| 1/13 rotten |
i'm ripped, torn, split, sundered. i'm divided and subdivided, dissected, uncoupled, disjoint. not whole. or whole enough but in two parts. today at tv lunch over combustible turkey chili i happened to stumble onto julien temple's documentary on the history of the sex pistols, the filth and the fury. was only going to watch a few minutes, eat, and move on to better things, but i ended up stuck with it - almost to the end, which i'd already seen. it's, for me, a rivetting, fascinating study ... necessarily as rude and vulgar as the subject matter which (yes, mom) does offend a part of me - the part that wants everyone to be kind and happy and healthy. i worried that someone - some visitor - would wander through the tv room and be scandalized by these rude images and words. "brother tom, what are you watching? shame on you." but i needed to see the whole thing. as if i were reconnecting with a part of myself, trying to understand that part. what? brtom a scumbag punk rocker? only in his soul. i was already too old and too lame. late twenty-something, bearded religion and english teaching yearbook moderating catholic brother in a houston high school. but i think i got it. i think i understood. how could i? what were the conditions for the possibility of me appreciating, feeling deeply, the sound and sense of the sex pistols more than an ocean away? i was a good boy - a professional good boy. these obscene british kids should have shocked me, should have summoned forth every drop of righteous christian indignation. but they didn't. because i'd gotten that out of my system back in '67 or so. now i was curious about this sonic rage as art or anti-art. what did it have to say and why was it talking to me? i still haven't figured it out. not completely. but here i am in 2002 still the professional good boy and still - on my better days - willing to listen to this stuff, still stirred by it. and yet i'm torn because i fear that at some level all of this pop(?) culture is merely the excresence of a thoroughly sick post(?)-industrial culture... "should be shunned," my better half says. "what would mr. berry say?" it tries to shame me. "hell, yr the moderator of the wendell berry discussion group - and a catholic brother to boot. you should know better. this is NOT christian stuff." (does irony have any seat at the christian table?) "well," says my other part, "you ain't never been no mister perfect christian fella." no, not perfect. never wanted to be perfect. and yet. WHY is this not christian stuff? when johnny rotten screams repeatedly "I'm not an animal!" over the driven chaos of the band, isn't some part of that persona desperate for a transcendence denied him by the effortlessly rotten consumptive surfaces of western culture? seeking god even? or some kind of deliverance? trite to say, but it was a protest music, prophetic in performance. difficult to hear. harder to decode. easy to misread. and it was misread by everyone, including the performers themselves .... possibly excepting rotten/lydon himself. absurd to say, but johnny's not so far from mr. berry. look at this from A Timbered Choir:
you can say it or you can sing it. from one angle the pistols were an excresence. from another they were an unconscious cry for health (or at least against sickness) from the body in disease. they were the messenger and message (all art can be) - not the disease itself. so after all this time i'm still ripped, torn, split, sundered by that old game of inside/outside. out there, i'm the good brother. in here, i'm screaming and yelling about all this shit (this imperfect human world) - wishing i had the funds to take it on the road. there's probably no need for the division. or maybe there is. i don't mean to be knocking myself as currently configured. i know i'm doing good enough work, but i'd rather be the singer. and that isn't up to me. the advanced placement class is beginning ellison's Invisible Man. this book knows about these things too. better than i do. |
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