Here's the next page from my book of 700 Drawing Prompts. (The previous page was posted on Patriots Day.) (In the U.S.A., every day is Patriots Day.) The prompt for this latest photo-realistic oil-painting was "Boombox".
Dear diary,
It’s Xmas Eve, 2018. Last night we watched Michael Moore’s latest movie Fahrenheit 11/9. It feels funny, cuz all the previous Moore movies were revelations to me: they taught me so many things that I never knew — but this latest one, I could have made it myself; in fact, if I had made my own documentary about the same events that Moore covers, it would have taught Mr. Moore a thing or two. I’m not kidding: I think that, at the moment, I actually know more than Michael Moore about U.S. politics.
And that’s a doubly funny thing to say, because I loathe politics. (I only love poetry.) But despite being unable to stand gross dull mind-numbing U.S. politics, I’m obsessed with this realm. For the same reason that a beast in the zoo becomes obsessed with its cage: Look at that lock – I think I’ve figured out it how it works; and the guard wears a key on his belt; and these bars are welded here & here & here, so if you pry THIS part back a few millimeters, I could use a short stick to hook the key away, cuz the guard’s always sleeping, etc…
Yeah and all the movies that I’m interested in seeing are political in nature. Is that just a coincidence?
- Errol Morris’s feature length interview of Steve Bannon, American Dharma.
- Werner Herzog’s feature length documentary Meeting Gorbachev, about Mikhail Gorbachev.
- Adam McKay’s new feature length tale of Dick Cheney, called Vice.
All the above are 2018 releases, and I’m dying to see them.
But, now that I think of it, there were indeed two things that I learned from Moore’s 11/9 film. Only two tho. Firstly, I didn’t realize that Obama did his water-sipping routine in front of the Flint people (whose water was poisoned, in case you didn’t know) on more than one occasion (that’s roughly two distinct sips: almost a swallow!) — I only caught the first performance. And, secondly, I never before saw the phone-videos from the people who experienced the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. I always avoid watching the live footage of tragic events, from witnesses or victims etc., because…
I can’t explain exactly why I recoil from that type of audiovisual evidence — it’s just… something about it seems off to me. So the inclusion of this material in Moore’s film took me by surprise. At one point in the movie, Moore incorporates some videos from people who were there inside the school while the shooting was happening — you can hear loud repeated gunshots and screaming and crying and general panic. It’s of course terrifying and makes you weep, but there’s an almost equally disturbing aspect to one’s own experience as film-viewer: it’s extra strange to feel such intense fear but also, at the same time, to know with a certainty that you yourself cannot be physically affected by the violence that you’re beholding.
Yes, my dear heckler, you are correct: someone could indeed break into the room where you’re watching the filmed massacre and begin massacring YOU THE VIEWER, but this latter massacre would be a new movie for a future audience — and the shooting on your screen would become a film-within-a-film (like Hamlet’s play-within-a-play), for upcoming attendees exclusively — in other words, the movie’s terror could not reach physically into your spacetime, any more than a massacre that occurs in your own present tense could outreach physically into the spacetime of the future. For that would defy the rules of narration.
So it all makes me wonder about amusement rides. Cuz I am basically Scottie Ferguson from Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece) — I’m afraid of heights. What happened, in my case, is that I watched my partner from the detective agency fall to his death from a rooftop, while we were chasing a bad guy. He fell to the street & said Eloi! then he expired (my partner, not the bad guy; the bad guy always gets away); and this event left me traumatized: now I feel dizzy every time I shop on the top floor at the Mega Mall. So I never understand why people invented roller coasters and rides like the one they call THE SQUID: I mean, these rides have cars that you can sit in, and these cars are hefted high in the air and spun around by huge steel tentacles that are decorated with flashing lights; and then the cars drop rapidly down to the ground, so that you who are inside of them feel like you’re falling to your death. I don’t understand this invention, because I don’t like to feel fear: I don’t like to feel like I’m falling: I don’t like to be reminded that I could die anytime: I’d rather forget this nagging truth.
Nonetheless, certain businessmen deemed it a good idea to build a giant contraption that serves the purpose of nearly scaring the life out of me.
My point is this: I fear that Disneyland, which is the place where all these frightening rides are located, will someday entertain the notion of building a ride that imitates the terrifying environment of a school shooting. So it would be sort of like a haunted house, where you enter into a building that looks like a regular school, and then the security guard near the entryway pulls you aside and says “You must buy a ticket to ride this ride”; so then you return outside and go to the ticket booth & pay fifty Caesars for a small paper that says: Admit one soul to THE NORMAL SCHOOL EXPERIENCE U.S.A. (which is the name of the ride); finally, you enter (legally this time) and you go sit down in the cafeteria, or you can also take a seat in math class or whatever, and for a while there’s nothing too frightening happening, beyond the normal anxiousness that comes from being in a social situation — yes, you soon grow almost bored, because the teacher’s voice is monotonous; or if you had chosen to visit the lunchroom, you might start swirling your french-fried potatoes around in the ketchup blob that you squirted on your plate from the condiment section of the lunch line, and in your boredom you make designs with the ketchup, using your fry as a brush and the ketchup as oil-paint…
What I’m getting at here is that this boring part of the ride where not much is happening is like the “up track” on a rollercoaster: you’re rising slowly toward the peak; and after you reach the top, your car speeds straight downward and you feel that rush of fear, which is the main attraction of rollercoasters — perhaps there are twists & turns in the track, and maybe the car even travels upside-down briefly; in which case, you’d need to install safety bars to keep the paying customers safely seated — you wouldn’t want one to fall out into the moat and get eaten by mechanical alligators; for there are alligators in the moat, at the point where the coaster does its loop; and alligators love nothing more than devouring people...
