I've got a song stuck in my fat head, and it goes a little something like this (hit it!):
"Nonsense prevails, modesty fails
Grace and virtue turn into stupidity
While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise
And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts
They still think they're the gods of antiquity
If something you missed didn't even exist
It was just an ideal -- is it such a surprise?"
-Elvis Costello, "All This Useless Beauty"
So how about that then? If something you missed didn't even exist, it was just an ideal, is that such a surprise? No, Mr. MacManus. Not it is not.
And is that a selfish, narrow thought? Is it hubris? Is it missing the forest for the trees? Or is it just an observation, a feeling, a current passing through like any other, captured, articulated and then contextualized? Is it beautiful, even, in it's way, the spiritual brother to the notion that the world only ever exists in the moment you're living in? Is it sad and joyful, cynical and optimistic, ugly and beautiful all at the same time? Yes. No. All of the above.
Art has to hurt, I think. And so does love, of course. Love hurts in order to soothe, when it's real. Art soothes too, but sometimes it soothes just by hurting. Just by feeling it, sharing it, calling it what it is, giving it back to us.
And so today, like every other day, I get to choose what I say. But do I get to choose what I see? Somebody's choosing, I believe that much, and I'd like to think it's me. But if that's true, then I've got some explaining to do. (And at this time, I seem to be employing a form of internal rhyme. Inconsistently, as you can see, but that explains a lot about me.)
Another lyric stuck in my head today: "I've got debts no honest man could pay." The Boss that one, from the one Springsteen album that has found it's way into my personal cannon, the spare and haunting "Nebraska," the soundtrack of my morning commute today, which says a thing or two about my morning disposition, in case anyone is keeping track, which for the record I sure as sure shit hope nobody is.
I'm not the Knight of Atlantic City and trouble ain't bussing in from out of state, but I kind of feel like I've got debts no honest man could pay. In a good way, I guess. What I have been given is far more than what I am owed, I am sure of that. And it scares me.
Fuck it, turn it up.
