(Detail from the case of a favorite film.)
Dear diary,
Here are four unbeatable words: God; truth; capitalism; and art. Maybe you could add love too, cuz love’s a real stinker.
Before continuing, I should explain that I’m writing from the United States in the early twenty-first century. That should explain why the word “God” makes my list, and “capitalism”. The people of the U.S.A. are religion-mad, every single one of us. And we United Statesians harbor opinions about the folks from other countries; and these views might be right or wrong, it doesn’t matter — we have no idea how close to the mark our assumptions come, we just hold these uninformed views to be self-evident. For instance, we think of all Frenchmen as vacuous atheists; so, based on this caricature, I can suggest that the French might substitute “atheism” for “God” in their own list of unbeatable terms. And if you are Russian, then it doesn’t matter if your country is no longer communist, you will always be communist in the eyes of all U.S. citizens; therefore, swap that “C”-word for our superior “C”-word, when you write your own essay.
Now what do I mean by unbeatable terminology? I mean that these words are like jokers in a deck of playing cards — they can mean whatever anyone wants them to mean. The encyclopedia sez:
The meaning of a wildcard must be agreed upon by all players before the game commences.
But what’s extra unique about unbeatable terms like God, truth, capitalism, art, and love, is that, even if you and your dinner date nail down a definition for a given term before commencing your blowout argument, once you begin to talk, all bets are off: those magic words are positively protean: they’re like a gun without a grip. Abandon all hope, ye who discuss capitalism with a capitalist, or God with a deist, truth with a scientist, love with a creditor, or art with anyone.
It would help if I could give an example of the way that these words are known to cheat during a typical conversation, but I can’t think of any at the moment. So I’ll settle for saying something inadequate:
Right now, in the U.S., at only twenty years into the new century, we’re already experiencing our third crash of capitalism. There was the dot-com crash, which began the period, as it lasted thru 2001; and then there was the subprime-mortgage crash between ’07 and 2010; and, at present, no more than a decade after the last crash, which was given the pet name “Recession”, we’re experiencing the coronavirus crash, which is expected to trigger not just a recession but a full-on depression: in fact, a greater depression than the Great Depression. And that tragedy occurred in the 1930s; which means that this system of capitalism couldn’t even make it a hundred years without falling flat on its face. If it were an infant, it would be declared “unfit to walk”, and we would consider it a danger to itself as well as others; thus we would put it out of its misery, the way that a compassionate cowboy shoots an injured horse. But if you speak to a U.S. patriot, who has neither learned about nor experienced any other economic system, he shall deny that this tendency-to-fail is a trait of capitalism (& rather a feature than a bug): “No, capitalism is not the problem,” our patriot assures us, “the problem is all the stuff that went wrong, which caused the calamities — everything that led to any ugly outcome is, by definition, rather an element of socialism or communism (or some other system, all of which are sinister) that somehow snuck into capitalism & tainted it — those evil impurities need to be removed in order to arrive at TRUE capitalism.”
So here we have an instance of a team of unbeatable words being used in tandem (“truth” and “capitalism”) to bolster each other, the combined effect of which overwhelms me; that’s why I dare not venture any answer to my friend — I simply agree with his reasoning and politely re-intensify my own patriotism.
*
But, having written to this point, I want to level with my reader. When I began this essay, I had an idea to tackle the concept of all these wildcards, or joker-words, and to give examples of how their deceptive use is mastered, albeit unbeknownst to themselves, by airtight solipsists; yet now I have lost all interest in continuing, after recalling that, were I to go on, I’d be breaking my own vow — for I vowed unto my superego that I’d…
Actually, here; I’ll let the official scripture tattle on me:
Bryan the world-renowned journalist vowed a vow unto God, and said:
“If I ever catch myself carping and whining again in my daily newspaper column about any economic system or national religion, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth from that sliding door of the neighbor’s house to bark at me, next time I’m raking leaves in my backyard, shall surely become the LORD’s meal; in other words, I will grill up that creature for a burnt offering unto our Heavenly Father.”
