philosophy

Oh man, for my drive up to Oregon I downloaded this Radio Open Source interview with Ken Burns by Chris Lydon, one of the great and stately warhorses of public-interest radio. I love listening to Chris do his crazy intellectual thing, and he consistently gets really interesting people to open up in interesting ways. His show is cool.

Anyway, Ken Burns talks about his WWII documentary “The War,” which I haven’t seen, and it’s really an insanely great conversation. They spend minimal time talking about process and other stuff, as Lydon being pushing him on the dangers of nostalgia and sentimentality regarding the horrors of war. In response Burns goes on an improvisational 3-minute solliloquy about the higher emotional states which defy explanation or logic, the necessity of such transcendent forces in art, and the fact that if you want to receive this blessing, you have to risk both abject failure as well as collapse into sentimentality and simple nostalgia. He also has a great — and vicious! — attack on the corrosive nature of irony, and calls the History Channel the Hitler Channel. Bravo.

The listening experience left me with my head buzzing about Art with a capital A, and a new respect for Mr. Burns. Worthy.

So Saturday night I got back up on that art horse (which I’ve only been talking about for eight or nine months, so that’s pretty good), and did a nice little talking piece at our christmas party talent show. Text is here. It was very well received, and even though it was far from my best work, it was up to my own standards and I was pleased. I haven’t shown off that side of myself too much since I moved out here, so it was nice to be able to let the artist out, to do something worthwhile with people’s attention.

It turned out to be a more preachin’ thing than I’d originally intended. That reading was latent in the verse and I’d just chosen not to rehearse it with that in mind, but the crowd responded on that wavelength, and our home in Westhaven was the original community church, so it seemed appropriate. It also made me realize the last time I did something performative I was officiating Frank and Laura’s wedding.

Maybe I should just go with it, create myself a guru preacher character. I like being coy and vulnerable too much to go full out Reverend with it, but at the same time the form doesn’t have to be so didactic, and it could really work for a lot of things.

To be honest, as an adult I’ve always equated art with religion. My training tended towards the ritual and having come up without a conventional religious framework, the process of creativity and the divinity of Really Good Performance/Product are what underpin any personal notions I have of mysticism and magic. It’s a human and social thing for me, the moments the acts evoke. It’s old-time; clap hands and all.

Anyway, it left me more exhausted than ever, but feeling high and mighty in my soul.

Here’s a great and lengthy quote from Air Guitar, an essay entitled Romancing the Lookey-Loos which starts off with a moment of Waylon Jennings on tour, and goes on to explore the difference between spectators and participants in Art.

It’s quite a brilliant essay, and which I think it cuts to the quick of what my shit is all about in both art and in politics:

[Spectators] were non-participants, people who did not live the life — people with no real passion for what was going on on. They were just looking. They paid their dollar at the door, but they contributed nothing to the occasion — afforded no confirmation or denial that you could work with or around or against.

With spectators, as Waylon put it, it’s a one-way deal, and in the whole idea was not to be one of them… Even so, [growing up] it wasn’t something we discussed of even though about, since the possibility of any of us spectating or being spectated was fairly remote. It is, however, something worth thinking about today, since, with the professionalization of the art world, and the dissolution of the underground cultures that once fed into it, the distinction between spectators and participants is dissolving as well.

This distinction is critical to the practice of art in a democracy, however, because spectators invariably align themselves with authority. They have neither the time nor the inclination to make decisions. They just love the winning side — the side with the chic building, the gaudy doctorates, and the star-studded cast. They seek out spectacles whose value is confirmed by the normative blessing of institutions and corporations. In these venues, they derive sanctioned pleasure or virtue from an accredited source, and this makes them feel secure, more a part of things. Participants on the other hand, do not like this feeling. They lose interest at the moment of accreditation, always assuming there is something better out there, something brighter and more desirable, something more in tune with their own agendas. And they maybe wrong, of course. The truth may indeed reside in the vision of full professors and corporate moguls, but true participants persist in not believing this. They continue looking.

Thus, while spectators must be lured, participants just appear, looking for that new thing — the thing they always wanted to see — or the old thing that might be seen anew — and having seen it, they seek to invest that thing with new value. They do this simply by showing up; they do it with their body language and casual conversation, with their written commentary, if they are so inclined, and their disposable income, if it falls to hand. Because participants, unlike spectators, do not covertly hate the things they desire. Participants want their views to prevail, so they lobby for the embodiment of what they lack.

He then goes on to talk about how this works specifically in art, that outside of the “hegemony of corporate and institutional consensus” culture flourishes wherever producers would rather “socialize their work among their peers, horizontally, at the risk of Daddy’s ire, than institutionalize it, vertically, in the hopes of Daddy’s largesse.”

