(no subject)
This is something I just had to share. I didn't write it. It's from the latest blog entry from Die Warzau (amazing band, by the way). It's long, so it's under a cut. Read it, if you have a heart. Don't let the initial reference to American Idol put you off; it's worth reading.
"I never saw an episode of American Idol. I am 100% positive that it's a fantastic show, though. How can you not like it? People get up and sing a little, More people in America than actually voted in the last presidential election then proceed to grab their cell phones and spend 50 cents to decide which one sucks the least. Awesome. I want to care about it but it's so much hipper not to. It's not hip to not know about it, though, so your best bet for generalized hipness is to watch the show, vote often, and then pretend you didn't. Then you have to not care about who wins, trying not to care too much about why you don't care. If you're not an American, all of this intentional, premeditated failure to show interest may seem jarring. If you're an alien it's probably downright bizarre.
I think about how the aliens are going to respond to us all the time. It's likely that they're going to be experiencing our television and radio shows far before they experience us. You want to present a good face for the aliens, because, hey, they have RAY GUNS. It's natural to vaporize things you don't understand, so maybe we can help the aliens understand us a little better. This is really the best way, I think, to avoid the dreaded Independence Day Bill Pullman battle to the death scenario. In the hopes that the aliens are on myspace, maybe the comments that follow this can present some insight because this blog will probably not.
Why? Because I have no idea why we don't care. I don't know why the 80s happened. In the 80s, working men made a decision. That decision was to show how vital and successful they were, how strong and powerful, by minimizing their relationships. They ignored their wives, told their kids to shut up, went on long business trips and sat in the gym insinuating that their family was a chore- a thing of no real consequence. They played racquetball, slapped each other on the back and then lied to their wives. The film "American Psycho" is such a great illustration of the ideals. Interchangeable men, avoiding even the sense of intimacy necessary to remember each other's names, fantasized about fucking and then eviscerating nameless women while reveling in music so generic and dispassionate that it had no emotional impact whatsoever. Did these murders even really happen? We don't know. The people involved were so fatuous, forgettable and unsubstantial that we never really knew if they existed well enough to know if and when they failed to exist.
20 years later, we haven't learned much. We work now more than we did 20 years ago. The snide sarcasm that follows around people who actually care about anything is 20 times louder than it was then. The only real difference is the intensity of how much we are encouraged to not care and the fact that women are doing it, too. Maybe you guys can explain it to the aliens better than I can, but I can tell them why I DO care. So, this is for the aliens: Why do I insist on loving and caring when it's so not hip to do it? Why do I risk looking like an idiot to do it?
Ok, aliens. This one's a toughie. If you don't have love, on your planet, this is what it looks like. Love is the scariest thing we have here on earth. More terrifying than a hundred atom bombs or a thousand tanks, love is the thing that kills people before they actually die, leaving them a broken shell.
For a while.
Love is the thing that makes a perfectly healthy man die 2 hours after his wife does. It's the thing that can sometimes keep them both alive for 90 years in someone else's heart. It kills, it revives, it mangles, it restores. It's the swiss army knife of humanity. It's medicine from a bottle that can turn you 100 foot tall or 2 inches high, cause your organs to explode or give you powers like Superman. There isn't anything that we know of that love can't do. But there's a price.
Being in love is the emotional equivalent of painting a giant red target on your chest and handing someone else a gun. When you love your children, right from the hospital, only 5 pounds in your hand, ready to die at any moment and suck you into hell for the rest of your life, you can feel the target on your chest, burning through your clothes. When you hand that gun to someone else, packed with bullets, bare your chest and wait, you do something that takes more bravery than any other act in the world.
It's not the "American Psychos" who are the truly brave ones. The brave ones are the ones who paint that target on- the ones who jump from that plane trusting something will break their fall. The ones who choose to take that medicine even though you don't know what the next pill will look like or what it will do. The ones with faces, with names. Could it be that it's the really strong ones who know that maybe you don't get that lifetime with the one you love. Maybe you only get a few years- maybe less. Maybe you don't get to raise that baby you love so much to be an adult with a perfect life. Maybe that kitten will die no matter how hard you try to feed it. You agree to take in the pain of the people you love, the things you love, the ideas you care about. You commit yourself to living in potential pain for the rest of your life. A car accident, a bad word, a mistake, a changed mind, and your target glows to life. The gun goes off.
Admiral Grace Hopper once said that "Ships are safe in port but that's not what ships are made for". Ships are made to be fired at, to hit icebergs, to carry hope and fend off waves. Ships are made to live like a ship does. Ships go places. Ships live in every inch of water between their location and their destination. Ships sometimes survive.
I can't tell the aliens why some people can't care about who the president is or why they will make fun of people who do care about something else. I can't tell them why some people will fear intimacy more than death. I can't tell them why it's hip to laugh and not care. I can tell them why I choose to care. I can tell them why I paint that target on and hand that gun off and why I'll probably do it again. Why I'll never stop doing it.
