Double Nickles

A month back, a dog bit me. The wound has healed, just a shadow bruise of that quick violence remains on my left calf. But the resulting course of antibiotics has messed with my chemistry. Stomach cramps were the immediate side effect, then rashes that are slowly waning. A few days ago, my left ear refused to pop. This morning, the right ear feels cotton packed. Things moving from left-to-right… might that mean I’m on the mend? From what, though?

Connected symptoms? Possibly. It seems that any assault to the delicate balance within my body starts a chain reaction manifesting in small miseries. I can’t recall the last time I felt no minor irritation, a day without a puffy eyelid or sore leg or indigestion.

Conventional wisdom and a slew of comedians state that all men of a certain vintage will endure physical abnormalities rather than visit a doctor. Stoic suffering. It’s our brand. Women, on the other hand, go to doctors and have their pain dismissed.

I have been seeing doctors for various irregularities. Credit my wife’s powers of persuasion. Were I a single man, I would suck it up, live with itchy skin and plugged ears and other discomforts I dare not name. I’d likely have more issues. I’d probably still smoke cigarettes. My drinking would be out of control.

My wife is going to add years to my life. I love her for this. But I also think of what a man once said: life is a terrible thing to do to a person.

Who said that? I think it was me.

I used to find my birthday depressing. How utterly stupid.

I am not depressed, but I can’t say I care much about my birthday. Because I’m not a child. It’s just another day. Yes, convention would have us celebrate another year around the sun, which I do—I’m not that stoic—but my idea of a celebration is a nice meal with my wife and a glass of single malt after a day of book shopping and maybe a museum visit. No parties, no fanfare. But, as I have done before on this blog (I think—I don’t have it within me to find or link to similar ramblings), I am not above a bit of reflection. The easy slide is into dour thoughts of my declining body (see above) and lack of achievements after what both seems like a tremendous amount of time and no time at all. It’s so fucking quick, it really is.

UNORIGINIAL THOUGHT ALERT:

Childhood seemed to last forever. Meaning K-12 was a slog. My god, would I ever get through this education and ascend to the ranks of real people? Somewhere around thirty-something, days quickened, years evaporated. And here I am, a decade shy of theoretical retirement.

My forties were the best. Everything else was practice for that decade. My fifties have been fine. No real complaints, save for the difficulty bouncing back from a bender or the aching back that demands my version of Pilates.

Two days ago, I had a cyst removed. A speck. I thought it a mole, but it was merely dead skin accumulating in a tiny gulf between shoulder and neck. Hardly worth the bother, but the first dermatologist recommended excising the thing. The second dermatologist, the one with the sharp instruments who did the excising, breezed into the room and cut the thing from me with a nonchalance I found off-putting. It was so rushed—even my follow up questions she answered with a quickness that made me feel guilty for wasting the doc’s valuable time. This woman has real shit to deal with, skin cancer and so forth, and yet there I was asking what to do after this less than minor procedure.

I can’t help but feel that the cyst, and its removal, is a representation of what’s to come: small annoyances that I would sooner ignore because getting them addressed means bothering some healthcare worker with bigger fish to fry. Until my guppies, the rashes and bad back and plugged ears, become malignant marlins. Then I might get a doctor to listen to me attentively. For now, I am merely the middle-aged asshole in their way.

Last weekend, I went for drinks with some friends. Lovely night out, even if I did as I too often do: talked so much I woke the next day full of regret. A few beers and whiskies and I can’t shut the fuck up. You’d think by now I’d practice restraint.

I woke the next day with a physical toll punctuating the regret. Not quite a hangover, certainly not the epic agony of my wilder days, but a fog that made reading difficult. I could hardly get through a page, the clouds in my head obscuring meaning. Usually, a glass of water, a cup of tea, some eggs, and an Advil set me right as rain. Not so anymore.

I’ve laid off the booze since then, partly because the dermatologist advised against drinking before the procedure. Don’t want to thin the blood and cause excessive flow. I’ve springboarded this reprieve into a full week off, which has brought predictable results: clear head, un-bloated belly, better sleep. There was less need for drink when I was younger. I enjoyed nights out, but more for the company than the intoxication. As I’ve aged, I find a glass of something strong more opportunity for contemplative luxury and less to do with callow rituals and rebellion. Which is precisely when the body has decided to make processing a few before bed more difficult. If there is a god, he is either daft or cruel.

God is male. Let’s get that settled. No woman would fuck things up to this degree.

In an essay about his prostate that I am too squeamish to finish, William Styron wrote about the unintelligent design of the human body. One can easily surmise the premise of his argument. Jim Holt made a similar point in a New York Times article: the human body is a botch job. The pain mechanism would make sense if it always warned of danger. Human places a hand on a hot stove, the body feels pain, human knows to remove hand lest they cause irreparable damage. But in the case of cancer, what function does pain serve when the pain often comes far into the disease’s tenure? Holt uses other examples of odd physiology to make his case that any designer of the human body is not very intelligent. No electrician would wire a home so shoddily.

Not believing in God helps. Or believing in a god who is, at best, indifferent. I used to say that I believed in God when things went badly, not because, as they say, there are no atheists in the foxholes. No, I just needed someone to blame other than myself.

I’m an agnostic because that’s my only defensible position. Really, I don’t care if there is a god or not. I can’t prove it one way or the other, so fuck the debate. I’ve heard that people find their way to God, or at least religion, the older they get. Stands to reason: we’re in need of something, especially when our time is closer to the end than the start.

My something has always been art. Literature and film and painting and definitely music. A world without Ulysses and “you shall above all things…” and The Third Man and Undercurrent and Hotel World and Disco Volante and That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do and Repo Man would be intolerable.

We run to God or art or heroin or Star Wars fandom or meaningless sex or Labubus (or their predecessors, Beanie Babies) because we’re here. We need something.

Yesterday, I read another writer’s ramblings, tighter than my own but imbued with a sort of hipper-than-thou contrarianism that presents as insight. The ramblings were not lacking insight per se, but the writer’s tone made me want to find this person and shake them and ask why. Which I suspect might be the reaction of anyone who’s made it this far. If you have, and you’re feeling as I did when I waded through this other writer’s precious bullshit, feel free to leave a comment below. You may simply write “shrimp taco” if you have no other words, and I’ll know that you mean: I finished your jabber, ya prick ya.

My dog is asleep next to me. He worries very little and sleeps easily. Every walk is a treat. Food is joy. Company is all he craves. The wisdom of dogs.

In the time I have left, I plan to read as much as I can. And write more. Even if it is rambling and solipsistic. Because who cares? It’s my time to do as I please.

