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Wednesday, October 07, 2009
ANXIOUS MO-FO
Minutemen
Double Nickels On the Dime
SST : 1984
[Buy It]
This morning there was a weight pressing down on my mind. This morning it was windy. I mean there was wind, not that my mind wound, though my mind did wind. My mind wound because I heard, in quick succession, about a series of projects undertaken by friends and acquaintances: a book, a movie, a television series. All were being undertaken by people for whom I have fondness, so I was happy to hear that they were working on new things. And yet, the news exhausted me. Sometimes, other people's projects have this effect by way of envy (if it's a project I'd like to be doing) or disappointment (if it's a project I think they don't want to be doing). This was something different. To the last, these projects sounded like they were, for lack of a better word, stunts, slightly desperate ways of passing time and acquiring attention while contributing nothing to the self, the world, or to a sense of how one might profitably exist within the other. And because they were stunts, the people performing them seemed stunted: powered by disinterest rather than interest, filled with anomie and irony rather than energy. It wasn't a question of whether or not these people were taking their projects seriously, only that they weren't taking on serious projects. This is a judgment, and a fairly severe one, but it is rooted in an uncertainty regarding the real value of these projects and a certainty of the strong need for real value within these people, and as a result I came away displeased, with a weight upon my mind.
That last sentence is even windier than this morning was, so let me clarify. All these projects I heard about began in anxiety. Here, when I say anxiety, I'm talking not about my anxiety, but about Kierkegaard's, which he defined as the result of freedom. Freedom created boredom and also choice and was consequently the thing felt acutely just before a leap of faith. For Kierkegaard, this leap of faith was a leap into faith, into Christianity, but let's say that it can be secular or creative or even carnal: a leap into love, into sex, into friendship, into art. I am not saying that it is better or worse to write a paragraph about your spiritual condition or to plan a series of sculptures or to end up in a midtown hotel with your arms tied to bedposts and your memory stuffed full. You decide. But if you decide to take something seriously, whether mind or body or soul, you will have found that your anxiety has worked like a charm, or at the very least a spur--it will make you tremble at your freedom and then motivate you to take that leap. But if that anxiety is treated with trivia (and what is more trivial than stunts?) then it's a kind of sin that just compounds anxiety by enacting meaningless freedom. Objections will be raised. I'll even raise them. How do I know that these projects are stunts, or trivial? How do I know that they're not heartfelt? How do I know that they're not intimately connected to the mainsprings of the people in question? How dare I be so presumptuous? All I can say is that I believe that I am right in this regard, and that I believe that these projects are inconsequential stunts because they address no real issue apart from that of relieving boredom. Eighty percent of media is an answer to this question, both for creators and consumers, and while projects/stunts that take this as their central mission are not crimes and their creators not criminals, they are not crime-solvers either. They are, in the sense outlined above, sinners, and they are sinning by spending their energy on unworthy pursuits. The miasma of anxious opinion and media-enabled yammering is a morbid emanation.
Kierkegaard had plenty more to say about this issue, as did other philosophers, artists, prophets, and fools. The issue crystallizes and falls out of focus. When I was seventeen, the clearest formulation I knew came from the Minutemen, and particularly "Anxious Mo-Fo," which kicks off the philosophical tract "Double Nickels on the Dime."Serious as a heart attack!
Makes me feel this way...
No device to measure, no word can define
I mean what I'm trying to say is how can I express--let alone possess?
Serious as a heart attack!
Makes me feel this way... And from there, I guess, I'll wind over to Charles Bukowski. I don't have a great investment in the man, though I love "Factotum" and I wince at "Women" (isn't it responsible, at least in part, for "Californication"?). But Bukowski once said "An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way," and for that simple formulation I'd like to thank him, and thank the Minutemen, and thank Kierkegaard, and put my fingers in my ears at the rest of it, if not for all time, just for a little while, as a form of relief. I am not wishing ill for the projects or the people who are involved in them. I am only turning away.Labels: ben, rock
posted by Ben
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