I haven’t been feeling well for a few days, a virus somehow picked up from coins or the touching of things not properly handled, dismantled or disinfected by servants first.
This has, of course led to television-induced dementia where I am unable to process any rational thought and instead find myself thinking inside the box, outside the realm of outlier understanding what with the onslaught of bizarre PVR’d films, infomercials and terrible daytime TV. Am currently watching FOUL PLAY, in which Goldie Hawn as a shy librarian, stumbles upon a plan to assassinate the Pope, but can’t make anyone believe her until she meets a bumbling, smarmy-but-charming police detective in the form of Chevy Chase. The opening credits/theme song, I believe, is called “Ready To Take A Chance Again”. It also “stars” Dudley Moore.
This is what happens when insomnia leads to an unconvincing blur between daytime telly and reality, between dreams and dramas. I found myself shopping for groceries in the middle of the night like a zombie craving canned brains, the ensuing hours command that my eyelids are propped open by pinned pupils in the middle of the day as i absorb and dismiss multiple plotlines erratically, too tired to complain, too irritated to sleep.
Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel.
All of which would be considerably more comfortable if I didn’t have the cold and could comment with a marginal amount of lucid authority, of agency in my own distasteful waste of hours, but then, I suppose I would be doing other things, and rather than chase my own tail with that what-if scenario, I suppose it’s more to my advantage to shut up and absorb.
Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel. Change the channel.
I’ve been rather busy writing some new demos for the past week, so I have been unavailable to you, my adoring minions. Once again, I apologize.
Currently nursing self-inflicted wounds after a weekday war waged on the mundane using the weaponry/frenemy vitamin V(odka). What better way than by watching multiple episodes of THE GOLDEN GIRLS, THREE’S COMPANY and SEINFELD, right? The laugh track started out badly and got worse. Rather than soothing me, the opening strains of “Come And Knock On Our Door” grated like Freddy Kreuger’s rusted nails on a shrieking, scared chalkboard.
Instead, I am absorbing Tennesee William’s BABY DOLL, a 1956 movie in which a child bride and her dim-witted husband are mercilessly exploited by a shifty businessmen, who aims to seduce poor little innocent Baby Doll, who is the Southern Belle through and through, all haughty and “I-Never”s. I stole one of her lines for the title of this blog. If you can’t have SUNSET BOULEVARD, grab a slice of BABY DOLL.
“l’m moving to the Kotton King Hotel! I’m moving to the Kotton King Hotel! l’m gonna get me a good job! The hotel manager helped carry my daddy’s coffin, he’ll give me one. l could curl hair at a beauty parlour. Or l reckon l could be a hostess…Smile at people coming in a place. Any place. l could be a cashier….Well, l could pass out menus, or programmes or something. Say hello to people. l can say hello.”
An artist friend sent me a photo of a painting/collage he’s done of me years ago, so I thought I’d share it with you.
I was perusing the live feed of my facebook account, as one does, when a friend from years ago popped up with a status that intrigued me.
It read:
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
After laughing briefly at the comments that followed, which included a posting that stated “nostalgia is for bitches…reminiscing is where it’s at”, I began to ponder whether in the wake of a constant influx of “new” old material being uploaded to the internet, the modern age had, in fact, lost the romanticism of nostalgia, or lost the notions of romanticism and nostalgia in and of themselves.
I don’t think that there are many moments as individuals within Western civilization that allow us to truly BE individuals in thought or experience, since the majority of our collective pop cultured consciousness has been bred not by the political or philosophical musings of artists or idealists, but instead cultivated by industrious Borglike mass-marketers, more so now than ever before. As a result, we are living in an era of constantly upgrading postfuturism, or to define my terms more analogously, in a time where the future expected by the science fiction and predicted shark-finned flying Cadillacs of the 1950′s was bypassed entirely for unexpected and clunky technological evolutions that never gave us hoverboards. Because we were denied the fulfillment of mass-marketed imaginary ideals, our culture instead compiled our movements and historical moments into a production line of new technology — network projected events, which are then dubbed to video are finally uploaded to YouTube to be relived on a whim at the click of a virtual button. This defies the possibility for the individual’s personal psychic nostalgia, as instead we are yoked to 90-second clips which evoke sensory reminiscences from experiences had across the board by the Boomer’s Children’s Children’s Children.
