John Wise

Here we are on the eve of the presidential election, and I’m fairly nonplussed by the drama that’s been building up to this point. Our choices are both devoid of vision aside from holding fast to a withered point of view from a past that no longer holds relevance. We cannot see ourselves in any meaningful global position anymore as we are too enmeshed in studying our own belly buttons. The joy of life found in striking out for the future is a smoldering hunk of death destroyed by our own stupidity. Resting on one’s laurels has come with a price, and for the United States, that translates into having lost our way. The abyss we are dwelling in opens the way for China to continue pushing its vision for the future of its people, where they believe that technology, education, and global collaboration will allow the Chinese to gain influence and prosperity. On the other hand, we have Russia and America wanting to modernize their nuclear stockpiles while shoring up their oil, steel, forestry, and manufacturing capabilities.

We’ve arrived at this juncture to a large degree by our open disdain for things smart. While rich is good, brainy is arrogant, elitist, and generally needs to be mistrusted. Again, rich, no matter how one got there, is good. This seems obviously idiotic, but by and large, this is about exactly where we sit.

There’s a relatively good chance that tomorrow, maybe even tonight, we’ll know who won the presidency. Maybe it’ll be contested, but who gives a shit if it is? The carnival will change gears, but intellectual lethargy will continue to rule the day. While I voted for who I did, there’s a part of me that wants to witness how unhinged we can take things. I have but one life, and to see firsthand the derangement of society compounding centuries of mistakes into a short period of time offers me a front-row seat to the self-immolation of a culture that sits at the precipice of luxury and convenience and yet is oblivious to its true value.

Then, in the middle of the night, during a fitful attempt at sleep, the tension pulls me from the futility so I might look upon the status of things with a glimmer of hope that my sense of gloom was misguided, but here in the dark hours across America, before the sun has started to rise, it looks like we’ve opted for another season of the worse telenovela played before an audience in a stupor of fear and anxiety. Our opportunity to pass from children to adolescents is being eclipsed by a tantrum of not wanting to clean our rooms, we will not conform to the better wills of our parents as they, too, demand to do as they please. Responsibility be damned, and again, who cares as the choices were Blue MAGA and Red MAGA.

I can’t say I don’t have a lump in my throat of dread as we will now see a totally delegitimized media that will look like it seriously colluded to drive a propagandistic attack on the incumbent, claiming his opponent had a better than 85% of winning. The House and Senate are not teetering yet, and looks like another four years of stalemate are at hand. In short, this is mostly fucked, but on the bright side, other players could take advantage of the vacuum opened by a country divided and seize the opportunity to enrich themselves with land and power grabs; then again, most are wise to be leery of a hurt dog snarling in the corner. More likely to happen is we’ll bear witness to a frenzied mania of self-righteous vindictiveness that will play out while the decay of the republic marches on.

What about hope and the 26 million votes yet to be counted, as it’s only 4:00 a.m. in the nation’s capital? That no longer really matters like the color and division in the country is splayed large for all to see; we are truly divided and do not care enough about rationality. We like our sick and twisted shit show and are not ready to change channels. Regardless of the outcome, how does one look at the map above and not realize that too many of us are not satisfied with the dire position we are in due to a shifting landscape of economic uncertainty? The tech revolution has made those able to adapt very wealthy, but those not on that gravy train are out in a digital dust bowl choking on the bits of nonsense thrown off as scrap with about as much value as AOL or MySpace.

Our systemic issues are not being repaired by a popularity contest between two old dudes, and as emotionally irrational as I’d like to position myself and believe that one is better than the other, that would be irresponsible of me if I still hold on to the idea that our problems are seated in an intellectual divide that has created blinders to what is ailing a society without dreams.

Tomorrow will be just one more day that I will rail about our need to wake up, but for now, I must go back to sleep and try to dream of better days.

Negativland asked us back in 1987: “Is there any escape from noise?” Today, I’m rephrasing that with the question: “Is there any escape from gaslighting?” There’s an escalating cacophony heading to an unknown crescendo as the wobbling wheels of America’s sanity are being ground away. In a country no longer unified by any kind of idealism, we are polarized into corners of seething hatred where Americans resent one another. The media machine on both sides feeds the trough of extremism, and where they fail to fill it to the brim, social media is there to add the missing nutrients of intolerance so we may gorge on the gruel of disdain.

