should get paid

for volunteering out of the mess. And

then I found some philosopher or some

contemporary social critic or something, 

named Bernard Suits (yeah, real name).

His point was why should we all get so

engaged in doing evil? Some people are

just driven to that garbage, the making

of money, possessions, supposed prestige.

OK then, let them have it. The rest of us

should be allowed to opt out for the good

of the planet, if nothing else, and be lauded

for it. And then, he says, suppose material

abundance is achieved  - it can be stopped

at some point. We don't simply have to

continue doing more and more. Once 

there, even more people can opt out. And

then what? He says  -  'Worry, labor and

trouble form the lot of most men's life, but

if all their wishes got fulfilled, how would

men occupy their lives? What would the do

with their time?' His answer was astounding.

'Play. Games and sport. Play for its own sake.

If some people intrinsically valued doing the

things regarded as trades, such as house

building,they could do that, but done as sport,

for reasons of the game of the building

craft. In addition to hockey, baseball, tennis

and the rest, there would be the sports, also,

of business administration, jurisprudence,

philosophy, construction, science, motor

mechanics, and the rest, ad infinitum.'

-

The very fact that we can approvingly (or

at least I can) imagine this form of society

shows that the idea of a Utopia is still

intelligible to us. Forge on! Work at it!