For our Rewind set, I am turning to this 2007 essay about the Gnarls Barkley album St. Elsewhere. A couple of reasons: I continue to adore this record, and the specifics of this essay still, I think, reflect my thoughts. And, the lead singer is enjoying another well-deserved moment in the pop music sun, so this seemed like a good time to return to some of his earlier jams.
So anyway, hopefully you enjoy. Excuse the slightly academic tone; this was, indeed, written for a class...
Showing posts with label Sharkey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sharkey. Show all posts
Monday, September 06, 2010
...Just Like Me
We pay psychiatrists hundreds of dollars an hour. We shovel-feed our children anti-depressant drugs by the mouthful. Mental problems sit at the forefront of our minds (no pun intended). Gnarls Barkley’s 2006 album St. Elsewhere dives into the depths of our thought process, emerging with a striking look at how our minds work and the up-and-down nature of our personalities. The album’s ever-changing mood and sound remind us that our consciousness is in a constant state of flux, while the album’s lyrics explore a broad range of mental issues. A catchy beat may have made the second song, “Crazy,” one of the most popular songs of the year, but when one scratches the surface a bit he finds more than a made-for-radio album.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Rocketman
Lovell: Houston, I believe we've had a problem here.
Swigert: This is Houston. Say again, please.
Lovell: Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a MAIN B BUS UNDERVOLT.
Swigert: I mean, can you say it again in the present tense.
Lovell: Why?
Swigert: It will make for a better movie quote.
Lovell: Houston, are you serious?
Swigert: On a number of levels, yes.
This week, Sharkey explores the implications of editing on humanity and why some gems are better left unpolished.
Swigert: This is Houston. Say again, please.
Lovell: Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a MAIN B BUS UNDERVOLT.
Swigert: I mean, can you say it again in the present tense.
Lovell: Why?
Swigert: It will make for a better movie quote.
Lovell: Houston, are you serious?
Swigert: On a number of levels, yes.
This week, Sharkey explores the implications of editing on humanity and why some gems are better left unpolished.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
[sic]
As a younger lad, I went through a phase during which I was fascinated by the space programs of the 1960’s. That being the case, when I stumbled a few weeks ago upon a Discovery Channel special on this exact topic, I of course settled in for an hour of uninterrupted space flight. The show culminated with footage of Apollo 11, including (of course) Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon, complete with subtitles to illuminate the sometimes-scratchy audio. As Armstrong stepped off the lunar lander, the Discovery subtitles read:
“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” [significantly, sic]
The “[a]” ought to jump out at you there. These brackets don’t serve their most common purpose—to clarify a reference, like replacing an ambiguous pronoun with a specific proper noun—here; instead, the Discovery Channel producers decided they needed to correct Armstrong’s grammar. That’s quite an editorial decision, to correct one of the most famous spoken lines of the twentieth century. But in some sense, it’s nearly required.
Consider the alternative: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” This is nonsensical, the interstellar equivalent of tripe like “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Without the article “a,” the two terms “man” and “mankind” are equivalent and the juxtaposition of “one person” and “the whole species” is lost. Now, I’m not covering any new ground here—the grammar of Armstrong’s first lunar words has been debated very nearly since the moment he uttered them. The astronaut has argued that the “a” was intended, and that he naturally drops syllables on occasion. Others have claimed that Armstrong actually did say “a,” but it was lost to radio static. And the Discovery Channel is far from the first source to bracket the “a” in its transcription of the line.
But let’s be straight here: Armstrong messed up his line. Doubtlessly, he intended to put the “a” in there, but he didn’t. And I’m here to argue that it’s better this way. But first, we need to talk about Journey.