Because it's worth it. Even up to the minute the bullet hits."
-Jim Marcus
"I never saw an episode of American Idol. I am 100% positive that it's a fantastic show, though. How can you not like it? People get up and sing a little, More people in America than actually voted in the last presidential election then proceed to grab their cell phones and spend 50 cents to decide which one sucks the least. Awesome. I want to care about it but it's so much hipper not to. It's not hip to not know about it, though, so your best bet for generalized hipness is to watch the show, vote often, and then pretend you didn't. Then you have to not care about who wins, trying not to care too much about why you don't care. If you're not an American, all of this intentional, premeditated failure to show interest may seem jarring. If you're an alien it's probably downright bizarre.
I think about how the aliens are going to respond to us all the time. It's likely that they're going to be experiencing our television and radio shows far before they experience us. You want to present a good face for the aliens, because, hey, they have RAY GUNS. It's natural to vaporize things you don't understand, so maybe we can help the aliens understand us a little better. This is really the best way, I think, to avoid the dreaded Independence Day Bill Pullman battle to the death scenario. In the hopes that the aliens are on myspace, maybe the comments that follow this can present some insight because this blog will probably not.
Why? Because I have no idea why we don't care. I don't know why the 80s happened. In the 80s, working men made a decision. That decision was to show how vital and successful they were, how strong and powerful, by minimizing their relationships. They ignored their wives, told their kids to shut up, went on long business trips and sat in the gym insinuating that their family was a chore- a thing of no real consequence. They played racquetball, slapped each other on the back and then lied to their wives. The film "American Psycho" is such a great illustration of the ideals. Interchangeable men, avoiding even the sense of intimacy necessary to remember each other's names, fantasized about fucking and then eviscerating nameless women while reveling in music so generic and dispassionate that it had no emotional impact whatsoever. Did these murders even really happen? We don't know. The people involved were so fatuous, forgettable and unsubstantial that we never really knew if they existed well enough to know if and when they failed to exist.
20 years later, we haven't learned much. We work now more than we did 20 years ago. The snide sarcasm that follows around people who actually care about anything is 20 times louder than it was then. The only real difference is the intensity of how much we are encouraged to not care and the fact that women are doing it, too. Maybe you guys can explain it to the aliens better than I can, but I can tell them why I DO care. So, this is for the aliens: Why do I insist on loving and caring when it's so not hip to do it? Why do I risk looking like an idiot to do it?
Ok, aliens. This one's a toughie. If you don't have love, on your planet, this is what it looks like. Love is the scariest thing we have here on earth. More terrifying than a hundred atom bombs or a thousand tanks, love is the thing that kills people before they actually die, leaving them a broken shell.
For a while.
Love is the thing that makes a perfectly healthy man die 2 hours after his wife does. It's the thing that can sometimes keep them both alive for 90 years in someone else's heart. It kills, it revives, it mangles, it restores. It's the swiss army knife of humanity. It's medicine from a bottle that can turn you 100 foot tall or 2 inches high, cause your organs to explode or give you powers like Superman. There isn't anything that we know of that love can't do. But there's a price.
Being in love is the emotional equivalent of painting a giant red target on your chest and handing someone else a gun. When you love your children, right from the hospital, only 5 pounds in your hand, ready to die at any moment and suck you into hell for the rest of your life, you can feel the target on your chest, burning through your clothes. When you hand that gun to someone else, packed with bullets, bare your chest and wait, you do something that takes more bravery than any other act in the world.
It's not the "American Psychos" who are the truly brave ones. The brave ones are the ones who paint that target on- the ones who jump from that plane trusting something will break their fall. The ones who choose to take that medicine even though you don't know what the next pill will look like or what it will do. The ones with faces, with names. Could it be that it's the really strong ones who know that maybe you don't get that lifetime with the one you love. Maybe you only get a few years- maybe less. Maybe you don't get to raise that baby you love so much to be an adult with a perfect life. Maybe that kitten will die no matter how hard you try to feed it. You agree to take in the pain of the people you love, the things you love, the ideas you care about. You commit yourself to living in potential pain for the rest of your life. A car accident, a bad word, a mistake, a changed mind, and your target glows to life. The gun goes off.
Admiral Grace Hopper once said that "Ships are safe in port but that's not what ships are made for". Ships are made to be fired at, to hit icebergs, to carry hope and fend off waves. Ships are made to live like a ship does. Ships go places. Ships live in every inch of water between their location and their destination. Ships sometimes survive.
I can't tell the aliens why some people can't care about who the president is or why they will make fun of people who do care about something else. I can't tell them why some people will fear intimacy more than death. I can't tell them why it's hip to laugh and not care. I can tell them why I choose to care. I can tell them why I paint that target on and hand that gun off and why I'll probably do it again. Why I'll never stop doing it.
Because it's worth it. Even up to the minute the bullet hits."
-Jim Marcus