I read recently that “literary fiction” will go extinct in the next few years. The article making this prediction meant that big five publishing houses are putting literary writing out to pasture and throwing their weight behind things that sell. Vampires fucking and young people with crushes on other young people and Colleen Hoover and the robots that can easily mimic her work. This may seem a depressing possibility, at least to anyone who writes whatever “literary fiction” is, but as someone who might boldly place their work under such a big umbrella term, I am only slightly bothered. At fifty-five, I am not likely to crack the code that will secure me literary renown. Unless I follow Frank McCourt’s example and pen a best seller in my sixties. Presented with this reality, I can either revise my wayward manuscripts into something the market values or just write whatever I want and find a way to share it with the few people who give a damn. It doesn’t take Kreskin-like clairvoyance to guess what I’ll do.

So that’s what I’m doing with whatever remains: practicing the art of writing, reading for pleasure when not reading for pay, watching what I eat so I can still indulge once in a while, visiting the sawbones with regularity so my irregularities remain manageable. And matching inevitable decline with caustic humor. And long walks with my wife. And long talks. Big books, brazen ambition, beautiful failure.

Life is shit as much as it is joy. Or so it can feel. True accounting would show that the level of shit is far greater than the joy. But the joy is what keeps us going. I sustain myself with mornings in bed and the comfort of my wife and my dog and a second cup of tea and writing nearly 1,800 words that few if any people will ever read because there is nothing else. And it is enough.

Whisk(e)y. A love Story

In my ongoing project, rewriting the dictionary, I have defined alcohol thusly: delicious poison. But this is inaccurate. I only find whisky, and some whiskey, delicious.

I make the distinction between whisky and whiskey because the Scots insist that whisky be spelled without an e. And they make the best whisky, so let’s respect their wishes.

There are great examples of whiskey, but they mostly come from Ireland.

Ireland and Scotland argue over which country invented this highest marvel of human ingenuity. I take no side in this war, just enjoy the spoils.

American whiskey arrives in the form of bourbon and rye and the popular mash, Jack Daniels. I’m not above sampling these potions, but there’s a stronger burn and sweeter taste to many of the finer products of Kentucky that my middle-age guts don’t adore. If I am to imbibe a domestic highball, let it be full of Buffalo Trace or Woodford Reserve. Otherwise, I stick with the lighter fare from across the pond.

My go to Irish whiskey when I’m on a budget: Tullamore DEW. Jameson is fine as well. Bushmills will do. But if I had my druthers, I’d solely sip any of Teeling Distilleries’ offerings. Redbreast if I really want to splash out. Once I had the Green Spot. It was lovely, but at $70 a bottle, I rarely enjoy that uisce. The batches from Conamara are peaty, much like Islay scotch. I shell out for a bottle when I can. I’m sometimes compelled by Powers. Paddy’s seems offensive. I only this year found McConnell’s, a Belfast booze. So many whiskies, so little money.

As for Scotch… hard to save much on those, unless you go with a blended. I’m not above that, but I splurge on single malt when I can. My favs: Jura 10 is fine for the price, but the older Juras are even better. Laphroig is peaty as fuck. I like that. Brine and peat smoke. Lovely. Tullibardine is affordable and quite nice, but I wish I had the resources to regularly consume Dalwhinnie. When I was last in the Highlands, I had the pleasure of sipping this whisky and sampling chocolates at the distillery, and I don’t know if it is the memory of that grand afternoon or the quality of the booze, but it’s the top pick at the moment. But I wouldn’t turn down Talisker or object to Oban. One day I may get enough socked away for a bottle of MacKellan. I’ve had the Ardbeg, which is smokey to the point of resembling bacon. No thank you. Lagavulin is everything Ron Swanson said it was. He really must have had some gold reserves to afford the amount of that Islay export he drank.

My first whiskey was many people’s first whiskey: Southern Comfort. Basically cough syrup. A short stint in that course and I graduated to Jack Daniels. Jim Beam always seemed like Jack’s lesser cousin, but I won’t lie—I swilled enough of that to tell the difference. Oh, to be young again!

Old Overholt or Wild Turkey Rye. I’d kick neither out of bed for eating crackers.

I wonder if Delilah’s, that punk bar of my youth, still serves cheap Wild Turkey on Thanksgiving. A nice way of avoiding arguing politics with your republican uncle.

As stated, I’m only an import guy, too old rather than too sophisticated for American brown. Bourbon is fire. Scotch is peat and seawater. Irish is sunlight.

Tommy Tiernan joked that whiskey is made of fireflies and the tears of redheaded women. Or something like that. A popular whiskey: Writer’s Tears. Amusing, and, from what I hear, solid. The analogy certainly fits.

Gin is my only other strong water. I like it in summer on ice with tonic and lime. Crisp and dry and rife with botanicals. Almost sounds medicinal. I tend to drink too many G&Ts because clear alcohol still seems like water. Even though I could never stomach it straight.

Whiskey I drink straight. Neat with a water back because one needs water after whiskey, not in it. Especially not in whisky. They say a drop of spring water activates the flavor, but I dunno about all that.

I used to drink scotch and water until a friend said, “That’s just watered down scotch.” Good point!

These days, I keep indulgences to two glasses once (okay, maybe twice) a week. My doctor had words last checkup. But my birthday is coming in a week or so, and I’ve allowed myself an extra night of sipping scotch. Treat yourself, right? Anyway, who wants to live forever?

I don’t think the alcohol is killing me. I don’t drink as much as people seem to think I do. I remember when I was a smoker how every cigarette made me very aware of the seconds I was sacrificing to Nick O’Teen. I felt every drag and knew that no good would come from maintaining that habit well past my thirties. I rarely think about the dangers of strong drink. Somehow I trick myself out of focusing on alcoholic wreckage. We’re all of us capable of defending an abusive partner. You don’t know scotch the way I do. Scotch just loves me too much.

Ali Smith and Actual Joy

“…the idea that pain is always looking for somewhere to land is central to the book, and also part of Smith’s answer to the question of the purpose of art in end times. Her writing…is a place for pain to land.”

The above quote comes from Sarah Moss in this review .

This is perhaps the best assessment of Ali Smith’s work post How to Be Both. Though it may be the underlying purpose of all her writing.

I read the bulk of Smith’s latest novel Glyph last night, because Smith, for all her play and experimenting, pens quite readable books. Even when punning (which she’s very fond of) and listing (no shortage of that in her recent work) and digging into etymologies and layering narratives, Smith crafts pleasing prose. There is, to my mind, no better evidence of her grace and play than in Hotel World, still my favorite of hers, likely never to be replaced. That was an early novel; what she’s been doing lately is not all that different from her past efforts, but where Hotel World is fractured into five overlapping narrations that maintain surprising tightness, the Seasonal Quartet (plus a companion novel because, fuck it, why not?) and the recent duology (Gliff and Glyph) make space for maybe not looser connections but certainly something baggier. The Accidental, Smith’s third novel, also changes narrators each chapter and stays, more or less, centered. How to Be Both is split in half, the order of the narratives switched depending on which (not quite) copy one holds.

None of this structural play is terribly new, at least not to readers familiar with Woolf or Faulkner, and none of these conceits overwhelm Smith’s storytelling. They enhance her craft rather than wag the dog. But reviews will inevitably focus on these elements, hopefully not at the expense of engaging with Smith’s concerns, namely: how to be a person in threatening times.