There will be no protest songs that bring us together, no angry, disaffected youth movements that will stir the cultural sense of compromise, and no fiery political charge that will unite the sides. This moment in American history appears to be heading to the proverbial 8th-grade playground where two boys are going to have to face off until both sides have hurt one another adequately or the other is beaten down. I only come to this conclusion as I can find nothing to suggest the two sides can find a compromise or that an inflection point is near at hand that would ratchet down our hate-laden rhetoric.

Regarding the sides of this standoff, one is afraid of creeping cultural diversity, of their access to weapons being controlled, and of taxes being expropriated to support ideas, gender identities, immigrants, and races they do not find worthy. The other side is afraid of the people seemingly desiring a move back into the cave that I just described. Of course, I don’t mean literally that they want to move us back to the cave, but there is no going back to the idealized mythological time they have in their minds where manufacturing jobs were plentiful and well paid, neighborhoods were white, and school shootings were never a thing. After years of being promised that they could have just that, they still hold on to a fragment of hope that it is possible, not realizing that the country they live in has moved on.

With the pandemic raging, people working from home, learning to cook, and fear of some nebulous mob, there are those who are joining the idea that maybe life outside the metropolitan island of conformity could offer refuge from what ails society. The thought that one could escape to some idyllic farm environment found in Montana is a folly that promises to destroy what the people who already live there love about it. Population growth arrives with services and infrastructure that accompany the new arrivals as capitalism moves in to take advantage of the needs of people so they may part with their dollars in order for our form of economy to function.

Joseph Heller might have bellowed that we are living in a Catch-22, while August Strindberg could have recognized the madness as part of the inferno meant to subjugate us in our own personal hell.  Finding a representation of normal is a peculiar hunt relying on our egos floundering in the delusion that they might wrest control out of the chaos of nature. I am likely disillusioned by my own perception of events, believing I have the insight into some unfolding catastrophe that is nothing more than my very own madness stuck between the rock and a hard place of being me. Maybe everyone else is quite normal, but my view was long ago biased by the truth I believe I can see through my filter of disorder.

When reason vacates its chair and the void is filled with the voices of anguish and uncertainty, society heads for the exit, and culture collapses. We fail to thrive where fear about the future compels us to act in our own best interest instead of the collective. The old saying, “You reap what you sow,” is never more true than when confronted with the imminent demise of civility and you begin wishing that society had been unified in an effort greater than the individual’s own well-being. Greed due to excess foments insanity, where without real purpose, aside from the selfish, the instinct of the lemming to hurl one’s self from the cliff becomes a collective calling. The antidote people must look for is to find greater meaning in life. Sadly, this has often meant that we must descend into war so we are confronted with the worst imaginable reality that makes us appreciate what we let slip away.

This brings us full circle to my title, Gaslighting, as it’s this slipping away of sanity that the incessant aggravated hostility of our media and wealth culture has been delivering. Enchanted by dystopian dreams that empower base instincts, we come to believe that the elixir to cleanse the soul will be found in fire. But it is only the fire of the mind that fuels our success and builds futures where life is improving. Progress is no longer of interest to a large segment of the American people who are now trapped in their own ruin due to the lunacy that is largely invisible to dulled minds.

Thirty-five days that’s how long I lasted in the outside world during the ongoing pandemic known euphemistically as 2020, otherwise referred to as COVID-19. September 24th was the day I began trying to explore an old routine, but I’m not proving very receptive to the half-measures I’m forced to witness, so I’m pulling the plug. From my limited purview, it appears that we are willingly running into behaviors that are counterintuitive to the fact that the virus that shut down the global economy is surging. Wear masks? Only when it’s convenient. Social distance? Whatever, let me crowd your space. Ventilate the space? But it’s cold outside. Hospitals are filling up! Fake news.

It’s been 229 days or seven months, two weeks, and one day since Caroline and I first entered our own self-imposed isolation. Caroline started going back to the office a couple of days a week on the same day I put myself into the coffee shop, where I’d often write early in the day. Fortunately, the days have turned cooler, and I can return to the table on my balcony where masks, ventilation, and distancing are not of any concern. As we enter these chillier, shorter days leading us to a new year, I can’t help but think of Steinbeck’s “The Winter of Our Discontent” and how our own intellectual corruption will make for a bleak landscape ahead. Sadly, we have no unifying voice of reason in a world where reason has been eschewed for feelings and intuitions delivered by charlatans capitalizing on being influencers with the hope of striking Adsense dollars. And so, modified self-isolation will drag on.

