It was with some amusement/delight that I saw some internet-eer recently refer to Dream Theater as the musical equivalent of DFW... I don't think the comparison is especially apt. For one, the guys in Dream Theater are a lot less afraid of occasionally coming across as cheesy, I think (a virtue we should probably all aspire to). but the mood is similar, at least for me. And the Twelve-step Suite is strongly reminiscent of the AA arc in Infinite Jest (my favorite part). Was listening to "Repentance" off of Systematic Chaos last night while building my Imperial rogue a new house in Skyrim: Hearthfire and talking with someone (a friend? I dunno...time will tell).
Sometimes you've got to be wrong
Learn the hard way
Just when you're through hanging on
You're saved
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development
We will be amazed before we are halfway through.
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
We will comprehend the word serenity, and we will know peace
No matter how far down the scale we have gone.
We will see how our experience can benefit others.
That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
Self-seeking will slip away.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us.
We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not.
They have been fulfilled amongst others
Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
We will always be true to our principles.
You're only as sick as your secrets
But the truth shall set you free.
The truth is the truth.
That's all you can do is live with it.
My dark secret with Infinite Jest is that I loved best the parts with bit character Ken Erdedy. That's not got much to do with the above song, actually, besides the fact that he went to rehab in the book... but, come on: Ken. Erdedy. Therefore anything is justified. Because. He is the "linchpin and plinth" of my emotional connection to the book, though it seemed like it was supposed to be Don Gately serving that role. I just wanted more Ken and Kate. And that's sooo DFW, isn't it, to make up something exquisitely beautiful, give you a glimpse, and then practically hide it under a thousand bushel baskets, really make you work for your tiny glint of candlelight. Maybe to prove how bad you really wanted it.
People are weird like that.
I chased off a friend of mine repeatedly, year after year. I don't think it's a good idea for us to hang out together, this hurts too much, etc. etc. You know--the sick-cycle dance of the battle-weary-but-hungering. We all do it, on some count or another, so march your moral superiority over to the docks and drown it, okay? He didn't believe I wanted him gone, so he kept coming 'round anyhow. Maybe I didn't really want him gone. Sometimes I'd flutter a little closer, but always spooking and fast-returning to the getting-gone talk and I'd vanish for months or years at a time. There were some good reasons. He wasn't always a trustworthy person, for instance. And other times he was completely honest but the things he confessed to me were pretty scary. And he liked running from reality into a haze of self-destructive comforts, mostly of the pharmaceutical variety, which I found heartbreakingly annoying. (cuz I'd never myself do anything analogous to that, right? ...cue the wink and knowing sigh and such) But those probably weren't the only reasons, eh?
So. In 2010 he finally gave up and obeyed me, stopped trying. And in spite of the fact that I brought it on myself times a million... and even though he tried for 14 years (we met as kids over a shared love of Nintendo) and only gave up for two.... and walked away saying things like "I will never be a father now, as I can't imagine anybody else as the mother of my children" and then he kept that promise...
There's nonetheless this tiny (I can't stress how very tiny), psychotic (not really) voice inside me that occasionally (I mean hardly ever) pipes up to say:
"See? See? You were unlovable after all."
That voice has a shit-eating grin, like the Cheshire cat, by the way. You will probably recognize it. Pretty sure everybody has one. Um. Right...?
I feel the need to add here that I am a completely normal and sane-seeming person who pays bills on time and doesn't have public meltdowns and is always polite to sales clerks and helps children with homework and is indistinguishable on the sidewalk from any other well-adjusted individual.
Ken Erdedy:
She'd promised to come at one certain time, and it was past that time. Finally he gave in and called her number, using just audio, and it rang several times, and he was afraid of how much time he was taking tying up the line and he got her audio answering device, the message had a snatch of ironic pop music and her voice and a male voice together saying we'll call you back, and the 'we' made them sound like a couple, the man was a handsome black man who was in law school, she designed sets, and he didn't leave a message because he didn't want her to know how much now he felt like he needed it. He had been very casual about the whole thing....
Now just one of the insect's antennae was protruding from the hole in the girder. It protruded, but it did not move. He had had to buy soda, ice cream, a Pepperidge Farm frozen chocolate cake, and four cans of canned chocolate frosting to be eaten with a large spoon. He'd had to log an order to rent film cartridges from the InterLace entertainment outlet. He'd had to buy antacids for the discomfort that eating all he would eat would cause him late at night. He'd had to buy a new bong, because each time he finished what simply had to be his last bulk-quantity of marijuana he decided that that was it, he was through, he didn't even like it anymore, this was it, no more hiding, no more imposing on his colleagues and putting different messages on his answering device and moving his car away from his condominium and closing his windows and curtains and blinds and living in quick vectors between his bedroom's InterLace teleputer's films and his refrigerator and his toilet, and he would take the bong he'd used and throw it away wrapped in several plastic shopping bags….