At least this seems to be Smith’s concern since she started the Seasonal Quartet. Those four (er, five) books were written and published within a year of each other and make direct reference to contemporary life. To be sure, Smith could not have imagined that Covid would be a part of her project, but as she mined contemporary concerns, the pandemic needed its novels (Summer and Companion Piece) topping off a project that started as Brexit was poisoning the air (Autumn) and examined the struggles of community and family (Winter), the very real detention of immigrants and the possibility of hope (Spring). Connection and loss run through each book reflecting our time of infinite possibility stalled by inertia. We are enslaved to technologies that promise liberation, in thrall to distractions marketed as innovations, and ruled by governments that speak of freedom while they brutalize those most vulnerable. Add a climate crisis and a pandemic to the mix and things seem pretty goddamn bleak. Yet each novel in the quartet offers joy, a word I have a hard time using, coopted, as it is, by algorithms and made the mantra of a generation I suspect has been made to expect endless dopamine. Smith is by no means a Good Vibes Only writer—she does not shy away from the reality, however dark, and yet her novels always feel rooted in the possibility that we could change things. We really could.

Maggie Smith’s (not the actress) poem “Good Bones” achieves the same end: confrontation of the bleakness of existence with the reminder that “you could make this place beautiful.” The two Smiths share this optimism. Though, looking closer, is the poem really optimistic? It posits the idea that one could make the world beautiful the way a realtor “walking you though a real shithole, chirps on / about good bones.” Smith the poet is trying to sell the world to her children who she is tasked with protecting and preparing. Not easy!

Smith the novelist is similarly examining the forces that make existence precarious, dangerous, dehumanizing, and delightful. I can’t always say I finish an Ali Smith book feeling ready to fight the power, not even after Spring, a book I assigned in a class called Power and Oppression. I wanted the students to see a story where the central horror, detention of migrants, was confronted with an absurd character, a girl who magically walks into a prison and asks the guards why they are doing what they do. This precocious young girl, named Florence, meets a guard, Brit (Smith is quite fond of on-the-nose character names) and convinces her to change her ways, which are not inherently cruel. Brit just needs a job. Florence dubs them “Florence and the machine” because Smith is having fun.

My students saw Florence as a stand in for Greta Thunberg. They understood the idea of a young person demanding that the world do a better job. And they saw what I was trying to do by making them read such a book. And they know that they could make the world beautiful. But they also need jobs.

How to square that circle? Every generation since well before mine has reckoned with the problem of knowing that the world is in trouble and needing to feed themselves and their families. We could do so much to curb climate change, but none of it will amount to anything the truly powerful corporations could do, so fuck it. YOLO. May as well get paid before the world burns. I can’t say I’m any better. I have worked for organizations that do things I do not love, things that have made me aware of my complicity in a system I despise. The real sin of capitalism against the individual is the forced participation that requires us to shelve our consciences in order to survive. And while we can, and sometimes do, fight back, our small resistance chips away at an imposing monolith. Are these actions enough?

Smith’s novels often make me believe in the importance of accumulative action. No, I won’t stop the war in Gaza myself, and her latest book, which directly comments on that (to use a disgusting euphemism) conflict, won’t stop it either. But reading about it in Glyph, through the mind of another precocious young person (Smith is not bothered by repeating tropes), made me feel that perhaps change is possible. Maybe the Zoomers might do something. And maybe their older cousins had an impact as well. As well us grumpy fifty-somethings and our Boomer parents. Generations love to reductively blame their elders for ruining the world and leaving the young with a mess to clean, but I can’t always lock in with that complaint. While not ill-founded, blaming the previous generations for the ills of the day ignores all the things none of us understand well enough to address. We’re oppressed and oppressor in often equal measure. I like to remind my students that they are 100% right to be angry with the Boomers and, sure, Gen X, but talk to me in thirty years. Tell me what the next generations are saying about yours. Try telling me they’re wrong. Your fight is not invalidated by whatever you’re doing that may make everything worse. Because we’re all trying our best. Well, most of us.

Smith trucks in this awareness of the struggle and the ease of disenchantment, the lure of getting by, the possibility of resistance, the beauty of community. I can’t figure out how a writer can both begin books the way Smith does in the Seasonal Quartet, with pages that exhaustively catalogue the ugliness of the day, and end with something close to hope. And yes, there are moments in her recent books that make me cringe slightly, a sort of flashing arrow pointing toward not always a happy outcome so much as the possibility that things might just be okay with this damned human race. I cringe, but I also smile.

Gliff and Glyph don’t offer the same experience, but they come damn close. And I may be alone here—reviews of both books speak to their healing optimism specifically evident in each novel’s plucky sisters. In Glyph, the estranged pair come back to each other, which is supposed to be big, though not much was done to establish their rift. Regardless, I got the message: bonds break but also heal. And if both novels rely on young girls imbued with wisdom and power beyond the scope of the average tween or teen, the effect is perhaps diminished the third (fourth?) time. But I was still up for the ride. Because Smith is a clever, fun writer who resists toxic positivity and leaves me feeling better than I felt before I read her. Me, a cranky dude who sees existence as absurd, the universe as chaotic, modern life as foolishly constructed, history as suspect, ambition as folly, leaders as rogues, and failure as inevitable. This sour fucker actually feels something akin to joy while reading Ali Smith. Not the visceral pleasures gotten from wallowing in grindcore metal violence or gallows humor. Not catharsis or solace, but actual joy.

A goddamn miracle.

Working It Out

A modern device of self-torture

What is my pronoun’s antecedent? I cannot say, for even as I work out, I am not always sure why. Or who, what, when, where. I know that I am the one tasked with maintaining my body, and that I am at the age where bouncing back from ill-advised indulgences is not so easy, thus the working out.  Which should answer a few of those five Ws. But there is very little I understand about life, mine or yours. I do think I know some of why I go to the gym. One reason is that I have to, much like I have to go to the dentist. I mean, I don’t have to, but if I don’t, the consequences are a motherfucker.

Start again because this essay, like my workout routine, is all about reps done quickly.

I started going to gym in my thirties because I was tired of being fat and nowhere near done drinking beer or eating pizza. My doctor, who I also started seeing regularly, advised simple cardo stuff and some weight training to build bone density. And I was with someone who wanted to go with me to the gym, which was fun. I like working out with this person. I like working out for her so I can stay in some shape approximating attractive, at least to her.

I once got winked at in a gym locker room. I dined out on that compliment for weeks.

I stopped going to the gym for a few years. Then my back started rebelling. I went to chiropractors. They were helpful to an extent, but most of them tried upselling no end of apparatus that would fit right into a David Cronenberg film. One made my back worse, so I went to a physical therapist who told me that I should work out regularly to keep my core strong and my back functional. And so here I am back at the gym with surprising regularity.