So on Monday morning Bryan caught himself carping and whining again about the same old stuff, and he handed in his article to the editor of the newspaper. Then, later in the day, he went outdoors and stood in his backyard to rake the leaves; and he heard the noise of his neighbor’s French sliding patio door; whereupon, lo:
Out comes his very own shadow to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was Bryan’s only begotten shade (for he had neither son nor daughter, so his shadow served as his sole offspring & lineage, and Bryan loved his shadow dearly, for she would perform all the things that he himself was too shy to undertake, like helping out strangers & neighbors, and caring for people’s pets & all the local wildlife — that’s why his shadow happened to be leaving the house next door while rejoicing: she had been spreading good cheer throughout the neighborhood; and when she heard that the woman who lives at that address had recently undergone surgery on her knee & thus was currently in recovery, Bryan’s shadow endeavored to take her mind off her pain).
And it came to pass, when Bryan saw her, that he tore his collared shirt, and then he also tore his collared undershirt (for this took place during the days when Bryan was in the habit of wearing two collared shirts: one over the other), and he put ashes on his head, as a sign of mourning, and he lifted his voice and said:
“Alas, my shadow! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for after opening my mouth unto God, I cannot renege.”
And she said unto him, “Dear double, thou hast flicked thy tongue at the LORD; now keep thy promise: Do unto me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy gullet.”
And Bryan wept, and he made no answer but only slipped sackcloth over his clothes, which were torn in tatters, to increase their mourning-power.
And his shadow addressed him a second time:
“Let this thing be done to me: I don’t really mind much. But just let me have a couple of months to prepare — say, till mid-June — that way I can make it thru the second volume of the collected poems of A.R. Ammons, which I’ve been enjoying; I’d like to finish reading that before leaving you forever, O my heartthrob doppelganger. — Actually, on 2nd thot, let me have until late August; that’ll give me a number of weeks to go up & down upon the hills of the countryside cursing God. I will invite the legion of devils that share our soul; I’m sure they’ll appreciate it — it’ll be like a vacation for them. Like an extended bachelor party to hail my martyrdom.”
And Bryan said, “Go.” And he sent her away for two to six months: and she went with her companions, and cursed God on the mountaintop.
Then it came to pass, after the end of the fête, that she returned to Bryan; and he did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: Bryan burnt his own shadow. And her bones and her fat were fed to the Lord Jehovah.
Thus it became a custom in that land, that the consciences of all the suburban residents went annually to shut up themselves in a vast green suitcase, during the anniversary of the execution of Bryan Ray’s shadow, X days every year.
(Judges 11:30-40)
So I think I’ll let myself off the hook, for this one. I won’t force myself to continue the essay as I planned it. But I do have two quotes that I intended to work into the text, and I’d still like to share them — I guess I’ll just plop them here at the end, without any further context. You can sorta imagine where I might have gone with them, had I placed them into the composition more strategically...
This first one’s from Nietzsche — it’s from the very start of Beyond Good & Evil (I’ve been re-reading this book; that’s why quotes from it have been popping up in my entries as of late) — it’s just a short one:
Who is it really that puts questions to us here? What in us really wants “truth”?
And now that I look at the text, another passage catches my eye — I like this too:
Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance?
Alright, so that takes care of Nietzsche. Now the other passage is from Duchamp: A Biography by Calvin Tomkins, another favorite book of mine. I’ll give it the last word:
Some of the Abstract Expressionists were put off, to say the least, by Duchamp’s reiterated comments against “retinal” art; about the spectator’s role in the creative act, and the absurdity of artists’ egos. Art was a habit-forming drug, Duchamp had said. “I’m afraid I’m an agnostic in art,” he told this writer when I was interviewing him for a 1965 profile in the New Yorker. “I just don’t believe in it with all the mystical trimmings. As a drug it’s probably very useful for a number of people, very sedative, but as religion it’s not even as good as God.”
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