Except…

In recent decades, however, changes in American institutional life have made this scenario exponentially more difficult to pursue. First, Richard Nixon’s expansion of the National Endowment for the Arts in the nineteen seventies has, over the years, effectively transformed the institutional art world into a government-regulated industry dedicated to maintaining a strict consensus of virtue. Second, the extended adolescence imposed on art students by lengthy tenures in graduate schools has effectively isolated them from the peers among whom they might discover their true, new constituencies. Third, the massive consequences of Frampton Comes Alive in the record industry and Star Wars in the movie industry have instituted a reign of consensus in the world of commercial entertainment, as well — as quest for a consensus of desire, dedicated to producing “blockbusters” that please everyone, every time.

Basically his point in this, and other, essays is that the institutionalization of culture, though corporate consolidation and/or the academy, has profound implications within a democracy. It’s a persuasive case, and I would argue that there are direct parallels with politics.

There was a time when I felt that the internet was really changing this, but lately I’m not so sure. It’s had an effect, but most of my wave has been absorbed and institutionalized. We’ve widened the circle of participation marginally, created a more diverse set of voices and sources of funding, etc, but have not appreciably changed the nature of the game.

The fact that this election cycle has been, with the exception of Ron Paul’s gadfly campaign, on more or less total lockdown, suggests that “the internet” in and of itself is not really going to be a change agent for American politics. This shouldn’t be a surprise to me, really. The web creates certain opportunities, but it doesn’t “do” anything on its own.

By contrast, in the realm of cultural production — music, tv, writing, etc — the internet (or as farsheed points out in the comments, people’s use of it) is most definitely continuing to drive major changes, and it may even start to crack up some of the Ivory Tower, which would be nice. The national political establishment, however, remains thusfar inured to the radically democratizing effects opportunities of the interwebs.

I’m feeling it. Well, actually, I’m totally fucking exhausted to the point of being goofball jittery, but sitting here on a borrowed bed after spending a week dancing along the edge of what I can really do as a person, I’m all strung out, a little hung over, but sizzlingly alive. It’s hard to articulate. Words fail, but General Tso’s Tofu provides.

Earlier this week I visited with Bill, my Pa, my step-father, father of my sister, who was around the house from when I was about three until I left home and did me a world of good in-between. He and my mom had a really interesting relationship, one which reached a romantic coda when I was a teenager (and was ergo semi-oblivious to this, or perhaps just too self-absorbed to care) but they stayed together as a logical family unit until my sister left for college.

He’s married now to a wonderful artist named Patti — hence the domain name — who’s lives most of her life out in DC, and who he (and my mom) have been friends with since they were wild and young. Yeah. Life is strange that way. I remember meeting Patti when I was a kid in Iowa when we were out there one summer on the farm, her and her then-husband Skip — who was part of the wild and young thing too — come out to visit and break the news that Skip had cancer. Skip died. We all went to his funeral in DC. They played The Circle Game.

Patti is dying now too. Same cause. All things considered I was impressed by how well she’s holding up, and Bill’s doing a stellar job of taking care of her, but it’s clear where things are going and it was bittersweet seeing her; made me feel sick to my stomach to say goodbye.

And it feels weird and advantage-taking to say it, but that very real, heavy, pressing reminder of just how finite our time on earth really is is why I’m feeling the way I do now, which frankly I’m enjoying. Contrast reveals, and the old words sing: Life Is Holy And Every Moment Precious. Thanks, Patti.

Also fueling the fire is that I’m reading Dave Hickey‘s Air Guitar, and I feel he’s a kindred spirit in the over-use of five-dollar words and full-hearted embrace of the Public. He made it ok, seems to be happy and shit. That’s always nice to see.

To sum up, post-postmodernism recognizes and embraces the relativity of all things, understands that meaning is born from a web of associations, and takes away from this not just the apple-pie wisdom that “life’s what you make it,” but also a critically empowering lesson in terms of how things get made. We are procedurally literate. We see and feel the romantic keen of Meaning, and fill ourselves with the knowledge of it’s construction like so much Holy Ghost Power.

Everything is a choice, so, in the words of Jimmy Carter, “Why Not The Best?“ There’s just no time for anything but Love, but Action, but Brotherhood, but Glory. Anything less is marking the days, waiting on revelation. Nothing ventured isn’t just nothing gained; it’s really a gigantic cosmic loss.