We’ll still head out for vacation as long as the country doesn’t shut down, but our version of taking a holiday is to do so on a cold, wet coast in lodging removed from mass gatherings while avoiding restaurants. We hope to remain safe and maybe even more isolated than we find ourselves at home. One of the goals while out and about is to stroll no less than 110 miles along the Oregon coast by foot, weather permitting. I have a good idea that we’ll encounter a good amount of defiant belligerence as many on the rural coast of Oregon are not only conservative but resentful of those they think are trying to influence them with their liberal thinking. That should be kept to a minimum as it’s our intention to visit the quietest beaches and trails in a landscape that we feel good about not wearing masks in, hence our minimizing shopping and shunning restaurants. There is one caveat I can’t help but mention: We are painfully aware that this will limit our financial contribution to a region hit hard without the tourism that helps it survive, but I’m not willing to subject Caroline nor I to situations where my anger might boil over at those with something to prove about their own will to stupidity.

And so it is in the city where I live; the risk of angering potential customers while also trying to integrate the suggested rules for operating safely is balanced by the need for money, but not mine. Rather than have one more source of frustration, I pull back and withdraw. My only sense of defeat arrives with the incredulity of witnessing this will to stupidity. Schopenhauer would certainly find disappointment that 200 years after writing “The World as Will and Representation,” humanity still hadn’t learned to appreciate the opportunity to find themselves, but instead, we’re too busy defining a caricature using tropes, artifacts, and jingoistic posturing.

There is music in my life, but it plays less and less of a role as I easily tire of what I’ve listened to before. From what I’ve heard from the streaming services, they serve a demographic and not cultural curiosity. On occasion, I find something that resonates with me, but liking it on YouTube or buying it on iTunes doesn’t lead me into corners that would deliver serendipitous feel-good sounds of a surprising nature. Take Luna from Ukraine and her song “Lilac Paradise,” which you can find by searching for Луна – Сиреневый Рай on YouTube, but how am I living in Arizona supposed to know that? Another Ukrainian artist to look for is Avoure – click here to listen to Aura.

There are an estimated 100 million songs that are floating around our earth, and the algorithms want to feed me Ariana Grande and Bruce Springsteen while I come across Polnalubvi singing about comets in her song “Кометы.” Where does one search for “songs like this” on the internet? Why isn’t this Russian treasure in heavy rotation on American airwaves? What about some other Russian music, such as Rasster and their catchy track “Sad.” Click here to listen to that track.

New to me this year was The Blaze, hailing from France. What a beautiful song about love.

Adi Lukovac died back in 2006, only 36 years old, due to a fatal car accident, but to many Bosniaks, the man is a hero who lives on in his music. I learned of Adi during a conversation on Colin Benders’ Discord channel, where I ran into a guy from Bosnia who I started talking to about our encounter with the music of Haris Džinović and specifically a song that had become an earworm titled, “Muštuluk” and Nera Stipičević and her song “Centar Svita,” both linked below. I was asked if I’d heard of Adi, which I hadn’t, but now I own the album titled Remake, which is a part of my listening repertoire.

Okay, so this wasn’t from this year; it’s from the months after we returned from Europe, and in cruising through some random videos, I came across Kollective Turmstrasse and their song, “Sorry I Am Late.” I recognized the filming location as the spot near Kotbusser Tor in Berlin, where I was shopping at Schneidersladen Eurorack synth shop. The song is a jam and on my rotation list. While not new, it’s likely new to you, and the video has a great John Water’s vibe regarding the characters.

Then there’s Sevdaliza who is a Dutch/ Iranian artist who just came to my attention thanks to a friend who’s been listening to her also. There’s a new track out called “Rhode,” but I’ll stick with the above link.

This is the Haris Džinović song I mentioned above.

And this is a seriously poor copy of Nera’s “Centar Svita” which I’d like to point out we first heard at a streetside basketball game in Split, Croatia. This is now our Croatian summer ice cream song 🙂