What I love about comedy and poetry is the surprise, the playfulness, the irreverence, the unsaid, the revolution, the absitivially unfuckability of mixing the ridiculous, the outrageous, the tragic, and the sublime, all the metaphors you can muster and the possibility of breaking all the rules. Anything can happen in stand-up or a poem. And the shit that happens that many people think maybe shouldn’t have happened may be the perfect tonic you need, or it may be a complete waste of a few of your precious breaths. In the end, like most everything else, the jokes/poems will be forgotten.
The other day I read a line attributed to George Carlin, stage master of comedy and poetry who was most often fueled by pragmatism, frustration, anger, and apathy in his satiric twists, knowing that as a species we were fucked, so why not have fun with our innate stupidity and just make a mockery of our lives to both entertain and possibly educate? He wasn’t really hopeful about that latter part, but he filled his days with language play, thought, and the inevitable response—comedy. What else was he going to do? And it paid the bills. George’s play on Descartes’ quote (I think, therefore I am) was the same witty ping-pong I penned in a poem of mine. This is not plagiarism, there was no conscious theft, only requoting a philosopher to kick a word-can around. How many others have spewed the same words in regard to that quote and did or didn’t write them or utter them aloud? Who cares? I’m guessing someone who thinks they can make money off it. We are human. We have evolved a language, and we love to holler (even if it is only to ourselves)!
Those who say they do not write to be read may believe that shit, but I don’t. If they don’t care whether anyone ever read what they write, why the fuck are they wasting their time doing something meaningless. If no one ever sees it or reads it, what use is it? You’ve soiled the toilet paper! Talk about self-indulgence! You are spending all this time on “your” behalf, so you can read what you wrote? Scribble on in the bubble, boy! Burn after reading! Just those last two exclamations are smiling-reasons why we love language and why we love stealing and repeating. It’s all about connections, as goofy as they may be, we are trying to communicate here. We would love to get a response. Even if we never hear it, we can’t shit ourselves into believing we only did this for ourselves. To me that’s just fear. Save that crock for the fascist cesspool of mixed-message chaos.
Here’s what I want from you: love, kindness, generosity, cooperation, and a little peace. Is that too much to ask? Do I detect some eye rolls, some nods, some dropped heads? I’m sure some of you can’t swallow that one. And why is that? Oh, yeah, I remember, because of the fascists, the suspicious, the envious, the greedy, and the shamed. Skepticism is good, but fear is often a handicap. Trust is a risk, so many people won’t trust me. They won’t trust you. They don’t believe us. They think we are after something they have. Of course, I’m just surmising this shit since I can’t understand or know what’s really inside another person’s head. The only way we can get an inkling is by trying to communicate. By talking to one another.
So given that scenario and the media bombardment we are subjected to each day, maybe the best way to survive or communicate is through comedy, poetry, music, and all forms of art/entertainment. These are the venues where we can step outside of ourselves and let the soul sing about all the insanity, the fear, and the pain we feel. Make light of it. Shed light on it. Turn the darkness into satire, make the devil a fool, put on Zappa’s “Titties and Beer,” make our pitch for laughter and fun. I’m thinking (again like my old pal, George) that most likely the Earth will save us by eliminating millions of us. You know about lemmings, right? I know this is crazy science shit, but I’m putting my money on Climate Change. Which reminds me of Carlin’s HBO special years ago where he goes off on “all these do-gooders!” To paraphrase an obsessive lingophile, he said something along the lines of: I am so sick of listening to all these fucking whiners pleading for all of us to SAVE the planet. (It’s at this point where we cock our head and wait for it, wonder if maybe this angry old fuck has finally lost it, gone off the deep end . . . then, the rest of the bit in his best mealy mouthed whiny liberal voice) Save the whales! Save the children! Save the planet! I say fuck the whales and fuck the children. You better start worrying about saving your own ass! I got news for you, the planet doesn’t give a shit about you! The planet will be doing just fine long after your worthless, selfish asses are dead and gone! George didn’t suffer fools, hucksters, or stupid assholes. I’m with him (that’s why he stole my fucking lines before I wrote them)!
Old School i'll drink anything but i buy cheap canned beer fix my mower with a coat hanger start and stop it with the choke i wear second-hand clothes till they're threadbare my old lazy-boy scratch-post recliner turned thirty-six this year my grandmother bought it three years before she died i don't own a cell phone i'd rather piss and moan about all the timely essential and important bullshit i'm missing in the back yard of the digital age and just for the record text is not a goddamn verb fucked is which is what i am in this new school playing on the new millennium field although i think i understand why we don't live forever some young fucker (fuck! now there's a versatile fucking word) would finally come unglued and pound me out of existence just to shut me up put both of us out of our mutual miseries long before i ever flipped the calendar page to begin another century
So if you want to talk about censorship or political correctness or historical erasure or cultural appropriation or any of the always currently sanctified timely topics in your “pasteurizing of art,” go right ahead. I’ll be at the bar. Just don’t walk in here and tell me what to write in a poem or what to say in an act on stage, on record, or in any other artistic platform. Save that for your elected representatives. That’s where that shit belongs, and hit it hard! Take to the streets! Protest their determination to protect the super-wealthy elite. How did those two things become blurred, democratic representation and entertainment? Because people are too fucking lazy to know the difference and easily motivated by fear and scapegoating. Art is the place where we can deal with paradox and contradiction without hurting others. Life is paradoxical more often than not. That’s human, that’s what we have to deal with in a democratic society. Like life it’s messy. People change their minds for many reasons, but simple existence, day to day living, growing older seems like an obvious reason to change one’s mind. The longer we are here, the more experiences and opportunities we have to learn new things, reinvent our old views into our new ones. Some people refuse to change as if holding onto all their old beliefs will keep them the same, let them remain here, denying the inevitable—we are going to disappear from this reality sooner than we think.
Love, acceptance, letting go is key. Loving unconditionally. Allowing others to be, to smile, or to walk away. Don’t assume you know better than they do what they should do. As a society the only thing we need to do is foster an environment of openness for everyone (isn’t that what our rhetoric is all about? freedom for all?) and make sure we help or restrain those determined to hurt others. The rest should be like a free, all-you-can-eat buffet! Endless opportunity for human creativity (which includes satire and contradiction)! If there is also an open bar, we’d be golden! (That’s a joke . . . and not . . . in case you were wondering.)
Peace and Love. Piss and moan.
Mark
Saw Carlin in Kenai, Alaska. It was the show previewing the seven dirty words before it aired on TV. Four or five people walked out. Fitting for Kenai, Alaska, a borough of red flags on election day. But that aside and in the past, Carlin lives on. Tolerance is still an issue. I continue to have hope from the younger generation who sees though all the bullshit. I may not be alive to see it. That is assuming that in that future homo sapiens will still be around.
Something else . . . believe it or not, but if I could pick one career that I wish I could have had, it would be standup comedian! I love comedy and I think making people laugh would have been the most rewarding career.
Well, as Carl Sagan once said, there is nothing out there to save us from ourselves. So our only salvation here on this planet is art, music, poetry, literature, theater . . . they don't call them the HUMANities for nothing! Oh, and comedy. We need comedy.