I sometimes think of Henry Rollins and his gym philosophy. Or Kathy Acker who also wrote about the gym in ways that are infinitely more intelligent than the rhetoric of the average podcast bro looksmaxxer. These heroes make me considerably more willing to get out of bed and torture my muscles. Working out is punk. Once upon a time, so was chain-smoking.

My membership with one athletic association permits me access to multiple gyms. The one closest to home is where I work out next to mostly older men and women. The men in this locker room are very comfortable with their bodies. Good for them. My modesty has similarly relaxed as I’ve aged. This is my dumb, lumpy body. It’s sometimes a pain covering it up. Fuck it—take a peek if you must.

The gym I go to on the way to work is full of healthy, toned, buff young people. I do not fit in, but there I am doing my simple exercises while they take workout selfies.

The gym is a microcosm of society. Which is I why I tend to find many of the people at the gym annoying. These are the types of people I have encountered while working out:

The before-mentioned Insta clout chasers

They can handle an impressive amount of weight, but they get mad when you walk between them and the camera recording their dead lifts. They will only workout in front of the mirror. Their athleisure wear would not be inappropriate at a club. The money spent on these garments could feed a Cuban village for months. Their hair and makeup are always on point.

The texters

Disobeying the rule against cell phone usage, they cannot stop playing with their gadgets even when it seems like they get zero pleasure from thumbing and scrolling. Their addiction is so raging that it interrupts their workout, which wouldn’t bother me were I not waiting for them to stop fucking with their phones and finish their sets. They always sit at the machine I want to use, whittling away five minutes on their phones before even thinking about, you know, working out. Their muscles have cooled and recovered by the time they lift something heavier than an Android, making each new set of exercises very much like the first. As a result, they think the ease of lifting this weight means they are in great shape.

The Water Boys

These young men are swoll, shredded, “built different!” and so forth. They have the jock’s deadeye stare as they pump! They wear T-shirts that say Lift Heavy Sh*t because they are so badass even when they censor naughty words. They carry ridiculously oversized water jugs and hydrate because that’s mad important, bro. They grunt. A lot. With every rep. Because they lift a full stack. And grunts are primordial. Bestial. They go beast mode at the gym. They follow gymfluencers who preach surface-level positivity. They never re-rack weights because how else would the rest of us know how much they can lift? They occasionally tell the rest of us what we’re doing wrong and offer to coach us if we’re looking for a trainer. Maybe just like and subscribe?

The Interval Colonizer

The guy working out across three different spaces will get very upset if you use one of the weights or machines he has reserved with his hand towel. He also tends to sit and text between intervals, but give him a minute, dude, he has one more set on that shoulder press machine. 70% chance he won’t wipe down the machines when he’s finally done. Marking his territory.

The Rest of Us

The folks who are not sure why we’re in this facility with these people who are probably lovely in many ways but right now are grunting and sweating and making us feel inadequate. We tend to do our routines quickly, with an eye on the finish line. We get on the treadmill and watch the clock. We feel the best moment of the workout is its conclusion. To be sure, the hardest part of our workout is summoning the will to visit the gym. We regard exercise as necessary but don’t fetishize it the way we do food or literature or knitting or craft beer. We are work-to-live not live-to-work. We don’t grind. We chip away.

I will admit that I feel good after a gym session. Today is no different; I’m in a better mood post-workout, am feeling a lot better than I felt yesterday, a day of doubt and frustration and anger that I can only partially explain. Everything yesterday was dark and wrong, as if the atmosphere had been poisoned by a soul-eroding virus. Today’s sunnier disposition has to do with endorphins, for even as I hated waking up, packing a gym bag, driving to the gym, being among the people in the gym, showering in sub-optimal conditions, well, now all that’s done and the rest of the day is ahead of me, and I feel goddamn happy. Maybe that’s what the “it” in “Working It Out” is: the medieval spleen bile that, were it retained in my body, would keep me a grumpy fucker.

I recall a friend telling me once that vomiting was the body making room for more beer. An unfortunate T-shirt I once saw read: sweat is fat crying. Tears make us feel better because they expel the horrors behind our eyes. Working out is me letting out the bad humors. Which keeps me ready for another day of whatever the fuck is coming.

The Game is the Game: twenty years of The Devil Wears Prada

Allow me to begin by acknowledging that no one gives a damn about what I think. And that no one is being forced to read my blog. No proverbial gun to anyone’s head. And that I have no problem admitting that my opinions and analyses are solely my own and no one need adopt them. I’m likely full of shit.

The reason for this throat clearing is that, after writing this, I’ve routinely gotten emails from Red Hot Chili Peppers fans that are almost as dull and stupid as the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ music. I’m somewhat scared of what may come from sharing my thoughts on a much-loved movie, but the thoughts won’t leave me. Best to excise them from the brain via the art of writing, or whatever it is I’m practicing. Silence is an option, always, but (aside from the Chili Peppers fans and haters Google sends my way) not that many people actually read this blog, so fuck it.

Also: I should confess that 1. I’ve seen The Devil Wears Prada numerous times and don’t exactly hate it, just feel it nets far more praise than it merits, and 2. I like nice clothes and lament how slovenly so many of my fellow humans dress, even if I understand the reasons why. For some—too many—it’s a matter of economics. Nice things cost money. Of course, I had a roommate who managed to look dapper as fuck by solely shopping at resale stores and mending clothes rather than cycling through new outfits every few months. And a very stylish friend has assured me that one needs only a modest core of outfits and little crafty attention to their possibilities.

Some people I have known have asserted, not incorrectly, that clothes are a con. I had a student who wanted to write his midterm essay on this very idea, his claim being that the world would be a better place if we all wore sweatpants. I get it—comfort over elegance. And okay, I hardly represent the pinnacle of fashion, but I own a blazer or two and more than a few nice shirts. I appreciate those who give enough of a fuck to present themselves somewhere between modestly and fabulous. So, as I grapple with my feelings on the movie all fashionistas bow to, know that I am not presenting a critique along the lines of those mentioned above.

Okay. Here goes.

The Devil Wears Prada offends me less than many movies of the last twenty years, yet this week—as the unnecessary sequel dominates theater screens—I’m finding myself irked at the number of podcasts and articles declaring the 2006 film a classic, a brilliant film, a testament to the magic of cinema. I mean, it’s fine, right? But is it great?

Perhaps I’m cranky after decades of seeing words like genius and classic being used too elastically. The movie, as a piece of filmmaking, is okay. Entertaining. Charming. Well-executed. Anne Hathaway, the leading lady, is winning and the real star of the movie, Maryl Streep as Miranda, delivers a performance that, while nowhere close to the weighty roles of Sophie’s Choice or Silkwood, is predictably solid. But is she the real star? No. The real star is clothing. Fashion. Capitalism. Hustle culture. Grind mentality. A perverted definition of the American dream.

The movie encapsulates the era from which it was spawned—we see 2006 clearly. Just a hair into the 21st century, 9/11 having briefly caused these United States to examine our hubris before the missiles began flying and the mechanics of the market went back to reminding us that the most important thing is that we work ourselves to death and satisfy the whims of those above us. Because maybe then we’ll get the big job and can be insufferably mean to our underlings and fuck over those most loyal to us who foolishly think they are next in the line of succession. The financial crisis (from which we learned not a fucking thing) was two years away and we were still preaching the gospel of unfettered capitalism. Money = power and clothes and making fun of anyone with a real human body.

I’m taking a minute now to credit an influence, the famous take down of another beloved film, “I Rewatched Love Actually and Am Here to Ruin It for All of You” by Lindy West. What I remember most from this glorious essay is the attention paid to a character who the film consistently regards as fat. The role is played by a human woman who looks like a human woman with a normal human body. Not even an overweight normal human body. Very much like Anne Hathaway’s normal human body in the first half of the The Devil Wears Parada before she goes down a size or two, a feat celebrated by her coworker because how dare she ever have a normal human body?

The first half of The Devil Wears Prada is notable for two things: jokes about the leading lady’s non-existent weight problem and making that character feel like shit for being a heathen ignorant of twin gods named Fashion and Power. That she becomes a congregant long enough to piss off her friends, lose her boyfriend (more on him in a bit), sleep with a random asshole, rise in her horrible boss’s estimation, and spout some girl boss feminism is shown as correct. She has come into the fold, seen the error of her earlier, dismissive ways. The famous cerulean sweater scene plays a trick on the viewer by showing us two very similar belts and having one of Miranda’s minions claim they are so very different. Hathaway’s Andy, our cinematic stand-in, laughs as her coworkers debate the merits of each belt as if they were curing cancer, only to be publicly (pun alert) dressed down by her boss, which is when our perspective is supposed to shift. The film has taken us to task for laughing at the absurdity of these very similar items being described as polar opposites. We can laugh again as the scene concludes, pretending that we too see how silly this uninitiated, frumpy girl is, so “blithely” unaware of how the powerful people in the room hold sway over what sweater she plucks from a discount bin (her real sins: she shops discount, doesn’t think much about her ensemble). Oh, Andy. Really. Grow up and get with the Versace already.

And she does get with the Runway program. She excels at the job, is admitted to the club and basks in all the baubles inclusion offers. But not before complaining to the one person at the office who reluctantly offers her a spoonful of consideration, played by Stanley Tucci. He tells her that she should quit if she isn’t happy there. He knows a million girls who would kill for the gig. So quit. Or shut up and do the job. Dress the part. Swallow the pride and skip lunch and hustle, hustle, grind!

I want to take a moment and discuss something one of my students shared with me regarding not just The Devil Wears Prada but their time working in the fashion industry. Specifically referring to the cerulean sweater scene, they argued that this duality, the knowing how ridiculous the industry is while surrendering to its vast power and basking in its giddy pleasures, perfectly encapsulates a career in fashion. Other briefly-consulted sources back this up. You love it; you hate it; you live it; you doubt every moment. I cannot speak to the veracity of this and am trusting those closer to the industry than I will ever be, but I can see the ways the gig becomes the life, the enthusiasm becomes the religion. And if such emersion into a competitive, mercenary, and gorgeous world is not only possible but necessary for one to thrive, they can hardly be faulted. I suppose. As I cast a few stones, I might admit my own zealous participation in different cults. Aren’t we all navigating systems of power that we bow to while hiding our scorn? Perhaps. I am at a loss to think of an industry free from ethical compromises, one without hierarchies or daily challenges to one’s personal values.

At least in the fashion world there are colorful extravaganzas and beauty. But I can’t stop thinking about all that spectacle as The Devil Wears Prada 2 is in theaters just as the Bezos threw themselves a party at the Met while the world’s burning and the people who slave for these assholes pee in bottles or wear adult diapers to work. If we are in the second Gilded Age then the likely dazzling glitz and haute couture of TDWP2, like the Bezos’ bash, feels tone deaf and crass. In 2006, the first film felt like a fluffy, harmless thing, a peak behind the jeweled walls revealing sights equal parts glamorous and poisonous. But funny. And our avatar, plucky wide-grinning Andy, got out before she spouted anything so disturbing as the wish for a stomach virus to further shrink her stomach (that line, from Emily Blunt’s character, is played for laughs when it should conjure horror). I’ve been told the sequel addresses some realities of 2026—publishing is on its knees, the successful career Andy dreamed of is hers, though now precarious. At some point I will see the movie; for now, I’ll reserve scrutiny and pause the before-mentioned concern that a second sampling of pretty clothes and scheming assholes will taste bitter.

But I digress.

Later in the first movie, Andy’s boyfriend, played by that dude from Entourage (whose name I forget, who I’ll call “that dude from Entourage” and won’t bother looking up because I hate that show), echoes Stanley Tucci’s sentiments. She could just quit if she hates the job so much. Sure, that dude from Entourage doesn’t give her the “You’re not trying; you’re whining” speech and is not nearly articulate or smart enough to verbalize what he is likely thinking: I don’t like seeing my girlfriend this upset over a fucking job. If you’re unhappy, quit. I know… easy to say, and he doesn’t get it, and he’s being selfish, and he’s not supporting her. There’s been a lot of talk lately about his character being the real villain of the film. I’d call him a dopey, bland, garden-variety bro. He and Andy probably shouldn’t be together and are heading in different directions. Which makes them a typical young couple. But he doesn’t want to support her killing herself for a job she is at first infuriated by and later ambivalent about? And he’s the asshole? Not the woman who calls Andy by a different name, gives her impossible tasks, needlessly weight shames her and faults her for acts of fucking nature?

That Andy has a very late-in-the-movie defection is hardly redeeming. Yeah, she tosses her phone in the fountain and quits, but she’s already swallowed enough Kool-Aid that her rejection of her boss’s toxicity does little to sap vitality from the film’s message: wealth and power and handbags are worth any number of principles. It is not only expected that one should kill themselves and fuck people over to get ahead, it’s correct. Anything else is lazy and mediocre. Exceptional people shelve their ethics and sacrifice their every moment to the gig. They don’t think about free time because there is no such thing. There is only the dress, the shoes, the handbag, the glitz, the spectacle, the title, the office, the salary, the accumulation of power measured against the other person’s accumulation of power. This other person may sit next to you in their very own cubicle (bigger than yours?) and they may even become your friend long enough for you to throw them to the wolves if it elevates your position. That’s the game.

Here I am reminded of the mafia films and crime shows that at times glorify horrible behavior. Fans of The Wire get caught up in the gangster chess game, the ways Avon and Stringer out maneuver the police who play by a set of rules not that different from the criminals’. It’s all in the game, as Omar says. The show speaks of citizens and players. The talk feels very applicable to Corporate America. The free market. Wall Street. Silicon Valley. The Government. A notable scene from Veep featured a senator asking someone, “What, is this your first day in the game?” The senator was referring to the mechanics of press conferences and backroom deals. Forget that these events center on the governmental politics of a country and have real-world stakes. It’s just a game. Silicon Valley assholes refer to anyone not at their level as NPCs, people they do not see as real, however much these people are made worse by the tech leaders’ megalomania. It’s all a game. Whoever dies with the most toys wins. Cops, gangsters, politicians, brokers, tech bros, magazine editors, executive assistants, chefs, mechanics, even (gulp) university professors. All game players.