I go back and forth on the Zen question, about what can and can’t be actively done or achieved through intention and attachment, what you might call “direct action” in life. It’s tricky. As they say, when the student is ready the master will appear, and all the great things in life will come to you in unforced moments. In the words of my mother, the universe is not a tease — but you have to let yourself go to it as well.

You have to be ready, to be hungry, to be willing to take a chance, to give yourself permission to speak freely. You have to have faith. You have to embrace your shadow self. You have to keep on plugging away.

This is a struggle for me just like it is for every other poor confused soul who braves the world free of easy fictions and light on the self-delusion. We all long for the comfort of certain knowledge, are envious of those who appear confident and calm. I know well enough that other people see that in me, and in this I take some solace, because it lets me assume that everyone else is really just as uncertain under the hood too. But that doesn’t make any of this feel less urgent. Gotta make something happen. Gotta believe. Got to be Free.

It’s scary to be here — to feel my spirit opening, like I could fall in love again, like I could get my heart broken — but scary in a good way, the Allen Ginsburg way, the way that lets you know you’re really on to something.

To be honest I have no idea what that something is, or where all this is headed. It’s just getting started, I think, and I want to try and Go With It even if I’m not sure what the goal is. I feel like my thirst for long-term/big-picture clarity holds me back and away from the thrum of the present. It’s a cop out.

So I’ll go with the flow, with the excitement. It’s keeping me up at night. Ideas. Philosophies. Business plans and political schemes. Thoughts of women and dreams of paradise. This is why they pay me the big bucks.

Speaking of which, in the meantime there’s still a shit-ton of work to do, a lot of boxes to check and a lot of miles to travel. It’s the hard yards from here until the end of the year, and maybe even a little into January, but after that… I have a feeling that 2008 will be a Whole New Thing.

As a follow up to the previous post declaring my new tag — The New Cultural Movement — I’d like to outline some of the specific threads of opportunity that I see as being germane here. This is kind of internally remedial for me, but seems like a good exercise anyway, and probably helpful for others to get a sense of the scope of things.

• There is a broad general movement away from consumerism and towards Participatory Culture. This isn’t precisely new — it’s the source of punk, hip-hop, burning man, the diggers, the beats, and a whole lot of other contemporary cultural niches — but it is emerging as an real force, and sapping away the power of concentrated broadcast/consumer entities.
• Specifically, a lot of people are making compelling culture on a human scale, out of their own lives or targeted at an community audience. My “blogfather” hooked me with his market-leading take on the whole deal, but there are bazillions of others. You may have heard of LiveJournal; there’s plenty more where that came from. I even know some people.
• On the political side, there’s a still-progressing shift towards open grassroots organizations, and towards the left in general. Why, respectable people even have the temerity to stand up against imperialism these days.
• At the same time, we are all outlaws in the eyes of America, and I have the specific experience of living in an outlaw haven and running with quasi-underground connections when I travel. Street cred, you know?
• I’ve also recently blogged about the philosophical trendline from religion to philosophy to culture. That’s what I meant on my old site when I said “Art: my church.” The gospel is poetry, and the mic is open.
• Open-source is huge.
• And yet, as I observed on my trek across the land, people still live in pretty spiritually crushing situations. There’s a lot of anomie out there, a lot of energy locked up in the 31 flavors of status quo.
• And finally, the Big D is in the mail, the Red Dawn is on its way, etc. I don’t believe in appocalyptic thinking — just like conspiracy theories, they’re nothing but disempowering — but I do recognize the reality that real changes are coming. The debt-based economy isn’t sustainable, and macro-level environmental shifts are already under way. It’s not the end of the world, but we are going to have to deal with this stuff in our lifetimes.

All this to me adds up to the conclusion that the time is now — now while I’m flush with cash and connections and don’t have any kids to worry about — to start pushing through to the next level on this stuff, start actualizing the potentials, putting the theories into practice; pedal to the metal and rubber on the road, so to speak. If not now, when? If not us, who?

Pithy, yes, but very real questions.

Out last night watching some boxing on the pay per view with The Girth, then over to shoot a little pool at the ACME. The omnipresent question between the two of us is what the hell we’re doing with our lives as “careers” begin to take off but everything else stagnates and the world around us seems to veer inexorably toward the ditch. What does it take to get a little satisfaction?

Harkening back to my post on Maslow’s Pyramid of Human Needs, there’s something wired into me and most of my friends that drives us to want to help people out, to look outward with a problem-solving eye. There’s a kind of juice one gets from this that can’t be replicated any other way, the cheap and generally unprofitable thrill of Doin’ Right.

