I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
ALL ENCOMPASSING YEAR END POST.
2008 will go down as one of the bleakest, most frustrating years not merely on a personal level, but a societal level also. Culture truly became anemic, with movies and music twisting and turning unsure of where to go, thus settling into middle-of-the-road self awareness and bubblegum sensuality that's flavor has been chewed out a long time ago. We were left with a glut of forgettable meaningless bullshit on the market, which is already hurting from overrunning product and minimal disposable income on the part of the consumer. The economy finally pooped its pants, and while the fat bastards in charge were able to walk away with incalculable millions in government bail(hand)outs being cradled in their avarice-veined arms, we were the ones left gnawing at the flesh around our fingernails for lack of affordable sustenance.
On my end of the spectrum; stuff happened that i can't even mention because i keep getting told by everyone to keep my mouth shut on this thing. Not because they fear for my safety, but because they don't wanna look bad, and they don't want any trouble. Because people can dish it out, but they can't take it... because they can't stand to have the truth about themselves revealed to the world, because it is almost always less flattering than they anticipated. So they lash out... come at you with vague threats of a physical nature, or even go as far as to cost you your fucking job, robbing you on an income for most of the year because they are to chicken shit to face you (or themselves) for real. That's something that stuck out to me most this year; that people just can't deal with people on an individual or an intellectual level. They can't even deal with themselves, let alone others, let alone society, so they anesthetize themselves with I-Phones and Beer Pong and Guitar Hero and Tabloid Tales of Loss and Redemption.
I'm no different i suppose; Personally i found solace in foreign cinema (specifically the Existential Slashers coming out of France ie. Inside, Frontiers, Bizarre Asian Psycho-Sexual Gorefests, and one zany Russian by the name of Andrey Iskanov, whose Philosophy of a Knife is less a movie and a more a hyper-real nightmare factory) and submerging myself even further into underground sounds from the past and present (also predominately from other parts of the world)... but i also write out my grievances. i also pay attention. I also can deal with the fact that many people probably don't think very much of me. I learned this year that most people can't. Everyone seems to truly care what other people think about them, and unfortunately they are so insecure that when they discover that one person may not think they're the cat's ass, they freak.
it was disheartening and aggravating to watch everyone else just give in, just settling and even bowing out for the watered down arena rock stylings of bands whose relevancy and power has long since went the way of the dodo, for all-blow-no-show political figureheads, for a tween-centric Disney Channel version of reality that is leaving the youth of the nation a little more than ill-prepared for the horrors that lay ahead due in no small part to their myopic caregivers overzealous spending which ironically is in hopes of satisfying the unquenchable desires of their screaming post-infants. a cyclic chamber of terror that is ringing the souls from our bodies as if we were rags that just mopped the floor around the toilet after a post-coital forked piss stream.
That may be the biggest heartbreak in all of this; most of us stopped fighting. At a time when our outrage should have been able to peel the paint off the walls, we just took it up the ass, put our heads down, and buried it inside, unable to fathom how we could survive without our capricious employers, our ubiquitous techjunk, and other people's opinions to guide us in the direction we're "supposed" to go.
That sums up everything this year, don't it? We were too lost to know that we were lost. We were too frightened to admit we were afraid. We looked to each other and got even more turned around... more confused. We looked to politicians for change, ignorant of the fact that it's been the same 2 party system for all of our lives. We looked to movies and music for escapism, and came back frustrated when we realized this was a life we would never know. Super-Heroes aren't real (even the realest ones), Politicians change nothing, and Katy Perry will never be your girlfriend's girlfriend.
here's a post i made last year in Quotant Quoatables vol. 6
"Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night
Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.
Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.
- from Watchmen by Alan Moore.
Happy New Year. Here's Hoping."
i said it last year, so why not say it again? maybe we'll get it right this time.
Just Needed to Share.
PS: The best thing about this entire year? the one thing we can look at and say to ourselves "hmmm... maybe 2008 wasn't all bad"?
....SUPERJAIL.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment