Why do we take delight and more delight
in songs
stories
movies
that end abruptly? that don't give closure?
. . . the song that melts away
on the lingering chord
unresolved?
. . . . the story that does not tell us
that we live happily ever after? But in-
stead leaves us
midsentence
midaction
midthought
mid deed (?)
(or even before the deed; think:
Raymond Carver,
that dear, dear man who many fiction writers today
love to hate, but, well,
I not only still like his writing,
I also still have great respect
for him.
I actually knew him, he and his wife,
Tess Gallagher,
were my neighbors
for a few years while
I lived and studied
in Syracuse.
Notably, I studied Creative Writing there,
which of course is what Ray taught -
I was in the graduate program
he was part of,
but, also notably,
the year I got there, Carver
got something like a MacArthur,
and well,
what self-respecting writer really wants to teach
when they don't really have to?
He stopped teaching the year I arrived.
Anyway, it didn't matter, I was so clueless:
I went to Syracuse because I wanted to be a writer,
and not
because I knew anything about the teachers there.
In fact, I didn't know who he was the first time I met him
at a party, and I think that may be why
he always sort of followed my work
for a few years (until they moved);
he would go to my readings, and talk to me
at parties, and give me all kinds of suggestion.
Looking back at it, I can see he
kind of took care of me,
in a very quiet way.
I paid him little heed; I was way
way
too in awe.
So anyway --
think Raymond Carver story. . .
OK,
back to my point about why
we take delight and more delight
in songs,
stories
movies
that end abruptly.
Well,
the Age we have been leaving has been
a Narrative Age,
and the age we have been entering,
rather haltingly and painfully,
but now we are absolutely in it,
is the Age
of Narrative Interruptus.
lastwordonnothing
The Age of Narrative was an age
that sought and sometimes found
happiness in its endings.
The "Happy Ever After" marks
Satisfaction and/or
the Desire for Satisfaction coupled with
the Belief
that Satisfaction is possible.
Since this is the Age we are currently exiting
we have inherited a truckload
of Happy Ever After Tales
that promote and perpetuate
a rather stilted view of the world.
IE:
- if you are good, Santa will bring you packages;
- if you clean inside your ears, beans won't grow in them;
- if you make a lot of money, you'll be happy;
- (a subnarrative of this one is: money can buy happiness -- if you believe this, just think about how much money it takes to be happy all the time);
- if you're a blonde, you're stupid and easily pleased
- if you a marry a particular type of person just like you, you'll be happy
- marriage and reproduction are the ONLY routes to happiness
essentially,
they're all mini narratives, all with
happy endings built right into them,
and we grew up using them
to define our paths in life.
But Hot Damn!
Most of us who are my age
(that's 425, remember)
and over have learned
through this rather miserable experience
called life
that those lovely stories, produced by people
whose time, circumstances & personal beliefs
allowed them to think in terms of happy endings,
are lies.
Lies.
Life happens like this:
(and then it's over)
As we have come to understand this
is the true structure of
life in our time,
our stories --
and the literal structure of all of the stories
that we use to help us understand life
has gradually changed.
We prefer
Narrative Interruptus,
because
that is more true to reality.
~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~
It has taken art: aka:
reality's reproduction
a long time to catch up to reality itself.
Reality is this, this life
we lead, and
within this life we lead,
we Humans were produced by the Creative Force
(aka: Allah, God, Yahweh)
to be the chroniclers & recorders
of the Force's creation,
to be the ones
to show that fabulous creation S/He produced
to the Master
who produced us.
It is our job to mimic all that we encouter
for the enjoyment
of our Progenitor.
(Yes, we are advanced apes,
we are the ones
in all the animal species
to be given the task of
going forth and finding
a way to show the beauty of nature
to the Creative Force
we call God.
That's our job.
Period.
(and, by the way, every now and then God wants to see this creation,
and that, my friends, is Makropoulos' explanation
of Two Thousand And Twelve:
that year marks the juncture
at which God is able to view
The Creation in its entirety,
and,
well,
we'll see what S/He thinks.
In other words, 2012 marks the end moment of the period of time it takes
(when measured in our realm of time)
for the timeless to be able to perceive
of everything it has produced
for the soul purpose of being able to view Itself.
Eternity, then,
is best defined as a number, and it looks
like this:
After 2012 (which fundamentally marks
the end of the period of time as it is measured in the realm of time
that it takes the timeless to perceive
of the timed)
we'll know how long infinity is,
and we'll be able to use that #
in actual counting, because
at that point
we'll have experienced an eternity
and come out the other side of it.
I'm not kidding!
That's what
12/21/12
will be:
the realization of the year
of the palindrome,
and the realization of the Perfect Mirror Image.
But I should get back to my point, which is
we live currently at the Dawn of the
Age of Interruptus,
during which our primary mode
of representing ourselves to ourselves
will be
by fragmentation.
Life
is
not
one
long
thin
con
tin
u
a
l
thread, no
it is interruption.
We believe no more
in the Aristotelean narrative,
because we know it is no longer
a complete narrative that fits our time.
No.
Our current life narratives acknowledge the short
ness and the changability
of real lived life.
One of the most compelling stories to us
right now,
unfortunately,
is the one that shows how
if you hurt the one you love the most
you can absolutely destroy them,
thereby
robbing them of the possibility of their own happy ending,
when we know darned well we're not going to have a happy ending.
And so we kill,
and kill,
and kill,
and kill,
and lie
and lie,
then kill
and kill
and kill
again.
It is the acting out of our personal discovery
that not every one of life's stories
do not have happy endings, and
it brings happy endings to no one,
and death, painful death
to all.
But the fact is:
endings are often not happy;
endings
are often not even
endings.
We live in the Age of Narrative Interruptus.
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