Alright, you get the picture; so now back to the “School Experience”. You’re in your cafeteria or classroom, and then the down-track aspect of the ride is when the “killers” (which word I place within hooks because they’re not real killers; they’re paid actors or perhaps even programmable androids; and their weapons are fake, and the ammo is harmless), I say the “killers” now appear from the back of the room, or from the sides or wherever you were least expecting them, and they blast-blast-blast their gunshots, deafening loud; and everyone screams and cries, and there are actors or androids, which are all part of the act, who fall to the ground as if dead, and fake blood splashes out everywhere.
Would this be a ride that anyone would like to go on? I sure wouldn’t. I’d rather not even THINK about such things — they’re the opposite of fun.
What’s truly fun is going to a brothel where all the people, both the customers and the staff, are there voluntarily & thus no money is exchanged because everyone is her own free artist of her own actions — all souls are free, and we all have free will — and everyone pairs off in twos or threes or more, and much flesh gets caressed. Now that would be fun.
But I don’t think that Disneyland has a brothel. Maybe Walt Disney World has one. But I like my idea better than their School Shooting Ride. It just makes more sense that you’d wanna love others rather than harm them, or get harmed by them. – I like the feeling of pleasure more than pain. And, to me, fear is a type of pain; or it’s like an “oh no, there’s gonna be pain soon, I just know it” kind of a feeling, which is rather annoying.
So that’s why I do not believe in roller coasters.
But how do we ever get to the point where we choose to do boring things, or painful or scary things, rather than pleasurable things? My question is: Why doesn’t everyone just sing songs and fornicate all day? I seriously wonder this. I’m not asking ironically.
Look: you see people. Are they naked? No, they’re clad modestly, in uncomfortable clothing. Are they approaching each other, for the purpose of embracing? No, they’re all hastening off to work. They’re on the train in the morning, or the bus, or sitting in traffic in their car or their truck.
Why would you want to sit in traffic, when you could be lying in bed with your neighbor? I just don’t get it.
Maybe it’s becuz, once upon a time, all these people actually tried to engage in an enjoyable function, but then after the bliss ended, some corporate goons presented them with a bill, and this bill was so large that it necessitated getting a job and postponing pleasure for a time. And that time just kept expanding until the postponement became infinite. So it’s like when you plan to take a two-day vacation, but then the paradise that you visit is so enjoyable that you decide to stretch out your stay for an additional couple days, after which you keep on lengthening your vacation until it achieves the state of Platonic Permanence. It’s no longer a vacation: it’s now your normal life, your routine residence: you’ve pragmatically translocated — hence the wise saying “Let’s take a permanent vacation.”
Yes, your workaholic schedule is like a vacation gone wrong: it’s the Polar Opposite of Eternal Reward. Not even God would inflict your Work Life on the Damned. Not even Satan, the Main Enemy of God, and all the Rebel Angels who tried to form a Union in Heaven, and all the Non-Christians who rejected Jesus in favor of his Teacher, the Buddha — not even these Terrible Sinners deserve a Punishment as Bad as the Life that you currently “Live”.
I think we’re all duped by promises. We’re told, “Just work hard NOW, and (trust me) you’ll be Living the Dream in no time: you’ll eventually attain The Good Life (believe me: I swear on my heart).” Then later, when you’re still slaving away & the Dream hasn’t flourished, & The Good Life is considerably late for your dinner date, you say:
“Hey, I’ve been working hard for decades now, and I’m not a hairsbreadth closer to pleasure — what gives?”
And you’re told, “Just keep working harder — all your dreams will soon come true. Give it time!”
So this is how the cold world strings you along. It keeps promising you rewards, which never materialize. And if you open your eyes to this trickery and grow enlightened, and you rise up and move as tho to cast off your shackles, and you shout “I see your evil trick; now I’m done being a slave. Hand over my fair share of the inheritance.” (For every human deserves a dividend of the treasure that results from all past accomplishments — no living soul can claim that he deserves a greater share than anyone else, since 99% of the work that served to create the present day’s abundance was done by the dead: and I mean the untraceably long-deceased; not anyone’s grandpa.) Then, in answer to your demand, the Powers that Be (humankind has never really graduated past its Mafia stage) ship you off to the real-life version of The U.S. School Experience.
Yes, our modern world is still held together by violence. It seems so peaceful in my neighborhood, but it wouldn’t be hard to prove my thesis: all I’d have to do is wander into someone’s backyard to smell the flowers in their garden: immediately the homeowner appears at his door holding a semi-automatic firearm in either hand. So remember this, next time some dopey guru advises you to “Stop & smell the roses.”
IN CONCLUSION
The humdrum non-life of unpaid overtime and overwork is actually the smartest thing a living creature can do. Take cows, for instance: How do you think that cows ever became what they are? Look at them: they work all day, patiently mowing the grass. They have multiple stomachs, and they never stop digesting. Plus you can put a yoke on their neck, and they pull you to town. (See the hymns “Santa is Coming”; & also the lyric “Giddy yap, let’s go ride in a wonderland of snow,” from the masterwork “I wanna sleigh with you.” ) A cow is like a supercomputer that grew flesh, and then, instead of computing numbers all day, it invested the entirety of its mental capability in the plain act of chewing. Cows are the perfect employees. And look what they gained from their genius plan: they became the only creature that can live with humans. They hold their own and stand right by our side, without use of body armor or facial weapons like horns or tusks (they don’t even have very sharp teeth, and most of them lack baleen) — no need for venom or the prickly outer coating worn by certain lizards or cacti; for they are man’s best friend. Cows are even treated as divine, by the U.S. meat industry.
No comments:
Post a Comment