Mark’s hooked on this too, via Americorps. There might be more money in being an artisan handyman, building fences from special Japanese cedar boards for the neo-bohemian HC bourgeoisie, but at the end of the day he says it can’t touch the rush of helping a kid with a fucked up life steady his or her feet and move in a positive direction as a human being. Even though the latter pays less than minimum wage — Americorps workers get s “stipend” and instructions on applying for food stamps, something that I find extremely unjust — he’s back again for another tour of duty.

For my part, I don’t get this feeling too much from my work. Bootstrapping a business is kind of a cutthroat process, or at least one that requires a primary focus on self-interest. While I got a good charge out of starting the Drupal Dojo, and a healthy portion of our clients are do-gooders of one stripe or another, the main thing for the past 10 months has been figuring out how to pay the bills in a steady and dependable fashion.

While I expect more opportunities to pursue interesting things and passion-projects now that we’re over that initial hump, clearly I need to be looking beyond my work for my reason d’etre.

Public vs. Private vs. Pirate Utopia

The world can be a better place than it is. My various and sundry experiences with alternative cultures and festivals suggest that it is possible to live in dense communities without crime, that economies can flourish without exploitation, that the shit-work of society can be divided up and made meaningful and even rewarding, that human beings can be granted much more freedom as individuals without destroying society.

I usually think of the various semi-subterranean examples I’ve found as instances of Pirate Utopia — a concept I pull from William S. Burroughs with his ultra-dry jaded ex-junky eye, rather than the anarchist boosterism of Hakim Bay — which is something to celebrate and enjoy, but ultimately leaves me rather unsatisfied in my Velvet Revolutionary heart.

And this is because in almost every instance, Pirate Utopians espouse a philosophy which includes the liberation and uplift of all humanity, but in practice tend to be pretty conservative. They’re only really Pirates in the sense that they’re outlaws, and maybe have a parasitic relationship to the square world.

In spirit, these are often a kind of Private Utopia. I see a lot of energy expended protecting the scene from external interference — the kind that comes when you, you know, start messing with the outside world, convincing their children to run off and join the circus, etc — and the inevitable internal change that results from fresh folks joining, old folks leaving, and new power-centers emerging from within.

The logical counterpoint, some kind of Public Utopia is hard to conceive. It would be immediately subject to the Tragedy of the Commons, attracting a bunch of lamp-ray lowlifes looking to leach off the luxury. Can you have a velvet rope and still pretend you’re reaching out to all comers? I don’t quite know.

Sterling Fucking Newberry laid down three tests for any Great Social Idea to pass in a post I can’t find anymore, so I’ll just reiterate them here:

• Accessibility: Is your thing really open and accessible, or is it cloistered and elite. More open is more better.
• Sustainability: Can you operate under your own power or are you dependent on external resource infusions to keep rolling? In a perfect world, you get your power from the sun and don’t fuck with the carbon, water or nitrogen cycles. Closer to that is better.
• Scalability: Can everyone in the world do what you are doing? If so, you’ve got a good idea.

Nothing will ever be perfect on any, let alone all, of these axes. Like I said, they’re good vectors to test along.

For instance, no literally geographic community can be globally accessible or scalable, but it can have open borders, and if it scores will enough on the Sustainability model and doesn’t require fancy tricks or some special local resource, you could have a model that scales accessibly.

My interest in politics is influenced by this thinking too: I don’t really want to just have my nice community and nice house and so forth, I want a nice world. It’s certainly better than nothing, but I’m hardly satisfied by my bullshit health insurance. In very real ways, I don’t believe any of us are truly free unless all of us are along for the ride.

What’s the spiritual value of not having to refuse beggars every day on the street, of not having to read about war and genocide? One might move to a posh or remote enough place that panhandling isn’t an issue, and you can always ignore the news, but those are just some of the many tactics used in constructing Private Utopias. Boo, gated communities.

The third way, the model I mentioned above, calls to mind another Burroughs idea, the “cultural virus.” This seems to be part of what I’ve been up to for the past several years, trying to get some better contagions going, pushing participation and post-consumer culture, leading an open-source life with the implied hope of being an inspiration to someone at some point, maybe helping us all live a little better.

As I continue growing up in my own way, I feel the need to get more serious and organized and communitarian about that. I feel like preaching. I’m not going to settle down into a conventional middle-class track (as if that really exists anymore anyway), but what I’m headed towards as an alternative isn’t quite clear yet. Nobody ever said reinventing the American Dream would be easy.

I’ve been contemplating Abraham Maslow’s Pyramid of Human Needs a lot lately. He actually called it “the hierarchy of needs,” but I like the words Pyramid and Human more; better branding. In any event, it’s a really handy idea to have in your toolbox, one of those semi-obvious insights into human nature that’s easy to miss, or forget, but never gets old.