At the worst moment of The Devil Wears Parada, Andy defends her boss against the criticism (monster, tyrant, demanding) by rightly pointing out that if Miranda were a man the world would call him smart and driven and praise his business acumen. Salient point. Sexism is definitely a thing. But so is toxic productivity. The film never really questions the culture that insists one should work as hard as not only Andy does but surely her boss has before getting where she is. And Miranda’s job is never safe; she is forever dealing with the vipers plotting against her. She makes moves to ensure her place at the top, moves that require some moral flexibility. That’s the game, and Miranda plays it best. We should idolize her, learn from her, defend her, never ask if the game she’s playing is venomous. Bigger questions about capitalism and the deleterious physical and psychological effects of climbing corporate ladders be damned. There are handbags to hawk and human beings to destroy.

Revisiting Bukowski, a Sort of Defense

As the years pile up, I am happy that my curiosity remains intact, somewhat. I don’t feel the same compulsion to know about everything the way I once did—my old practice of scanning the Chicago Reader to see exactly which movies (plural!) I would see that coming weekend, the hours spent reading articles about important musicians, those afternoons in used bookshops happening upon my next obsession, those days are sorta over. I’ve found my canon, and while there’s space for new music and a new favorite film, I have collected my go-tos and will happily revisit them as my fifties fall well behind me and I’m off toward the grave.

A personal canon is a good thing. I have my favorite this and that, fifty-plus years of amassing the art that speaks to me, for me, against me. And though I’ve eased away from cultural omnivorism, there’s still hunger for more, even as I have far less interest in whatever the hell is going on now. I’m sure the new Wet Leg is great, but I’m just recently discovering Swell Maps.

As with the posts to this blog thing about the Red Hot Chili Peppers (which nets me messages from randos, most in agreement, some making facile remarks) and A Clockwork Orange,  I had it in mind today to revisit some of Charles Bukowski’s writing because there was a time when I read the guy. A long time ago. When I was young and that sort of thing appealed to me.

I don’t think of Hank much these days, but last week a student mentioned him in class, and I had a weird nostalgia for the time when I was reading Last Night of the Earth Poems and finishing the last cigarette (“one before I go to bed”) of the day and falling asleep thinking that a writer had to be, above all else, honest even if being honest meant being vulnerable and ugly. Risk, goddamnit!

I don’t know that I was wrong, but there a lot of ways to be honest and vulnerable that don’t require so much performative edginess. Which is not to say that Bukowski was faking his drunken asshole persona, but scores of lesser writers and bigger assholes have emulated Hank to significantly lesser effect.

The last thing I intend is an apology for reading the patron saint of drunken writers. Lit bros aplenty will pen their peans for Hank. This is more me thinking about why I have kept every one of his books (well, up to a point—the dude has more posthumous releases than Tupac) as opposed to many by Kerouac and Hunter Thompson I let go once their madcap scribblings struck me as juvenile. Thompson was the better craftsman, and Kerouac, for all his rambling, could land on something close to beautiful when his head cleared. Still, despite Bukowski’s prose sometimes clunking, and more than a few of his poems feeling unnecessary, his work remains compelling.

I might chalk it up to the man behind the poems/stories/novels. Not just the larger-than-life stuff, but the part of his biography that always inspired me. This was a man who rejected so much, who had zero time for the academic classroom, whose writing bore few marks of the editor’s scissors, and yet while he lacked Faulkner’s flourishes or Joyce’s maximalist glories, his simple, direct prose achieved something singular. Unlike his one-time hero Hemingway, Buk’s largely unadorned sentences feel natural, flowing, energetic. When he’s on, he’s really something—funny and heartbreaking despite the cheap bravado. But maybe because he earned the right to swagger, I don’t mind all the tough guy shit. Hemingway always read like a man in search of experience that would make him the legend he was in his head, whereas Bukowski didn’t chase wars or bullfights or deep-sea fishing. He chased solitude, self-destruction, the beauty that appears “as the / spirit / wanes.” Misanthropic, misogynist, malcontent, he definitely has his warts, many of which fueled his most interesting efforts.

Of course, the same bestial wails that continue drawing readers repel those looking for something like refinement. But he has that. Not in the sense of regality; Bukowski’s elegance comes from the simplicity of his ideas. He was at his best when he detailed the experience of the lowlife like an American Jeffrey Bernard without the British writer’s dry wit. The hardscrabble existence and skid row poetry that, when it was honest, offered complexities. But when Hank’s aim was profundity, when he really tried for something more than a slice of gritty life, he came off as another crank at the end of the bar who you were despite to pawn off on the next unlucky bastard bellying up.

A friend told me that she’d seen plenty of men whose dating profiles named Bukowski as their favorite writer. Automatic swipes left. I get it. Bukowski was a prick, albeit an interesting one, but the dudes who love him can be insufferable. Then again, I’ve heard women say that about Joyce fans, too. And one woman said she’ll never read Kurt Vonnegut because of the number of boys who have insisted she give Slaughterhouse Five a shot. Were I still a single man (perish the fucking thought!), I wonder which writer would send me away from a potential date. Nicholas Sparks? Colleen Hoover? No. Wait—Candace Bushnell. Maybe. I dunno… no woman has ever beset me with unending praise for their favorite writer, not because women don’t have favorite writers but because women don’t go on and fucking on about all the writers I NEED to read. I’ve learned more from women than men, yet no woman—aside from those employed as teachers—has ever tried to teach me anything.

Suffice it to state that Bukowski’s attitude toward women was rarely palatable. Part of his package. I don’t know anyone who goes to Hank for nuanced takes, but I will offer mild defense in the form of a few remembered poems and stories. At times, when he dropped the word “whore” from his lexicon, Buk could be a softy. His poems to his wife that speak of her adding years to his life, him pleading that when she takes herself away please do it slowly, his crying jags, tears running from his face like “heavy senseless things,” the stories where he communicates his madness and lets the reader see that all the posturing is actually covering up something so much worse than what’s on the page… I can’t help but find something in those highs that make me okay with the lows.

And there are lots of lows.

A few good texts stand out, mostly the novel Factotum and the poetry collections Mockingbird Wish Me Luck and War All the Time. A handful of stories have stuck with me— “The Blanket,” “Great Poets Die in Stinking Pots of Shit,” “The Birth, Life, and Death of an Underground Newspaper”— and the travel book Shakespeare Never Did This is an overlooked gem. But this list represents a drop in the Bukowski ocean. Among those waves are stories like “The Fuck Machine” and “All the Pussy We Want” that don’t do much more than send my eyes rolling. His story of nearly drinking himself to death and ending up in a charity ward remains high in my estimation, but for all those hits there are heaps of misses that a good editor would have caught. John Martin may have been a more hands-off editor or maybe he knew that unfiltered Bukowski was what kept the Black Sparrow flying. Or maybe what we have is the result of editing? In which case, what the fuck was left on the cutting room floor?

