You Can't Fake Soul

Maybe I’m putting too much into this. Basically my only point is that we’d be much better served by variable prices for mass-market cultural goods like books, movies, cds, magazines and the like. In my opinion $40 books and $24 movies would just about save the world.

What this differentiation would do is allow niche development and the emergence of a more robust adult culture. As most artistic pursuits take years and years to develop, most artists take advantage of their youth to “pay their dues”. And as it’s quite difficult to change your stripes once you’ve “branded” yourself, most of our most powerful art is youth-oriented. And I’d include bands like the Rolling Stones and even writers like Tom Wolfe and painters like Warhol and Pollock here as well—that were young and mostly tried not to age. Without cds that sell for $40 (and an audience happy to pay that for meaningful culture), what we get is Sting, past his prime, still noodling (and doing alright); Norah Jones, quite competently crooning in a much older style; and can’t-quite-grow-up movies like Sideways, Sunshine of the Eternal Mind (which was fairly good—but still grunge), and whatever French pap has happened to cross the pond (nothing wrong with French pap, but if you think intellectual and dark or unrequited and love go together you are mistaken and will be so sadly).

Even these established bands make most of their money touring. And literature just plain doesn’t pay. Movies, the price of entry is coming way down, but the distribution and marketing is a bear. Plus, it’s not like adults interested in the best (or adults interested in playing the best) are going to schlep to a beer-soaked dingy club or drive 45 minutes to a weathered art-house theatre. The industry thinks that cultural content is an added freebie—and for what we get currently it basically is; but if we want a mature, vital, enthusiastic, fun culture, we’re going to have to pay a whole lot more.

The problem is how’re we gonna get Puritans to pay more for what they want? When we’ve been told for our whole lives that we should be saving and scrimping for that time in everyone’s life when the whole country starves and that we’re not worth even the shoes we really, really want. This is why we have no wonderful, ecstatic, upbeat modern culture. A culture with these attributes costs money. And you have to have adults interested in creating it. Adults with mortgages and kids in braces just like yours. There’s got to be a decent enough return that they’ll even consider it. Otherwise you get the kids and the crazies—a culture made by people who aren’t like us. And “canonized” artifacts like the damn opera (the musicals of their time?) or the symphony. Not to knock those, but they “speak” to us more than they speak to us—it’s kind of like we love what’s dead—as it’s been proven valuable. Has given it’s life for itself. Was already decided upon. We love the processed—it’s just no fun. And we don’t feel it like even the most basic black church or jazz club—where they’ll give an “Amen” of “yeah” just because. The question is do we want a culture we can feel. Do we want selves we can feel? Are we willing to make ourselves worth feeling? (Hint: you already are, I guarantee).

Or we think all this and then answer with “the real”—performance art, Annie Sprinkle, Crass, socialism, or something similarly juvenile. What about what we want? What about not responding to what we don’t love but just going straight toward that which we do? Not a statement, not a political act that will show those people, just what we want. Why don’t we make what we love? Not something that will show people what is dumb and therefore increase our chances of having someone else make something we’ll like, but just what we want in the first place. What we love. Make what we love and get to love it.

And there’s no reason that we don’t have it. And we will have it soon. As soon as people start a) making it and b) paying for it.

My friend Bob, I believe, brings up the most astute point against my general (and specific) optimism here: we have a greater proportion of our populace engaged in art and creative endeavors than perhaps any society in history—certainly if there was a “place to go” (my words), someone would be going there.

You’d think so, Bob, wouldn’t you? I’m constantly amazed at artists and musicians ability to churn out the same mopey drivel. But also we can do little but slow the movement of human flowering—all thoughts, followed thoroughly enough lead back to the same point. The history of the world is the history of the evolution of human consciousness—and to think it’s stopped just because some intellectuals called us “post” is ludicrous. The simple fact is that we are closer than ever. As individuals, as cultures and societies. This I guarantee. We probably could annihilate ourselves (and may) but only by ignoring the beautiful possibilities all around us. Only be ignoring what we want, the riches we have, and our unmistakable power to create our own lives.

In my teens and twenties I conducted a pretty much thorough examination of the “creative” underground and counter-culture—encompassing pretty much all of white creation—and I can confidently say that art relating to probably 2/3rds of our human existence artists won’t even consider. The remaining 1/3 (much less if you include combinations) is much of what we have: the vapid, the cliché, the disturbing, the opaque, the dark, the moody, the ironic, the unwashed, the chaotic, the infantile, the depressed. Everything else is pretty much up for grabs—a huge territory or colors, chords, sentences, feelings, dances. It’s as if New York City had an extra Rhode Island in the middle of Manhattan—and land was free for the taking.

And I didn’t learn this at school, I didn’t examine like a scientist or ethnomusicologist, I went and lived the nonsense. It may have even saved my life—for two minutes. I went and heard the bands, painted the pictures, watched the artists drink, listened to the complaining, did the drugs with the photographers, did yoga with the photographers, dated the conceptual artists, ate with the journalists and critics, got my nipples pierced by the lesbians—you get the idea. And I didn’t even leave because I wanted to. I didn’t even want to. God kind of spit me out of it. And, like a true counter-culture die-hard, I went kicking and screaming every step of the way. I was mad at god for even taking my cigarettes away—you can imagine how I felt about the “mainstream”, the “politicians”, the “corporations”, etc.