Basically, you start at the bottom with your fundamental Physiological needs, starting with the need to breathe, because if you can’t breathe or eat or perform certain biological functions, those things more or less take over your existence. That’s the bottom line, and most of us first-worlders have it covered, thank goodness. Direct manipulation through the withholding of food and water is rare in our lives.

After that you climb up to the level of Safety. If you don’t have a sense of security about yourself and the things you consider yours, be they material, familial, or whatever — if you’re afraid — you’re stuck with that, and you really can’t go much further as a human being. Safety is a psychological concept of course (real security is impossible; you can’t control rocks in space that might fall on your head or wipe out your species) but it’s important for this concept to make its way into your mind, however that happens for you.

For most of us, being in debt, especially “bad debt,” can stick us at this level. Sickness definitely pegs us here. Also, this is arguably the level on which a lot of politics operates; overt fear-mongering, appeals to anxieties about “them,” the specter of ruin, apocalypse, etc. Unfortunately, when an appeal to this psychological level works, it’s very potent.

Assuming you’re able to rise above the chains of fear, uncertainty and doubt, you reach the level of Social needs, summarized as:

• Friendship and belonging
• Sexual intimacy
• A supportive and communicative family

This is where most people, myself included, consistently run into problems. This is where a lot of human drama plays out, where you were most likely agonizingly stuck during adolescence. This is High School.

Now, it’s not like you need to check off those bullet points to have your Social needs met — hey! two out of three ain’t bad! — they’re just good succinct illustrations of what this level is all about. If you ain’t got love in your life, from your friends, from your family, from a lover, you ain’t got nothin’.

When you have your basic need to Belong and Love taken care of, you get into the real tricky shit: Esteem. Maslow made the novel observation that humans, being social creatures, need recognition and respect, and maybe most of all self-respect, in order to be fulfilled and truly happy. This is something that is often taken for granted rather than really fully considered.

I really like what’s written in Wikipedia on this section so I’ll just quote it:

There are two levels to Esteem needs. The lower of the levels relates to elements like fame, respect, and glory. The higher level is contingent to concepts like confidence, competence, and achievement. The lower level is generally considered less advanced and more external; it is dependent upon other people. Someone in this level needs to be reassured because of lower esteem. People with low esteem need respect from others. They may seek fame or glory, which again are dependent on others. However confidence, competence and achievement only need one person and everyone else is inconsequential to one’s own success. It may be noted, however, that many people with low self-esteem will not be able to improve their view of themselves simply by receiving fame, respect, and glory externally, but must first accept themselves internally.

This is where I feel most stuck at the moment, even moreso than on sex, even going on (tick tick tick) seven months without. I do miss sex, and sometimes I worry that my lack of urgency or activity in that realm is symptomatic of a wider wilting of the spirit, but the stuff that keeps me up at night is all about Achievement, work, self-worth, etc. We’ll get back to this.

Now, Maslow thought all these levels that we’ve passed through were basic, reductive, and could more or less only drag you down in the lack and want. Your task as a human being is to cover all these bases, overcome the multiplicity of issues inherent, slay your dragons and face your demons and take the final step to the top of the pyramid: Self-Actualization.

Self-Actualization is the level of human need that never ends. It is a growing, living, evolving thing, essentially the man’s answer to “what’s the point of life?” It is creativity, spiritual transcendence, true community service, grace and goodness. Basically, you live in order to be:

• Aware
• Honest
• Free
• Trusting

Maslow was popular in the 60’s, as you might guess — he also coined the term “peak experience,” which fits right in there — and like I said all this stuff is pretty damn obvious, but then again so is most religion or self-help. Don’t tell lies. Help a brother out. Be in love with yr life. I really do believe that this is what the worth of human existence boils down to.

The theory says that people who reach this level are often involved in solving problems in one way or another, often the problems of others, helping other people make their way up the pyramid. They have an internalized sense of morality, and having risen above the basic levels of need they find their joy and ecstasy in living out their principles.

Sounds good, don’t it? That’s the life.

Oh Geez! Look At My Navel!

Since this is my autobioblog, I’m going to go stare at my belly-button and delve into what all this means to me and my life.

I’ve more or less got the first two layers licked. I can survive, and there’s not much I really fear outside the normal existential shit. I have foundation level of confidence in my ability to live through whatever happens, and paranoia doesn’t get me; my person is secure.

