Happy 20-teens

Amongst other momentous things, 2009 became the year in which I would write something like a year-encapsulating letter/blog post. The only thing that can follow that up next year would be a family newsletter. What can you do. Really, what can you do when to resist when you live in a culture that co-opts all resistance, besides buy in unabashedly. Buy a house. Get married. Get a dog. Guilty, guilty and, sooner rather than later, guilty again. I could of course point towards irony and say, "but I at least know what I'm doing". What good is that? The year-encapsulating blog post will flow from your fingers like the 16-digit credit card number flows through the Amazon's secure server. There is no swimming against this tide.

Money dominated nearly every conversation this year, most noticeably those conversations in which it was conspicuously avoided. After years of fooling the toiling classes with dreams of jumping class by way of inflated home values, the market popped the bubble and ran off with every cent of capital said toiling class pumped into it. Now, we're supposed to be ashamed of losing everything in the first place (but not for the legitimate reason of being fooled, but for the blunt fact of wanting to believe we could climb in the first place), and thankful for whatever we can hang on to, most often mere subsistence. The latter part is supposed to be the moral of this year's story- be thankful for what you have. Fuck that. The moral of this year is be disgusted at what you hear out and enraged at what you see.

But of course I am thankful for what I have- I have a new house (built by idiots in 1920, remodeled by morons in 1950- currently under a strict re-education regime by a neanderthal), a new wife (built by geniuses in 1981, no need for remodeling), and a full time job. Like any poet, if I give thanks for my job, it has to be with irony. But like any American poet, I'm used to that irony being read over or ignored. What can you do to resist when you live in a culture that co-opts all resistance, but sign a mortgage and go Christmas shopping. Except I love Christmas, without irony. Merry Christmas, especially if you're not Christian or of any European cultural extraction and hate this holiday- I hope you had the merriest one imaginable, because participating in the absurd is the only gift America has for the world.

Oh, yeah, that and drone bombs- but what can you do to resist when you live in a culture that co-opts all resistance. Look at that genius we have in the White House. He was part of the resistance, if you recall, a pinko community organizer. Now he's drone-bombing Afghani (and Pakistani) villas, looking to make ghosts of the phantoms of faulty intelligence. This will continue, just as it was going to continue regardless of who got into his position a year ago. All those weeks of agonizing about a troop surge was agony over the numbers 20,000 or 30,000. All the options are bad. That's about the best we can say in our defense. Take a country that's been at war for the past 30 years, almost without rest, and ask that will happen if you pull the latest round of occupiers from the West or North. Civil war of course. Not really better or worse, just different war. That's what we voted in last year. Change=Different War. Different how, I don't know. War with feelings. War with reluctance. Heroic reluctance even. Just look at the Nobel speech, if you're able- I for one couldn't stomach listening to it, just like I avoided eight years of ever listening to Bush II. I still like the guy though, and would probably enjoy a drink with him if given the opportunity. I just wish he would give up on a second term and thus gain half a chance at actually leading us somewhere. Call bullshit on the entire Congress and their nonsensical health care economics arguments ("Keep your governments hands of my Medicare!"). Bring us some bankers' heads on a plate. I have to say, after a decade of three of the worst catastrophes to ever visit the American populace- 9/11, Katrina and the economic meltdown, the American people still don't have a single head on a plate. And since we've all forgotten who Khaled Sheikh Mohammed is, that little show trial won't hardly do the thing. How about Bin Laden, Bush II and Greenspan, apple firmly in mouth.

But of course it wasn't Greenspan that did even the worst damage, it was Bubba's deregulation. And so it goes, the friends of the working man are the worst enemies he ever had. But what are you going to do to resist when you live in a culture that co-opts all resistance. You could write books. I keep threatening to do that. Lots of my friends did it this year: Sarah Trott, Stephanie Young, Linh Dinh Others are rumored forthcoming. I try to read them all, and as I try to do that, and read the ones by the people I don't even know and then some of the dead people I'll never know, it occurs to me that there's a lot of books, possibly (duck for stone throwing) too many. Not sure we should add any more. Ditto with albums. A friend said to me that the sixties must have been a great time to be alive and buying records, easily the greatest. I replied that maybe it was just the last time it was possible to digest all the records of a decade and savor the best. In this decade, you have no chance of finding all the best records, and thus the ratio of shit to shinola seems so much less savory. It will remain impossible to determine even the quantity of good music, let alone the essential character of that good music from this decade, because you couldn't even write software able to listen to all the shit we are putting out. Honestly, it seems cruel to even add anything to the pile for people to sort out. This is not an endorsement of Kenny Goldsmith's position on art and literature, this is a matter of manners.

But what can you do to resist in a culture that co-opts all resistance. I recorded two records this year, one (The Gomorran's) which was released, the other which we are withholding until we (OUTHEAD) decide if we're still a band. I keep threatening with this book about music and text, the one which gave birth to this blog in the first place. We'll see what happens, but know, faithful reader, that a lack of blog posts on the subject does not equal a lack of thought. A scarcity for sure, but not a lack. When a dear family friend Lawrence Halperin died a month ago, I was taken aback by how frightening I found his life's output. Even in 93 years, two national monuments (U.S. and Israel), a national park and countless state and city parks is a little frightening. I got to work on two of those parks- I can point to the parts I played in these creations, but I have little to point to of my own creation. And these are like two poles for me this year- to create, in the intellectual sense, or to do. To keep your hands clean or to labor away with them without a moment to look up.

But I did turn this:



Into this:



And that's something. Many thanks to my wife and family and friends and co-workers who helped. And many thanks to you, gentle reader, for trekking through the ideational continent all year. I shall try to keep it populated in the new decade with ideas worth wading through.