I wrote this about 4 years ago in Portland, Oregon. It was the basis for the lyrics for "Air Barriers," the first song on the Voodoo Economics album if : then :: iminami.
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Now, we know that the place never really had the chance to get off the ground. Metaphorically, I mean, as the place was the ground to begin with. We all stood there, looking at its potential, and knew that it wouldn’t fly. Nor would it wash. We racked our princess and the pea-sized brains in attempt to find a way not to care. All we came up with was that, in its currently dirty state, there was nothing that could be done, or could have been done. Perhaps it was best to wash our hands of it, to call it a night, to maintain the sanctuary of home.
In coming together, we never brought up this possibility: of death to the place, or do I mean of its failure to birth? The idea crossed every mind in the place. It jitter-bugged through some; it hung its hat in others. In mine, you don’t ask? Perhaps a mild case of strobe-light paranoia.
As vague as all of this may seem to one who hasn’t the mildest notion of what place I mean, in actuality, the vagueness is an illusion. A mere illusion. A mirror illusion? Yes, yes…that’s the proper allusion. I’ve looked for that one for quite a long time now, and finally have found…but, onward.
When we found the place in the first place, it looked like a shadow of itself. A bright, burning shadow, but a shadow nonetheless. As a group, an awareness of ability shaped itself into a large sledge hammer. (We forgot we might need to take out nails sometimes. Was that a mistake?) At any rate, this shadow appeared to some as a space to fill with nice things; to some as a dark pool we could dive into, to others as a complete entity, in no need of more than the most delicate changes (repeat). In our excitement at our discovery, these differences somehow declined to surface. “Good grief! How?” you may not ask. It seems that we spoke, during this time, only in exclamation marks. Particularities evaded us more and more regularly, until our speech became indiscernible to passersby. Would have, anyway, had there been any passersby. We lived, though, in our own world, closed to any rational, normal human beings. If there existed, anyway, any rational normal human beings.
Yes, those folks would certainly have puzzled as they walked by our site. They may not have noticed us at all, we were so far off-kilter. This unanimously-named “we” certainly had some thing in common…some feature attraction. If you are asking, “What is this commonality?”, I would question your sanity, and maybe ask for your phone number...what’s your number, please.
As I have already made abundantly clear, our transient harmony had almost nothing to do with actuality. Certainly, we did not think about our plan “in action,” as action was a thing none of us had experienced within our pasts. We failed, also, to take into account our compatibility as humans in a working environment, in a building environment. We had, though, the grand vision to carry us through.
This vision grew hazier by the day, as we learned more details about the grander visions of those around us. For instance, one thought that there should be a leader; moreover, that he should be that leader. Come to think of it, that may have been a commonality, albeit, an irreconcilable commonality. There must have been, though, a reason we initially got along so well together. Let’s explore.
In our first meeting as an entirety, we made jolly. We drank drinks, and smoked smokes, and laughed about things that are absolutely not funny. This made us feel at home, for we all knew that home was not a place to frown at. Our concern, at that time, was primarily wound up in fitting in with our newfound and jolly surroundings. This “group,” full of piss and vinegar, kept each of us enraptured, and held on to our over-active consciousnesses (quite the plural) by becoming something new each moment that it continued to exist. Each of us, then, made it a point to become. Constantly. Becoming. Our naivete was probably overbearing, but unfortunately, there was no one in the room capable of giving us that bite of wisdom. Each of us (here I am, still, making absurd assumptions about others in the “group”) eventually found that ‘forced becoming’ breeds a stagnancy worse than a stagnancy based on stillness. The overall jovial atmosphere, though, of our first meetings overtook our sensibility, and brought us into some sort of euphoria, into a place where we all felt super-human.
To jump back a bit, this supposed super-humanity observably manifested itself in our reactions to the current political climate in our overarching, impersonal place. We laughed ha-ha, as if any of the things being oh-so-wittily called out might be construed as funny by you or I, the rational observer. I can still justify this laughter as a comment on the irony of our twisted social structure; however, I now concede that these then-entertaining circumstances were actually rather terrible, and should be looked at soberly. Snicker we did, though, and this, I think, was the basis of our connection. It was a nervousness that cropped up, that edged itself out of us twitteringly, when any indication of sadness or injustice peeped into conversation. The nervousness that seeps out when one benefits from inequality. “Let us make light, then!” said we, and we looked at our dark place as an opportunity to do so.