At the third level, when I said “two out of three ain’t bad,” I was fudging a bit. I have a lot of good friends, true, and most of my family is fantastic, but there are needs here beyond romance that tug at me. My estrangement from my Father fits in here. He seems to think that communication is impossible, and while I try to take a light and long view of this — if I can manage to make babies before he dies, chances are he’ll come around — it’s a weight I carry.

The romance thing is also an issue, and for better or for worse women are, among other things, a signal to me. Messengers of fate; signs from the universe. Things aren’t bad in this realm, just slow. There is a sense of incompleteness. Something is supposed to happen here, and until it does I’ll be waiting. I don’t like waiting.

There’s also the long-running problem of finding a wider tribe beyond my little intentional community of friends and family, a broader cultural identity or whatever. I have a lot of facets to my life and I deal with a lot of different kind of people, but I don’t really feel like I belong with any of them. I don’t know that this will ever be resolved, and I don’t think it really has to, but it’s something that holds me back.

But perhaps really what I’m feeling there (and in other places) are my big challenges with the Esteem level. I like being ambitious, but I also recognize there are some jittery undercurrents to my drive for glory. I have serious problems with satisfaction. As Billionaire Tyrant Rupert Murdoch is portrayed as saying on The Simpsons, “It’s never enough!”

At this point my thinking starts to get a little loopy, or maybe spiraling. I start to think about scale, about how wide I set my focus. To be totally honest I’ll never be satisfied, because I look at the world and there’s just too much work to be done. There’s too much wrong to right. In my better moments when I rise above my loneliness and insecurity, start thinking with my whole brain and breathing with both lungs, nothing seems more important than getting more of my fellow monkeys up the Pyramid.

Shit’s fucked up out there, and the planet is too big for anyone to carry. I realize that I can’t literally save the world, but as soon as I start shrinking my scope — you’re just one man, scale it down a bit — the whole business becomes very unsatisfactory.

For instance, politics are very boring and depressing at the moment. There are no movements I believe in, save the broad awakening to humanity thanks to greatly enhanced global communication. There are a million causes worth fighting for, but no plans or organizations or leaders to line up behind that I find credible.

In response to this, my attitude becomes more self-centered. If I can’t save the world, I want to save myself, and my friends. But I don’t really believe the end of the world is coming, just a bunch of shitty shit shit and the royal screwjob (war, famine, pestilence and death) for a lot of poor folks I’ll probably never meet or even see on TV. The Red Dawn isn’t something I can really devote my life to, because as much as I like going up on a mountain and shooting guns, I don’t think the odds that my survival will depend on such things are very high. It’s nice to be ready, but I’m not going to retreat into the compound any time soon.

So then, what does “saving myself and my friends” mean? By default it seems to mean the acquisition of material and capital things. “You ain’t no kind of man until you own some land,” and all that jazz. But things are boring, and while I do enjoy being out of debt and can’t pretend I don’t covet shiny baubles, I distrust this covetousness. I hate it. Piling up numbers in some account literally does not get me out of bed in the morning, and the suit that grows around you, the slow and half-conscious slide into a bourgeois endgame, this stuff gives me nightmares.

Caught in this crux, doubt creeps into my heart. I feel I’m wasting my energy, my youth, my potential. Time is slipping away, and it’s almost a moral wrong: all that evil needs to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

Which of course knocks me right back down into the muck, dealing with my own reductive needs and vainglorious desires until I manage to climb back up and take another run at the summit. Lather rinse repeat.

Wither From Here?

People have told me often enough that I think too much. It’s probably true. If I didn’t run myself around like this, I’d probably be a happier and more productive member of society, but this is who I am, and I don’t fancy a lobotomy. I much prefer to talk and write my way all the way through, sometimes in public!

Stepping back, I wrote:

Basically, you live in order to be:

• Aware
• Honest
• Free
• Trusting

Those are good things to work on, and with them in mind when I let all my pretenses (defenses) drop, I feel something real. I feel the love I want to share. I feel the future I want to build. I feel the hope I want to give, the joy I want to bring, the adventures I want to have.

This is good. It feels a little scary, which is often a sign of truth. There’s an awful lot of life wound up inside me, so much that I get nervous about letting it out.

Rolling over the clouds, chasing the sun, looking back at the expanding crescent of the earth’s shadow in the sky behind, it hits me all over again.

I’m going to have to find my own way.

And the only way that works is if I’ve got the pride, ego, confidence, vision or whatever you want to call it to make it happen on my own terms. I spend a lot of time second-guessing myself and guarding against hubris — a well-known tragic flaw — but it’s too late at this point to hope that some ordained path will mystically arise. I’m not destined to fit into a “career track,” too independent (cocky) to go into apprenticeship, and I’m certainly not going to find some guru to hand me down my purpose on a silver platter. That much is clear by now.