Bukowski’s many tales where women are little more than pieces of ass who lie and break his heart send me to a different shelf. I like to think I was never as big a prick. I have not always been a good guy or a great boyfriend, but I never absorbed Hank’s sexism so much I casually regurgitated it to some unfortunate female. Or maybe I did? Who remembers—but damn, I can certainly see the man I don’t want to be when I read his pages. Which is where this reevaluation gets sticky. Perhaps by reading these tales of ordinary madness and notes of a dirty old man I am afforded vicarious thrills, the voyeur’s permission to celebrate the worst on offer in Women or Love is a Dog From Hell. I can perform as an ally while letting this overt misogynist scratch some terrible itch I don’t want to touch.

Even when I had my head somewhat up Bukowski’s ass, all those years back when I thought Tarantino made good movies, I never thought he was the equal of Faulkner or Eliot. I knew better then, and I know a lot better now. The marvels I’ve witnessed in Joyce’s novels, the hysterical tragicomedy in Beckett, Calvino’s fabulist wonders, not to mention the slew of women who are, on their worst days, better writers (Jeanette Winterson, Ali Smith, Virginia Woolf, Jessie Fauset, Ann Quinn), Buk can’t touch any of that. Had I one writer to bring with me to a deserted island… I don’t know who I would choose. But it would not be Bukowski. Yet… there they are, those books. They take up so much real estate, an entire shelf on one of my bookcases. Most of those books currently staring me in the face are not worth keeping. They are there really to remind me of the kid I was who insisted that reading every Bukowski book wouldn’t yield diminishing returns. What a dumb dumb.

I lent a copy of Women to my friend Kevin. His review: “I could’ve drank. I could’ve fucked. I drank.” Nailed it.

I have not given Bukowski much thought in these last, oh, thirty years. But I see him popping up often in my Instagram feed, pictures of the man somehow looking both bloated and desiccated, shirt buttoned well below the top, beer bottle in hand, some plucked quote over the photo and scores of dudes in the comments celebrating the guy. Fine. Most of their praise is defensible, though from a few lauds come whiffs of manosphere sulfur. Ironic since Buk would have had no time for their dumb causes and idiotic worldview.

The last defense, and the only one I really care about, comes from the novel Women wherein the Bukowski stand-in Henry Chinaski responds to a girlfriend who, while readying her departure from his wretched existence, insists that she’ll one day be a bigger name, that she has more talent than him. Chinaski replies something along the lines of every baby in every crib has more talent than him. The difference is, he does the work. Which is pretty much the best thing we can get from the Bukowski example. The drinking, screwing, gambling, fucking off, quitting jobs, living like a cockroach—all of that overly romanticized stuff is for young males. (Until they get older and realize how much they like money and comfort. Until they reach middle-age and read Walden and daydream about escaping to a cabin in the woods.) But the work ethic is most admirable. Bukoski hated talking about writing and writing workshops and all of that. He just opened a bottle of wine, turned on some classical music, and wrote. Every night. A routine. Imagine that coming from the man mythologized as a loafing reprobate souse.

Bukowski was right. He did not possess admirable talent, at least not as we so often think of it: the fevered genius with greatness beyond understanding who produces visionary works, whose every utterance is a psalm. No, Buk’s example is one that has always inspired me more than the Great Man bullshit. One need not be a genius, just dedicated. Willing to do the work. Sit down, write. As much as possible. As often as possible. Regularly. The words will come. The pages will grow. But if you wait around for divine inspiration, you’re fucked. I’ve written a few books following this example.

Until the Bubbles Cease

This year, I was not invited to represent English at my university’s Lifeboat Debate event. I had that honor the previous three spring semesters. Nothing lasts. Nothing should.

I am not offended. Honestly. I assume that the new crop of students who organize the event don’t know me. Or they don’t like me. Either is possible, but there’s a big dumb part of me that wants to believe I was not asked because of what I said last year.

Quick context: The Lifeboat Debate is a gathering of instructors and students who are tasked with defending their existence. The idea is that the world is flooding and there is only room on a lifeboat for three academic disciplines. Why should mine be invited onboard? Of what value is English?

Of course, the very question offends me to my core, though I realize that not everyone intuitively understands why they ought to practice writing and read a lot of books. Thus, my job. But my job has morphed from composition and literature instructor to detective, and I find myself reiterating the value of functional literacy to a population that increasingly sees no issue with exporting their skills to AI. So maybe the debate has more purpose than I thought?

I would not have won. I never do. At best, I get second or third prize. Last year, I came in second, which I attribute to reverse psychology. Which will make more sense when you read my speech.

My colleague who teaches Sustainability Studies always wins. Of course. The totality of his argument: Who likes eating food and drinking clean water?

I’ve never been competitive, but I will admit that one year I was compelled to fight for my discipline after another colleague resorted to pure pathos and misrepresented Henry David Thoreau’s story. Otherwise, I tend to let someone else take the gold. Forever steeped in punk rock ethos, I’m content staying niche. The real heads know.

And then last year I had a thought: English Comp and Lit should not be saved. I see where the world’s headed. There’s no place for me there.

Here’s the speech I gave as my introductory statement. While I cannot say that it is truly to blame, I, again, want to believe that it had an impact sufficient to deny my invitation to the very event where I would surely be denied hypothetical survival.

“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.”

That’s from an Oscar Wilde book I read as an English major.

I don’t 100% agree, but I understand the sentiment.

Literature and writing have utility, but that makes them much less interesting than the reasons I got into this absurd field of study. And while I respectfully thank you for having me, the idea of defending those reasons in this manner is antithetical to both how and why I’ve spent my life.

Reading, writing, literary study… these are labors of love. They have little value to most people, or at least so say the market, culture, and consumers who believe art is owed to them for free, constantly streaming and all-too disposable.

Let’s be honest: English study is a pain, what with its emphasis on care and reflection and the slipperiness of its most interesting theories. Worse, being an English major or literary-minded person means accepting uncertainty. And these days, no one is comfortable in uncertainty. Literature doesn’t pretend to know anything for sure (unless it’s rubbish posing as literature). What good is that?

Yes, there is “inspirational” literature, but more times than not, you literary-minded suckers will have your hearts broken, your optimism challenged, your ability to understand thwarted, your sense of correctness decimated. At best, you’ll be better prepared for how unprepared we are in this world.

Let me stress this: English doesn’t assure you anything. The language is built on contradictions, exceptions, irregularities, baffling possibility. And worst of all: you’ll never master it. None of us do. Of what use is this to the society you’re rebuilding? Well… plenty, actually, but I can’t pretend that use is quantifiable. And while, unlike some of my esteemed colleagues, I would never assume my discipline’s value is self-evident, I don’t care to beg for shelter in this STEM storm.