And so and so on went the process of getting to know each other. When I say “other,” I mean just that: each became more of a singularity in and of ourselves as we defined our respective roles in attempt to create our grand little place. Spanning time, the group found its inner workings to be increasingly unsatisfactory, while its functions were pulled off swimmingly. The place was beginning to look quite like it should: comfortable yet distant to the ever-growing numbers of passersby (to whom, by the way, we pretended to pay the least bit of attention), shabby in the most chic fashion, and altogether a place that seemed desirable to those supposed rational ones. Toward each other, though, the place presented itself in quite a different manner.
Some others felt the place to be a castle in the air. Those who held that assumption dear could be split into two factions: those who believed the castle worth protecting by complex and showman-like aerial maneuvering, and those who believed that no amount of fancy flying could keep a gust of wind from blowing the place out of sight and mind. These two others sometimes recognized each other’s sameness, and other times found each other to be insufferably different from one another. They found solidarity in their passive aggression against another faction of the overarching group: those who believed in the solid reality of the place and all that it held.
Ahhh, the sky castle junkies hated these believers. Why? It seems like their non-belief structure would prevent them from placing enough importance on falsities such as others’ beliefs that they would feel any quantifiable emotion toward these other others. They saw through their own hypocrisy, though, and hated believers because their hatred meant that they themselves believed. All others believe; it is the nature of others. If ever there were one who was not an other, then that one would know…but I digress. Or do I? Continually???
One fine day, these two factions had it out, in their two separate universes. What was the cause of this delicious battle, an actual happening in our web of non-happening? Humorously, it was over the foundation. Well, the battle was over the foundation. I mean, on top of the foundation. I’m avoiding telling the cause, because if I haven’t already, I’m not sure I can. I will, then, proceed to give the amorphous details.
The imaginary believers (I have given that extra name to the sky castle junkies) were performing their usual duties in the construction: flitting about the site, admiring future additions and gingerly touching walls. As the proper believers herded in from their finished cigarettes, a sidewise comment was made toward the junkies regarding their general spaciness and lack of any meaningful place vis-à-vis the place.
The commonalities between all factions, though, were astounding. The presiding similarity lay in an overwhelming confidence in the certainty of the success of our project. If any one of us had doubts, they could never be expressed to every one. Doubts were considered to be for the weak-willed, and the feeling of the group was that uncertainty tainted its perfection, and in doing so, jeopardized our final structure. Ahh, the beauty of that structure in every mind must have been so vast as to be eternal. It must have had that quality as to be inexpressible! Our mistake, our downfall, then, was inherent in every move we made toward our perfect structure. Every nail, every brick, every gnashed thumb was only a step away from each participant’s rapturous vision of holy ground…the untouchable wrestled into corporeality. But we could do it; we were certain others had. We had seen their places, and they looked unblemished, like a place we (as non-creators) could only experience from remote viewpoints. We each wanted so badly to be inside a place like that, real or not; this we knew from the start. Yes, the trouble came in the beginning of the building.
At the ceremonial first shovelful of dirt, some part of me died. Everyone changed, and we were no longer a whole, joined by what each assumed was a common idea. We became, though I hadn’t yet put my finger on it, a group of fools: fooling each other, fooling our own selves, fooling even some people merely passing by into believing that we knew what we were doing, and that we were all doing the same thing for the same reasons. Sure, we knew we had different parts to play. That’s common knowledge. That part of me that died upon the breaking of ground, though, was the part that thought that we were all in the same play, that thought that, even if a few lines were forgotten, a few cues missed, at the end would be a glorious curtain call…a time when every one of us would gain our just applause, and then we could sit back and relive the gory…err, glory days of rehearsals…remember the time so-and-so one made that hilarious Freudian slip and we all laughed and laughed and laughed?
Sunday, October 12, 2008 at 10:59PM 