RUDIMENTS, pt. 610
(the long and the short of it)
So just imagine the distance
all of this made up, to me.
The new day of 1972 had
me erasing all of these
startling experiences I'd
just lived through. In the
city, and - in another
format - I had to make
anew yet another version
of myself that would sling
through all this 'Ruritania
hijinks' aspect of my 'new'
life. By God, it wasn't an
easy task. In between the
various portions of my
sundered life, there had
to be something I could
latch onto. 'Occam's Razor'
was a fairly well-known
philosophical assumption
about simpler solutions
being 'more likely to be
successful' than complex
ones. I was never even sure,
I admit, if I'd understood
that in any way, but intuitively
it seemed I was headed in the
opposite direction and fighting
it. In the years I'm speaking
of, as the 1960's passed into
oblivion (representing gross
simplicity) the 1970's had
entered into a new passage
of tired and groggy, and
absolute, deadness. Now, I
had hated the comic simplicity
of all that preceding hippie
stuff, and tried to refute the
partaking of it - all that
beads and body-color and
sandals crap. None of that
was ever for me. For some
reason, people had always
assumed it was me, and I
don't know how that ever
got started. But, on the other
hand, as all that died off,
things began getting all
complex and multi-layered.
Endless rock n' roll geeks,
for instance, delving deeper
into arty-bullshit rock music,
multi-layered infusions of
synthetic and techno sound,
long boring, crazed and
faux-classical solos and
passages - even jazz had
by this time started messing
with fusion. The 'simplicity'
of, say, 1968's or whatever
it, was John Wesley Harding
anti-bombast, peeled the skin
from people's faces, they were
so shocked. Everything had
somehow gotten adrift,
aimless, floating off on
man-made islands.
-
One of my friends from
art-school, he upped and quit.
Threw out all his books, and
just heaved them and said he
was done with reading forever.
He called reading deadening,
anti-human, and without any
productive value. All he
wished to do was go far away
and dig holes. Yep; shovels
and holes. Metaphorically,
I guess. You can't just go
around digging real holes
in people's property. That
was his reaction to the
advancing neo-complexity
of all the crap we were
getting into. Maybe he was
on to something; I never
knew, but it seemed annoyingly
wasteful to me, and I'd missed
out too on those books. The
creep. He's dead now anyhow.
His solution was pretty simple
too, I suppose. A gun. Nothing
too complicated about that.
I never got to that position; life
had never made me that intense
or depressed. I managed to
cope. One time a guy said to
me that of all the people he
knew, among our group, he
always thought I'd be the first
to go; by my own hand and
choice. I said, 'Hell no, I
want to see how this thing
ends up.' Besides, I was
probably just too chicken.
-
Sure, sometimes I was so lost
I couldn't even talk to my wife
and kid. They all seemed part
of another world. Kid-stuff. I
was never much for any of
that Dr. Seuss and Lorax crap.
Nor did I ever understand how
or why anyone would be.
The supposed blessed logic,
or lack of it, in a kid, maybe
that was part-possessed of that
childlike simplicity and charm
that was all supposed to be so
good. But it never was to me.
Kids were demanding. Kids
only saw one thing. And kids
were boring as hell. I'd be lost
in some over-serviced idea,
hardly able to talk or acknowledge,
some days for hours. I want to
say days, but it wouldn't be true.
Wordplay. Deep thoughts. Light
thoughts. Paradoxes. Puzzles.
You name it, I was there: 'Only
those of note go to high-toned
Eton.' That was a good one, but
how to you put that across to
some farm bumpkin who doesn't
know Eton from atone. I was
'askance at my stance.' That
was another one. 'SN is tin to
chemists in a snit.' That too was
one, but you had to know the
Periodic Table of the Elements
to get it. Yep. Sometimes I felt
like a dwarf in a suit of armor.
But, I could never figure, was
that simplicity, or complexity?
Which was I living? The artist's
life is a complicated thing. I
always thought, artistically, say,
that the farmer I worked farm
for, his wife Barbara, otherwise
fine looking, had a big ass. Just
too big, and it ruined everything.
Is that a simple observation? Or
a complex one? I didn't know, but
I knew enough not to discuss
it. Life was funny like that.
Simple or not, it's funny. One
time one of the visitors to our
house asked something about
how long cows should be milked.
I said, 'Oh about the same as
short cows; and that's the long
and short of it too.' It did then
seem simple enough to me.
-
It was always when the city folk,
not these country people, started
getting intense that everything
got complicated, with layers of
reason and logic eventually going
way past and subsuming the
original premise or idea, so that
they just began arguing in a way,
about arguing - as if they were
with one eye watching themselves
perform and being pleased by that.
You'd end up with like white, 'Jewy'
guys (that's their word, not mine),
defending the black power
movement; and they'd do that
by strenuously acting black,
but never realizing it came off
as the stupidest thing in the
world. Or, the other version of
this was, back in the days of the
'Sandinistas' and Nicaragua and
Bishop Ortega and all that junk,
these skinny university and college
cafe types strutting around like
Hispanic militants, crazed, intense
revolutionaries, like they just came
down from the hills where they'd
been holed up for 40 days with
nothing to eat or drink but banana
leaves and goat's milk. With a
machine gun, no less. To me, that
was complex. That was putting the
horse (or the 'big ass') of complication
before the cart of simplicity. I
guessed everyone had to live
by what their vision of living was.
Even I did it some, probably; but
my vision of me was always
changing and undergoing an
alteration. To hell with that 'wild,
mercury sound.' I was the mercury.
-
Which brings me back to the
Periodic Table of the Elements.
HG is Mercury. I used to love
those symbols, letters, etc, that
make up the Periodic Table,
and for many years I was
totally enraptured by it.
It was totally without any
literary or artistic merit; in
fact, in those respects it was
endlessly meaningless. Yet, I
was convinced it was the key,
or a key, to something. It was
magical. Some things were
metals. Some were gases.
Life itself was made up of all
those differences - as were
the parts of experience I'd
been going through. It all
seemed fair, and it all seemed
equal too - the simple and
the profound, and I (we) were
making it all as we gorged our
ways through it. Society, AND
Being, was just a big ball of flux.
-
I go around now, to places that
I drive to, upstate or far off, and I
find myself constantly searching,
for, and sometimes still finding,
my world; remnants and parts of
it, left behind. Not around here
presently, of course - that's all
been flubbed up and worked
over now. The chemists and
the list-makers are all in the
ascendancy here, and have
taken over. But farther out, in
those out-of-the-way places
I can still find, sections of my
old life and thought can be
located, turned over, found.
I just have to be open, and
attentive, and wise, about
the whole stupid mess of
things. What is, and what
isn't. Simple, or complex.
More on all that, next.
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