What people don’t understand about the counter-culture is that it is now a full-blown culture of it’s own—with it’s own very strict mores and values to be followed. If you want a career as a painter, or writer, or musician, the path is very well trod—and anything diverging from those paths, anything not catering to the new elite “anti-elite”, is not only worthless, it’s not even seen. It literally can’t be seen—because it has to be felt. And it’s almost as incomprehensible to the counter-culture as it was to the mainstream in the 50’s and 60’s—only now that there’s so much flotsam and jetsam out there it doesn’t make a splash. Because it’s a lot more quiet and gentle. So people barely get it—or don’t even know it’s a “thing”. Among the many important values that the counter-culture has done away with: subtlety, beauty, naturalism, warmth, relaxation, sobriety (unless as a statement of denial), ease, affirmation, cheerfulness, play (unless infantile or drunk), stability, comfort, sanity, connectedness, individual desires, light, being white, structure, earnesty, trying, craft, utility and responsibility.

And while most of the values that the counter-culture does espouse (democracy, activism, questioning, criticism, speaking up, community, “individuality”, creativity, youthful exuberance, improvisation, etc.) were, at the beginning of the counter-culture, desperately needed in our society, many have become so pervasive as to become toxic. If art or culture is to improve a society; and that art’s practitioners are all killing themselves, depressed, drunk or on drugs, or negating themselves physically, visually and verbally; where on earth will any improvement come from? That’s like saying the priests are all drunk letches but their sermons will magically enlighten you. And we know that’s bullshit. Simply put: we can’t think past our feelings. We can’t hope to end up somewhere we haven’t planned on going. And I’d say that applies to the afterlife as well. You’re not going to love retirement after being a workaholic your whole life. You won’t even know how to sit still. No one is coming to save you from yourself. But we can take ourselves there—if we insist on it. And believe ourselves the benchmark.

So, what kind of culture will we have that will be worth $40 a book, $24 a movie, and $36 a cd? It will be loving and beautiful. It will be deep like Tuvan throat singers and bounce like Snoop in your grandma’s Impala (after he had it done up). It will talk about white people, and having money, and what that does and doesn’t do. No—scratch that—it will be about white people, and having money, and what that does and doesn’t do. It will be about us. Be about you.

It will be about wanting god—and not being able to find him at church. It will show the ecstasy of a sunrise—and how deeply we want to share that.

It will be about fucking. About women and men. Some of it’ll be NC-17. Nothing you haven’t heard before—or don’t think every day.

It will be about your search for meaning—the one you barely ever mention. It will sympathize with you in your exhaustive search of previously created materials. It will be simultaneously simple and complex. Sometimes the more complex, the more simple.

It will be straight forward and direct. It won’t have intellectual underpinnings or necessitate new language to understand. But it won’t come to you—you’ll have to go to it. It won’t be better theory but better feel.

It won’t be radically different either—except that we’ll start to feel it. Slowly at first—as we haven’t let ourselves much for a few thousand years. Eventually we’ll feel it all. And like it. It won’t be magic, or keep us safe forever, or guarantee our paycheck, but it will keep us warm, allow a place for our children to grow up into, allow us to be strong men and whatever it is that women want to be.

It will cause difference of opinion, but it won’t divide. We’ll lose our fear of confrontation (and thereby be able to skip most of it), our fear of believing differently, of being alone or “outside the tribe”. In a very real sense, it will be a community of those “outside the tribe”—of those who are intellectually, creatively and emotionally self-sufficient—and therefore able to enjoy all that this world has to offer without fear.

For only by being happy alone can we take the risks necessary to be joyfully together. Only by being confident in the nooks and crannies of our complete personality can we ever have enough humility to get close enough to others to really know them. And continue to grow close over a lifetime. Without major surprises, about face turns, emotional shut-downs, threats, or mid-life crises. Without most of them anyway.

This stuff isn’t rocket science but it also ain’t easy. People are just beginning to put together the pieces that work for them.

The good news is that we won’t all have to be self-help gurus, yoga teachers or magazine editors (unless we all want to, of course). We’ll be able to be artists, musicians, filmmakers, potters, tailors, cobblers, chefs, painters, carpenters, mechanics, helicopter pilots and the like. We’ll be able to be anything we like. But it will have to be what we want. And we’ll have to take complete responsibility for what that is. The one true thing about this world is: you can’t fake it.

No “I had to for money”, no “if I didn’t have kids”, no “I’ll teach my daughter to dance”. Our kids don’t start any further than we end. Which means that the only way to save them time or trouble is to create for yourself that which you want for them (or that which you want for yourself). And there’s no shortage of things to do. I’d wager that as individuals and as a society—as a culture—we feel less than 1/4 of what it means to be alive. That’s a whole lot of room to move, to create. You can’t encourage a vulnerability (or liveliness, or vigor, or truth, or love) in others that you don’t feel in yourself. You can’t teach what you don’t know. If you want it you gotta be it. Gotta feel it—and pay for it when you want to see it in others.

That’s it.