My experience as a performer (and with a few other things) has given me a bedrock belief in my power to create moments of sublimity, to temporarily transcend the normal boundaries and limitations of humanity and make contact with the divine. It’s real, glorious even, but also ephemeral. You can’t live it, although you can do your damnedest live for it, by it, and through it. For better or for worse that’s how I roll; seeking the edge.

This past year and a half I’ve struggled with my rambling nature, trying to settle down in one way or another. It hasn’t really taken. I’ve learned a lot about myself and gotten into some really great things — and so I have no real regrets — but I’m coming to the conclusion that now is not the time for me to put down roots in the conventional sense, and indeed that “conventional sense” may simply not apply.

I’m not opposed stability per se. Good things last, and I’m a lover of quality, but reliability and routine have no appeal to me as ends. Security is a desire written into our DNA, but like a lot of those hardwired things (“I’ll fuck anything that moves!”) it’s irrational and insane. I like trust, which is related, but again I tend to find my way through to that on the top end — through quality and exceptionalism, not predictability. I don’t really trust that which is predictable; to be honest I relegate it to a lower order of consciousness.

Sometimes I worry that this is just me wrapping a semi-intellectual conceit around the old “live fast die young” rag, that once I lose my edge (or my hair) I’ll change my tune, and by then it’ll be too late (“There goes Koenig, a broken old man”). But I don’t think so. I’ve made my life what it is largely on my own initiative and pluck, and that’s come from my trusting my gut feelings. This is one of them.

So what does it mean? I’m going back on the road? Hardly. It’s a shift in perception more than anything else. Actually, it means taking on more responsibility, that taking my own bullshit somewhat more seriously, owning it. Once again I return to reclaim the dignity of my own experience.

I won’t reach my destiny by trying to pick a career or an industry or a scene, by being a businessman or an artist or a politician or an engineer or an outlaw. It won’t happen by finding the right place to settle, or even the right woman to settle down with either.

Indeed, I’m coming to believe (again) that I must eschew such narrow thinking. My ambition involves all these things and more, but reducing it to single constituent parts — much as it appeals to my inner project manager — pulls the life right out of the system. The whole is more than the sum, and a plan is just a list of things that don’t happen.

But as the general said, plans are useless, planning is essential.

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So the above was written on the plane ride back from NYC to SF, where I stayed for three days checking out the office and getting some things done with my partners. I drove home Thursday afternoon through some of the most intense balls-out springtime environments I’ve seen yet.

The vineyards are sprouting up green and the hills have yet to dry out and go golden. Flowers are everywhere, and as I rolled down out of the last batch of hills the coastal lowlands of Humboldt Bay literally reeked of organic tumult, some musky and specific mixture of chlorophyl and cow manure.

It brought back a flood of memories, this smell. Baseball in Iowa. Hiking up the hill on the Four Winds Commune. Driving up from Roseburg after a day trying to sell vacuum cleaners. The Oregon Country Fair. A pretty mixed bag, really, but all full of wonder.

Last night me and the Alaska Redman cleaned out my stash of Czech Sunshine, an idea that’s been in the works for a while, but got activated as a spur of the moment thing. We’ve got a little history here, going back to age 19 and three hits of blotter a piece shared with our old Waldorfian comrade Mr. Jacksaphone. It was a giddy teenage trip, but things went south in the wee hours and I spent the time from three to six AM holding old Red down on the floor so he wouldn’t do himself harm. Which is what friends are for.

Eight years later and on a lower dose we have a better time of it. No king-hell revelations or visits from another planet, but plenty of postmodern laughs — how many cheap pieces of glass do I have to give you to get this fire back? — and a chance to blow out some mental cobwebs and get another perspective on things.

The best idea we came up with was to put forward the notion of The Nothing (the villainous force from The Neverending Story) as being behind all manner of creeping corporate evil. Kids getting lost in My Little Pony fractals. “When we retire, Clara and I are going to take trips like this all the time.” Vote Nothing in 2008!

In the morning we have a nice chat, again around coming of age issues, the end of childhood, the notion of family, careers, locations, communities. It sometimes seems and impossible task, getting it all together. I’m no closer to a grand plan or vision, but tired as I may be I’ve got plenty of hope.

One of the things I do of late when I come back to NYC is see women I used to be involved with. I’m a big believer in maintaining connections, especially the ones that have meant a lot, and it’s been a point of pride for me that I’m friendly with virtually all my lovers and girlfriends.