It’s not to say that, for example, when compared with the amount of branding and marketing from eras past, that the current age is disallowing for nostalgic reminiscence only by lacking a previous element of simplicity. If anything, the more subtle and crafty modern age multi-leveled marketing burrows more deeply and cleverly into the subconscious without announcing intentions, thereby duping the rube society into the belief in the “hidden” value of immediately displaying then discarding the appropriate movement-of-the-microsecond, whereas previously in marketing and advertising products, movements and agendas, the overt and simplistic messages prodded the individual into taking a stance they could stand behind.
I don’t, as you might quickly concur, think that as a result we are culturally less aware of such infiltration than we would have been in previous eras, in fact the opposite is my contention. However, I think that it’s the acceptance of nonreality as reality that has restructured the capacity for sensory interaction with the physical world, leaving us unable to experience it as true individuals.
How does this defeat our senses of romanticism and nostalgia, you ask? Because we are (if I can believe the hype and anchor my argument to my earlier statements) bred in a bubble, we therefore can’t help but be nostalgic for the same bulletpointed products, programs and literature as the next individual-cum-autocrat in our age cohort, though they may prefer a different tune, style of dress, or predilection to substance. Derived from the same sap, the syrup is inevitably the same, though it contrives to taste a world apart. Zapping the notion of individuality through the realization that we have all been cut from different parts of the same cloth, it’s difficult to imagine that whatever love, suffering, humor or humiliation we experience as individuals is little more than a reproduction of a reproduction, and as a result, personal nostalgia ceases to exist beyond imitated moments of swelling violins in Ron Howard films. Unsubtle tones denoting what the individual should feel, and when, and for how long, until another moment arrives, it too defined by minute changes in the soundtrack.
This ill-articulated rant was brought about by a brief flickering on a screen I noticed between picking through battered and stained copies of reproduced Classic literature, and paradoxically I felt as though I could detract or unplug myself from feeling contempt for lacking individuality by expressing my “romantic achings for nostalgia in an age bereft of culture” by plugging my ramblings back into the machine I declared had diseased it in the first place.
The other week you somehow stopped existing. I didn’t realize before how much you meant to me, thinking prior to that that I could take you or leave you like an uninterested old hand at an Amsterdam brothel — you were fine with my attention, or not, and could earn your pennies elsewhere should my eye wander to the other delicacies splayed about.
Well, Internet, Day One was freedom.
A freedom from your clutches ALWAYS asking me to update, post pictures, blogs, videos. It was January 2nd, and of course you were nagging at me (as per your usual) to upload you with pictures from New Year’s, comment on twitramblings of b-list celebrities, search out strange comic-obsessed recluse fanboys and befriend them. I read a book. It was a classic piece of literature, and I sneered when I looked into your nonexistent face, contempt dripping toward your weak pulse of a signal. I used a touch-tone phone and laughed several times about how calling people for free with video capabilities was for suckers.
Day Two was like white noise in a contemporary bachelor pad. The white noise of white furniture in ultramodern walls in a building that refuses entrance to children. I watched several hours of fine BBC programming using this old-fashioned Victrola-type device called a DVD player. (pron: DEE/vee/DEE)
It wasn’t until I bored of the Beeb on Day Three that I realized the cable was out, leaving me only with the PVR, as the cable and internet were somehow connected by telepathic means I couldn’t, nay, shouldn’t understand. OK. Fine. Luckily I had PVR’d a whole bunch of shows and movies, so it was satisfactory enough as I watched Goldie Hawn and Steve Martin play off each other in HOUSESITTER, Capra’s PLATINUM BLONDE and CASABLANCA.
Day Four. You looked at me and taunted, as I edited video. I balked at first, then was seduced by a paler version of you, linking to a sad little matchstick light of a wireless signal from somewhere deep in the concrete jungle. YouTube uploads were taking over an hour. Don’t even start me on iTunes radio. It was a joke. A sad, sad joke. I picked up a Skype call to stuttered sentence fragments and jumpy live feed that did NOT secure me in conversation with total babes.
Day Five I stopped drinking, and you mocked.
Day Six I started drinking again and re-watched the same DVD’s while awaiting a service call from your provider. (You say provider. I say pimp.)
Day Seven you were repaired first thing in the morning, my sweet sweet angel, and I saw how like a beast I had become without you. I plundered your beauty and devised works of genius we could live out together, beautiful dinners, building our future house, planning our destination wedding.
I spent today in the comfort of Internet luxury, banking, PayPalling, Surfing Dlisted and Twitter Twitter Twitter, Book Book Book. I used Grocery Gateway to pick up necessities that had dwindled in your absence like a recently divorced man’s clean laundry. Back on the A-list of your love, I pwomise never to leave you again, and to respect you for the high-class escort that only occasionally dabbles in porn that you are.