…everything was ready to be shut down. Once the woman who said she'd come had come, he would finally shut the whole system down. It occurred to him that he would disappear into a hole in a girder inside him that supported something else inside him. He was unsure what the thing inside him was and was unprepared to commit himself to the course of action that would be required to explore the question. It was now almost three hours past the time when the woman said she would come.
…he would force himself to do it anyway… even if he didn't want it. Even if it started making him dizzy and ill. He would use discipline and persistence and will and make the whole experience so unpleasant, so debased and debauched and unpleasant, that his behavior would be henceforth modified, he'd never even want to do it again because the memory of the insane four days to come would be so firmly, terrible emblazoned in his memory. He'd cure himself by excess.
Y'know, I'm not an addict in the conventional sense. I've never even touched a bong or anything else of the kind. And I can easily go without drinking until 11 am or so most days (kidding, kidding). I don't lower the curtains and hide for anything anymore. None of my addictions or foibles are recognized and societally approved to qualify as life-ruining, and there aren't any clubs to join for support with it. Nor could I really stomach anymore a club that makes you believe in a higher power (that's part of the problem, see).
But, daaaang, I have grown tired of making the same mistakes. Tired of the Sisyphean load itself as well, but also tired of the way I'm always veering off to the left with it after hundreds of not-entirely-dissimilar goes at this goddamn hill. I am tired of rounding the bend and seeing that same, old fucking tree again, that same old rust-stained crack in the stone wall. I want Don Gately to feed me some goddamn brownies and then take a bullet for me so I can live again.
Sometimes I think we are all dry drunks, excepting the drunkards.
(((You should read this all in a very blasé tone, btw. I am actually feeling as tranquil as a bodhisattva, even if I've not got the wisdom of one. People always think you're mad or something when you vent like this, even if you're really just rolling your eyes and faintly smiling. I am rolling my eyes and faintly smiling, goddamnit.)))
But, anyhow, there's no Don Jesus Fucking Christ Gately.
 |
| I actually prefer the Marilyn Manson video. |
I keep returning to Franny and Zooey for moments like these (it's practically a part of the repeating scenery, after the bit with the tree and the crack in the wall)... the part at the end where Zooey has been caught trying to impersonate their brother Buddy, and then goes on to impart the wisdom of their older brother Seymour instead (who of course has previously blown his brains out in another story, because that's what all our real modern sages do, while meanwhile folks like the Dalai Lama and Joyce Meyers take tea with people like Karl Rove or Alduin the World Destroyer and then proclaim everyone to be equally swell and non-disappointing which is so obviously untrue as to be laughable--and that should be a very, very dark laugh indeed), while trying to comfort his sister, who in reaction to finding herself on a shitty fucking planet has been having a breakdown, focusing all her rage and disappointment into the monomaniacal desire to become a perfect reciter of the Jesus Prayer.
(Could you parse all that? No? Work harder for it, then.)
Anyway, I started bitching one night before the broadcast. Seymour’d told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn’t going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn’t see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again—all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don’t think I missed more than just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and—I don’t know. Anyway, it seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on the air. It made sense...
...I’ll tell you a terrible secret—Are you listening to me? There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady... Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that goddam secret yet? And don’t you know—listen to me, now—don’t you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It’s Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.
Or maybe this bit:
Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew--knew--that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?
Of course, Salinger, who produced that, died an explosively cranky old loner, obsessed with the minds and vaginas of underage girls. So...
So.
Great job, old man. Real inspiring. I mean, from the grave, you're making me into a better absurdist right now.
Franny took in her breath slightly but continued to hold the phone to her ear. A dial tone, of course, followed the formal break in the connection. She appeared to find it extraordinarily beautiful to listen to, rather as if it were the best possible substitute for the primordial silence itself. But she seemed to know, too, when to stop listening to it, as if all of what little or much wisdom there is in the world were suddenly hers. When she had replaced the phone, she seemed to know just what to do next, too. She cleared away the smoking things, then drew back the cotton bedspread from the bed she had been sitting on, took off her slippers, and got into the bed. For some minutes, before she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, she just lay quiet, smiling at the ceiling.
Have a nice day, ya fellow morons. :-) Live it out.
<3
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