I should be clear: I don’t think Journey is a bad band, or that “Don’t Stop Believing” isn’t a pretty great karaoke song. So what follows should not be interpreted as “a person is a dope if they like Journey.” That being said, Journey has no humanity—by which I mean, their records have a sterility that removes them from what should rightfully be called “music that relays recognizable human emotion.” Admittedly, it isn’t fair to single out Journey: there’s a list of more-or-less sonically interchangeable rock bands from the ‘70s and early ‘80s, like Boston, Foreigner, and so forth. To anyone not completely obsessed with their music, all of those bands sound exactly the same; what, really, is the difference between “Don’t Stop Believing” and “More Than a Feeling”?
What unites these interchangeable classic-rock-radio monsters is a sort of sterile sheen that extends not just to the production values of the songs (although it’s a big part) but to the songwriting and the vocal styles. All of the big hits from these bands feature recognizable verse structure, interchangeable vocalists, and production that polishes each track to a high gloss. This similarity doubtlessly helped the bands thrive; after all, this was the period in which radio stations realized big money could be made as long as listeners didn’t bother to change the channel, so stations pursued similar-sounding bands. If song after song sounded pretty much alike, listeners wouldn’t change the station to hunt for something else.
Again, I feel compelled to stress: this music isn’t awful, and I’m not mocking people who enjoy it. Different strokes, after all. And I’m very conscious of the fact that the argument I intend to present here can come across as elitist or holier-than-thou. I ask the reader to trust that this is not my intent, but I also admit that I may be feeling skittish because this argument actually is elitist and holier-than-thou. Oh well—damn the torpedoes, I suppose.
When you set out to create (or promote) music that sounds exactly alike, you kill off what’s interesting and human about it: the randomness, the imperfections, the (dare I say) soul of it. Embracing one’s humanity means embracing one’s flaws, admitting that perfection is unattainable, and learning to see the beauty in what we cannot control. Creating assembly-line rock music requires absolute control: anything overly unique or unexpected fucks up the reasons people listen (or, at least, don’t not listen) in the first place, so everything must be carefully constructed to appeal to a generalized taste.
In doing so, affecting little moments of humanity get cut out of the music-making process. The randomness and uniqueness of individual performance gets papered over by endless multi-tracking, tight control of pitch and feedback, and precise editing. While this level of control can create something catchy, I argue it is rarely memorable or interesting. Indeed, many of the little moments in songs that people remember and adore are little weird bits of amplifier feedback, an unintended microphone pickup, a moment when the singer’s voice catches in just that way that adds new emotional resonance. It’s the flawed, uncontrolled, human nature of these moments that makes them what they are, and you’ll never find something like them in a Journey song.
The more perfect something is, in the end, the more difficulty we have relating to it. That’s the reason why utopia literature is so damn boring. George Orwell explores this point at some length in his 1943 essay “Can Socialists Be Happy?” In that essay, Orwell contrasts works of utopia like H.G. Wells’ with portraits of fleeting, impermanent joy like Dickens’ The Christmas Carol; “The Cratchits are able to enjoy their Christmas,” he writes, “precisely because Christmas comes only once a year. Their happiness is convincing just because it is described as incomplete.” That’s a picture of bliss we can relate to: one in which we enjoy the perfection precisely because of its contrast with the daily failures of life.
Utopian literature, on the other hand, comes across as drab and dull. When an author tries to describe perfection, all sense of emotion is lost. We can see this particularly well in literary portraits of heaven and hell. As Orwell points out, “Heaven is as great a flop as Utopia—though Hell, it is worth nothing, occupies a respectable place in literature, and has often been described most minutely and convincingly.” We don’t have the vocabulary to describe a perfect existence in any sort of detail; instead, we have to fall back on vague platitudes. For something to relate to our human experience in any deep way, it needs to be flawed in a way we can understand and sympathize with.
The very title of Orwell’s essay, though, points at the political, not just the artistic, and that’s an area that requires more careful steps. When thinking about how we should order our society, it doesn’t seem quite right to say, “Well, we ought to try to preserve some imperfections so that our civilization remains noticeably human.” Clearly, we are better off trying to move society forward and making every reasonable attempt to improve the environment in which we have to live our lives. The reason we find utopia stories boring isn’t that we would hate to live in a perfect world: instead, we just lack the ability to make an invented perfect world interesting or realistic. That perfect world isn’t realistic. That isn’t an excuse to stop trying.