Life in the Woods is more romantically lonely (lots more) than my urban days have been, so I really enjoy these dinner dates, remembering what it was like. I’ve no real agenda in mind, but it does wonders for my psyche to sit down with a beautiful girl and have a good conversation and realize that I’m still a likable guy. My day-to-day doesn’t offer me much evidence of this — again, speaking in a romantic context — and my self-confidence is fragile enough that after spending enough time without positive feedback I begin to regress.

So last night I was having a great chat with this tall, enterprising, quick-witted beauty at the still-excellent Great Jones Cafe, and the topic of nostalgia comes up; my saw being that it feels depressingly premature to be looking back like that at the tender age of 27. She has a really great insight: the devilish thing isn’t reminiscing for “the old times” as it’s inevitable and arguably proper to cherish your own personal history, and anyway if you want to do the things you used to do, the odds are you can do them again. That’s just a question of will. The real bugger is missing the person you used to be.

This has all sorts of rather deep implications, not least of which is that your attitude or outlook or “aura” deeply affect your experience of life. In imperceptible but (I believe) quite powerful ways this affects how other human beings react to you, which in itself affects your attitude. Lather, rinse, repeat. There are a million cliché phrases to describe this phenomena, but in spite of that it is a very real thing. And itsn’t it distressing to realize that you’ve lost that old energy, and you don’t know where or how it went?

The question resonates with me, and it seems to be at the heart of what I’m struggling with lately. There’s a kind of enthusiasm, optimism, excitement, and most of all a visceral abandon to the adventure of life which I feel has drained away over the past three or four years. Even as I rail against institutional conservatism and risk-averse behavior, I find myself growing ever more mindful and cautious and skeptical.

I’m struggling. The most important thing is to stop struggling. Part of this is a natural outcome of maturity and experience, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I do really feel like there’s a part of me that’s slipping away.

And it’s a valuable part. Even the planning aspect of my mind, the portion driving this change, recognizes this. I can logically see that this change in attitude is not only reducing my sense of sizzling in-the-moment happiness, but also closing doors. As per the above, this slow bleed of enthusiasm and spontaneity, the “loss of my starry-eyes,” has a detrimental effect on my future life chances.

Typically there’s a lengthy gap for me between intellectual recognition of a problem and any sort of resolution or change in experience. Thought and action are not easily bridged. On the other hand, this isn’t the first time I’ve had this realization, and odds are it won’t be the last. Round and round and round we go.

So, to sum up, I’m confronting this challenge — as one definite grown-up put it to me recently — of “growing up in my own way.” Many of the lovers I talk with will mention a Peter Pan-esque quality to my personality and attitude; sometimes ruefully or with scorn, but more often wistfully and with warmth. It’s an attractive and infectious thing, refusing to bow to the demands of the square world, living on ones own terms. It’s a part of my energetic attitudinal complex that I think accounts for a lot of my lucky breaks. Even as I mature and begin thinking for the bigger-picture and long term, moving on from the life of a rambler, I don’t want to lose that.

Easier said than done. That’s for damn sure.

After my dinner and a drink I rode the good old L-train into Williamsburg to meet up with some of my Brooklyn friends, as well as my moving-to-NYC sister who was in town, at Pete’s Candy Store. I love that place, and it’s maintained it’s charm over the years.

Sitting at the next table over from me and A-Stock are a quartet of good-looking girls. Younger, too much makeup for my liking, etc, but still quite fetching, and dressed to kill. One of them seemed to fancy me (or maybe I had something really awful stuck in my teeth) and was giving me the eye.

It was a good illustrative moment, because my response was to sort of uncomfortably duck and look the other way. I can’t even bring myself to flirt. There are plenty of rationalizations — I was waiting for my friends to arrive; I’m not really so excited about random hook-ups anyway; etc — but the more true answer was that I had, in my own mind, no way of reacting to the situation and reciprocating her apparent interest. And what’s the fucking harm in flirting? It would have probably made me feel good. An earlier incarnation of me wouldn’t have been so stilted, but to the current me that door is closed.

This little moment doesn’t actually bother me the day after, but as I said it’s a good example. Visceral abandon to the adventure of life is how most of the great things that have happened to me have happened, and it’s something I find harder and harder to get into these days. This is especially pointed with matters of the opposite sex — my biggest gripe about my current state-of-life; blah blah blah — but this hesitancy increasingly creeps into other areas: my work, my politics, even my writing. It must be stopped.

So indeed. In about a month I’ll be turning 28. No longer a young man, perhaps, but still a man who is young. We shall see if this turns itself around.