So, if my survival is contingent on somehow justifying my chosen discipline’s utility, you should force my face into the cold water until the bubbles cease.

Thank you.

Too Much Joy

 Last week, I had the pleasure (note that word—it will come up again) of reading from my latest book to a group of people gathered at a literary event. I do this from time-to-time because it allegedly helps sell books, though the true purpose behind these gatherings is promoting literature, sharing creativity, engaging with other writers and literary citizens, and honoring the oral tradition of literature, especially poetry.

As much as I can be accused of cynicism and having a “caustic wit” (as said by a former manager at my first office gig before I knew to keep my mouth shut), I do believe in the true idea behind literary gatherings, as described above. Because I’ve never sold many books at any of these events. Not enough, at least, to justify leaving the comfort of my apartment. In this way, I might be called, if not an optimist, an idealist.

At this reading, I shared a bit from my book that I think went over well. A few chuckles and some nice words after, always appreciated. One friend said about the passage I shared, “Acerbic as always.” Another person, who enjoyed the spectacle enough to buy a book, asked if I’ve always been this way. I assume they meant bitter.

I suspect people might describe me as a relatively amiable fellow. Sarcastic and fatalistic, sure, but happy to be among good friends, smiling as much as scowling, if not more. In short: I feel I project a mostly sunny vibe. But if you read my stuff, you’d probably disagree.

At times, I am a bitter, disappointed, frustrated, angry, disillusioned, disaffected, snarky bastard given to the darkest humor and seemingly nihilistic philosophies. “Seemingly” because nihilism is a lazy accusation. I am not nihilistic. Nihilism is easy. And kinda dumb. Existentialism is more the meat. And absurdism even closer to what I might claim as a governing worldview. Because an absurdist does not cover up the horrors of existence with platitudes, positive or negative. They see the struggle, the meaninglessness, and they fight anyway. Anyone can give up. Where’s the fun in that?

If there’s an aspect of modern life, specifically in the U. S. of A., that I don’t love, it’s the imperative to enjoy. Zizek pointed out the way Americans feel an obligation to be happy. It’s baked into our advertisements, pop music, and “Live your best life” T-shirt slogans. It’s not just a desire for joy, thoroughly understandable; it’s the necessity for it. Not being joyous in the land of the free global center for first world capitalist material pleasures is an admission of failure, a glaring fault. Growing up, I heard people wonder, “Who can’t be happy with all of this?” Because the “good life” was not a goal but an edict.

ISLES, that wonderful band from the UK, have a record called Joy as an Act of Resistance. While the record is great, the title conveys something I rather like: that which is being resisted by joy requires some consideration. I mean, you can’t resist without acknowledgement. Joy is not simply the denial of horror so much as the rebellion against it, the refusal to let it completely consume us. And one can find joy in resistance and fight, maybe better joy than escapist pleasure affords.

To be sure, most people can both experience joy and keep an eye on the creeping nightmare, but I suspect we’ve been made to feel that talking about, feeling, or processing anything other than joy is bad bad bad

I have more than a few friends who wring joy from aesthetic pursuits, alcohol and drugs, or “retail therapy.” (I do the same, for the record, so don’t @ me, ideal and possibly nonexistent reader.) I know avowed sensualists, Wildean aesthetes, bone marrow and truffle fry fine diners, collectors of rarities, fashion designer zealots, and others who may bemoan capitalism as quickly as they apply its balm. I do my version of this—I buy more than I need. I know the temporary joy or exchanging money for shiny things. I like my single malts and pretty books, even the ones I may never read. I prefer clothes that are as attractive as they are comfortable and will shell out sums that once would have sickened me just so I can have another flat cap or handsome jacket. But I know that none of this equals meaningful action. To quote Marc Maron, I’m just buffering disappointment.

Pleasure is the thing. We find temporary pleasure in the promise of capitalist joy. We see anything impeding pleasure as wrong, an obstacle that must not be scaled so much as obliterated. Much has been made of the need for friction, so much that I don’t need to get too deep into all that. I can say that the lure of technology and the looming AI “revolution” will be a world without friction where we can enjoy unobstructed pleasure.

Call me (again) cynical, but I don’t buy it. What world will we create that is considerably better? What world have we created already? What frictions are left that are so terrible? Obviously, plenty, and my questions betray plenty of privilege, but forgetting for a minute the vast societies that still want for clean water and the basic infrastructure of the developed world, what more does, say, the USA need? Obviously a lot, most pertaining to socio-political matters, none of which will be addressed by new gadgets. I suppose as the disparities deepen and the middle class vanishes and literacy evaporates and democracy fully crumbles, we’ll have better CGI in our movies and faster delivery from Uber Eats. Pleasures fast and base!

The place where I find the worst examples of human behavior, mine definitely included, is social media. I am the worst version of myself when I’m on Facebook. I’m a slightly better version of Vince on Instagram, as that is mostly the Vince who posts photos and enjoys self-absorption without a lot of words making things worse. My friends on social media fall neatly into one these groups: those who wish to “keep it light” and often strike me as playing on while the Titanic sinks, those who rage against the machine and exhaust themselves exercising futile muscles, and those who just want to pick fights and talk shit. The first group bugs me the most. I get the tendency of the second—they’re pissed and they need an outlet, however unhealthy. The third are also looking for an outlet, through their indignation is considerably less righteous. The first… what are they (we) doing sharing evidence of our best lives and our lovely dinners and our gaudy baubles? I’m as delusional, distracted, and dopamine addicted as the next fucker, sure, but I often suspect the next fucker thinks their solace in pleasure is somehow noble. At least they’re not sharing articles about whatever the hell Trump did this week or yelling at people for using socially outdated language. No, they’re (we’re) just feeding data to machines, making Zuckerberg richer, and furthering a truly dumb culture.

But it’s fun!

Another criticism leveled my way: pessimism. Okay, fine. A little. But I’ve always found that optimism and privilege go hand-in-hand. And, really, I’m not a total pessimist. Just a frustrated romantic. Now that I’m thinking of it, perhaps the reason these labels sting a bit is because they’re supposed to. Joyful optimism is enviable elevation of oneself above the world-weary. It suggests superiority, thus the barbs of “pessimist” and “cynic.” But this may be another reason why I sometimes find positivity toxic. There’s an ugly condescension in there along with the before-mentioned social advantage. It’s easy to be an optimist. There have never before been so many distractions from that which might engender pessimism. And while I can’t advise succumbing to total pessimism, a dash of jaded realism goes a long way, especially when mixed with hope. Hope is far more nourishing than optimism and joy. Transient by nature, joy needs constant chasing. It’s too fleeting to ever be sustainable or world changing.

None of these abstractions are mutually exclusive. I suspect we are all perpetually wavering between hope and despair. It’s understandable that we’d want to push away the dark via whatever device, content, cloying pop song, or delicious poison we find. I’m just trying to find balance. Best we can do, right? (How pessimistic.)