John Wise

As Foetus once said, “I can do any goddamn thing I want, anything.” That was back in 1985 with the release of his album Nail, and today, it comes to mind once again. Thirty-seven years ago, I snatched that release up after wearing the groove out of Hole, his album from the prior year. Oh, Foetus was not the full name of the project should you be interested in looking it up, it was Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel.

So why is this being mentioned today? Well, that’s not complicated, but it’s complicated. You see, this guy I know is in a pickle of sorts and is lamenting the stupidity of the situation, all of it really, and I was thinking about his need to make a difficult decision and the fact that Caroline and I are traveling tomorrow. While he and I were at coffee this morning, we were talking about Susan Jacoby, and as one thing leads to another because that’s where those things lead, I was thinking of the lyric from that song I referenced that says, “There must be some kinda romance in bein’ dumb.” As for Susan, she’s the author of books dealing with American anti-intellectualism, see the connection?

From there, but later at home, I was in the bathroom scrubbing the toilet. The wife won’t touch that thing until I become a “Sitzpinkler” (look it up), and I find myself thinking about our trip tomorrow, hence why I’m even cleaning the toilet. To be clear, we DO NOT go on a trip without our place being spic and span, so upon our return, we are not confronted with the chaos we are accustomed to on a day-to-day basis.

I’m hovering over our piss-stained toilet, thinking how good it feels to have the majority of chores out of the way and how, during the past weeks, I posted 11 missives that were only possible because we skipped a trip that was supposed to happen over the weekend of the 24th of June, but we opted to not. This option to not then triggered another part of the lyric from Foetus’s Anything (Viva!) which is the first quote up at the top of this post.

You see, we could skip out on a weekend trip because we’d already indulged on 11 previous trips this year (hmmm, this is the second reference to 11 in one post; there might be some kind of magick arising out of the occult or maybe I shouldn’t be listening to Death in June’s Nada album?)

Do you see what’s going on here? I think about one record from 1985, and all of a sudden, the nostalgia of my edgelord years rears its gloomy dark head, and I’m catapulted off the trebuchet of cheesy 80s music. Not the shitty 80’s music the rest of you listened to like Simple Minds, Tears for Fears, or Duran Duran, I was knee-deep in Current 93, Psychic TV, Einstürzende Neubauten, Mark Stewart, and Cabaret Voltaire, and though I should not admit it, I was that guy jamming on Whitehouse. Yer thinking, NOBODY jammed on Whitehouse? Well, maybe you never listened to I’m Coming Up Your Ass, loudly!

I don’t know what you were doing nearly 40 years ago, but I was not standing still. Sure, I had to stand at parade rest because I was in the U.S. Army (how they had me, I’ll never really know), but in the moments where I was opting to not, I was eating döner kebab, canvassing the red light districts of whatever European city I was in looking for hot whores, reading transgressive shit that was poisoning my mind, spending nights in underground clubs, collecting videos from various artists that I couldn’t share with “normals,” and generally exploring my own narrative.

Countless lifetimes of experience later, I sit in a Starbucks sipping my $4 grande iced tea, looking at assholes who require that I pound my 34db of noise-canceling, in-ear-monitors into my left and right head holes, turning the volume up to block all hints of the insipid soundtrack and equally insipid conversation of those who opted to be those who are not. And while it’s true I’m listening to Douglas P. sing about Klaus Barbie from the C’est Un Rêve track (again on the aforementioned neo-folk Death in June album), I’m pretty chill, haven’t done me a prostitute in more years than I can recollect, don’t seek out those edgelord experiences anymore, and have to be in a seriously different kind of mood to tune in William Bennet and Peter Sotos go on about My Cock’s On Fire or wailing about A Cunt Like You.

Well, well, well, it turns out that Whitehouse has a place in the repertoire of afternoon easy listening, and for the first time ever, I looked up the lyrics to that last song I mentioned and find that the line, “Pull yourself together, you fucking stereotype,” still has resonance with me. I opt to not.

Delving into the perversity of abstract thought, I search for fetishes (writings) that will anchor me in greater isolation as I lose the context of living with others. The challenge of deciphering the obtuse and complex propels me into chasms of other’s thoughts into which I’m ill-equipped to descend. I hang on by fingernails and scratch for fragments but inevitably fall down.

I’m relegated to gathering impressions of textures as words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, and chapters plod by the slow mind of the aging man who can no longer objectively figure out if the density of the subject matter is, in reality, difficult or if my own ability to comprehend is being compromised by my advancing years.

This then asks the question, am I losing my humanity (discernment), and has the bulk of our species ever had much of that at all?

If the purpose of the amoeba is fulfilled by its limited stratagems ordained with its simple life, what is the scale of human failure as we ignore the bigger directives of our own existence? We possess the power of scrutiny and yet see little beyond a primitive desire to decorate ourselves under a cloak of superficiality.

Mind you, the invisible cloth of the masses torn from the king who’d been adorned with a similar wardrobe offers transparency to those able to see the truth but easily tricks others who are mostly unaware into believing that they, too, are humans. Alas, you cannot alter the perception of what you wear without first consuming the pigments that will paint the fabric used in making your garb.

It is at the intersection of words that the fetish of our individuality takes form, and real human transparency starts to be seen instead of standing naked and stupid upon the throne of ignorance. We are not two-legged amoeba, nor should we be subverted into acting as such, but that is where many who form the masses have been banished to.

The heavy-handedness of this judgment weighs upon me as I consider the level of arrogance one must attain when passing these kinds of ideas off as having legitimacy, but this is what my observations of a plurality of those around me suggest. To miss this obvious state of affairs and deny voicing them is an acceptance of banality that ratchets my inner world into turmoil. I do not, adamantly do not, desire conformity to a standard of intellectual equality that might indicate a sameness between people, but just as society is able to have some expectation that we share enough common language so we can communicate with one another. I desperately need the bar to be raised.

You see, I am nowhere I want to be, but I also have very few around me who elevate the conversation and cultural embrace that indicate we are ascending the ladder of progress. On the contrary, obviously, I feel we are descending into not only greater banality but into madness. And just maybe, the division has been materialized by our unhealthy fetishizing of the economy and not giving rightful value to words, ideas, and thoughts that challenge our understanding of knowledge.