• dedalus
      • hello David Everson
      • Username: dedalus
      • In response to: "If you were in a movie right now, what music would be playing?" "Wake Up" as performed by Arcade Fire & David Bowie
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    • My Favorite Cliché

      • *What's your favorite cliché?*

        My friends have called me out regarding one particular expression a few times. And since each time I get called on it I proceed from feeling guilty for uttering a cliché to a bit confused as to why that particular cliché is a bad one, I therefore conclude that it must indeed be, as Plinky would have it, my "favorite cliché."


        "It is what it is."

        Sometimes I say it from resignation, but much more frequently it is acceptance. I'm talking about the kind of acceptance that most people think they are achieving when they use the word tolerance. Tolerance, of course, implies that you will permit something to be (possibly because you are impotent to change it) despite the fact you loathe the activity. Some confused people will use the word acceptance to describe that feeling; that is not the kind of acceptance I am talking about here.

        I am talking about the kind of acceptance that echoes the divine tautology: "I am I." To follow suit, "it is it," and, since our universe exists in dynamic parallax, we extrapolate the grammar to include the verb 'to be,' arriving at the gorgeous (and my critics would say meaningless) truism -

        It is what it is.

        Which is a much less epiphanic condensation of the Tao Te Ching. From chapter 80, the image of a past before the human animal had abstracted its self-knowledge with layers of history:

        "Men return to the knotting of rope in place of writing.
        Their food is plain and good, their clothes fine but simple,
        their homes secure;
        They are happy in their ways.
        Though they live within sight of their neighbors,
        And crowing cocks and barking dogs are heard across the way,
        Yet they leave each other in peace while they grow old and die."

        Some might raise objections to a description of this scenario as ideal: what of art! what of progress! what of love passion ambition drive advancement etc! But this isn't apathy; the animals are not apathetic. This is life being life. Something we can barely glimpse, the neurotic descendants of our rope-knitting ancestors.

      • answered by dedalus on 09/24/2010
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    • A Book Character I'd Like to Be

      • Ray Smith, Kerouac's alter-ego, travels from his city environs to a more natural setting. He's chasing some vaguely Buddhist concept of nirvana (the whole novel could be read as a Western Buddhist parable).

        Along the way, he attends Ginsberg's legendary first reading of "Howl" - all names are changed in the novel. Surrounded by artists, seekers, thinkers, revelers, Ray enjoys their company despite a desire to find something more permanent than drunken nights and winding conversations. But he never rejects those nights or conversations.

        Kerouac is more innocent in Dharma Bums (nevermind the whole orgy scene). He's innocent in the sense that he thinks there is something more permanent. The innocence goes away in later works, turns into a desperate sorrow, even. (The author died due to complications from excessive drinking.) But I admire the combination of craziness and simple hope that pervades this dharma bum.

        I jump from bar to bar in Kerouac's own city of St Petersburg, wishing only at times that I was at Walden Pond or Tinker Creek or Desolation Peak. The thing is, I've read Kerouac's other novel, Desolation Angels, again mostly autobiographic, that follows from these desires to get back to nature. It is as terribly sad as it sounds. (My first college English essay was entitled "The Disconsolate Buddhist: Kerouac and the Western Search for Eastern Wisdom".)

        Maybe I picked someone too much like me already. I should have picked the Count of Monte Cristo with his clarity of purpose and treasure hunting. But ever the realist, something about Ray Smith's life felt like it should be mine.

      • answered by dedalus on 09/16/2010
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    • Backing Vocals for Modest Mouse

      • If I could be a member of any band, I would join Modest Mouse. I would have loved to have said The Beatles or Led Zeppelin, but I wouldn't have a place in those groups. Modest Mouse, however, seems to have more band members than they really need already. And I could nail that sound of the drunk guy poorly singing along with the lyrics that fills out the backing vocals in some of their songs. Plus, they just look like they have a good time.

      • answered by dedalus on 09/12/2009
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