The difference lies in the fundamentally accidental nature of our human flaws. What makes mistakes human is the fact that we’re trying to avoid them, and we fail to do so. If we make flaws goals in and of themselves, we’re far off the mark.
This is why the accidental nature of those memorable little musical moments is so important. It would be one thing if a band decided to meticulously place a weird microphone pop in the middle of a song, but it’s quite another if that little pop just happens on its own. (I should point out here the obvious: most music is meticulously edited in post-production. But there’s a difference between deciding to leave an interesting little flaw in the final cut of a song, and trying to place it there purposefully. The latter can be interesting, but the former will be more affecting. [If, that is, we can tell the difference. Which, of course, we can’t. We can only assume, and I would suggest that we tend to assume the former.])
So we don’t run any danger of creating a sterile, uninteresting world by attempting to make society better. We can accept the fact that we’ll never be able to get it exactly right—those little problems will keep popping up—but we don’t have to abdicate agency. The world will be plenty imperfect without our trying to guard those imperfections.
By now, it’s probably clear what all of this has to do with Neil Armstrong. When he fucked up his poetic line as he made tracks on the moon, he injected a vital bit of humanity into what was at that time our species’ crowing technological achievement. He not only said something beautiful and poetic: he tried to do so, and messed it up. That’s unique, un-recreate-able, human.
This may not come as a surprise, but I believe that elegant language is a striking and uniquely human thing: plenty of organisms express themselves, but it takes a diverse and complicated language to express one’s self well. In this sense, Armstrong’s (intended) line is a thing of beauty. There’s symmetry to the two halves, while at the same time providing an interesting contrast. Structurally, it calls to mind lines like “To err is human; to forgive, divine,” and please don’t think that wasn’t a carefully chosen example. But while the poetry is good in its own right, slipping up on delivery added a human touch that elevates Armstrong’s moment.
Consider the scale of Apollo 11’s achievement. We didn’t get a person (Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin) into space until April 1961. It took barely 8 years from that first set of tentative sub-orbital space flights to land people on the moon. Most of us have used calculators more powerful than the computer that got people there. But the story of manned spaceflight in the 1960’s is made all the more interesting by its repeated failures: toppling rockets, spacecraft fires killing astronauts, probes crashing uselessly into the lunar surface. After all of that, at the moment of success—whoops! Is there time for a second take?
Well, no. No there is not. We don’t get second takes—we just have to do the best with the one shot we had. That’s why Armstrong’s [sic] is better than any sort of perfect delivery he may have practiced in his head: it reminds us that even when we manage to get everything right, we can still get something wrong. We’re only human, and we shouldn’t feel the need to bracket that fact away in the transcripts.
“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” [significantly, sic]
The “[a]” ought to jump out at you there. These brackets don’t serve their most common purpose—to clarify a reference, like replacing an ambiguous pronoun with a specific proper noun—here; instead, the Discovery Channel producers decided they needed to correct Armstrong’s grammar. That’s quite an editorial decision, to correct one of the most famous spoken lines of the twentieth century. But in some sense, it’s nearly required.
Consider the alternative: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” This is nonsensical, the interstellar equivalent of tripe like “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Without the article “a,” the two terms “man” and “mankind” are equivalent and the juxtaposition of “one person” and “the whole species” is lost. Now, I’m not covering any new ground here—the grammar of Armstrong’s first lunar words has been debated very nearly since the moment he uttered them. The astronaut has argued that the “a” was intended, and that he naturally drops syllables on occasion. Others have claimed that Armstrong actually did say “a,” but it was lost to radio static. And the Discovery Channel is far from the first source to bracket the “a” in its transcription of the line.
But let’s be straight here: Armstrong messed up his line. Doubtlessly, he intended to put the “a” in there, but he didn’t. And I’m here to argue that it’s better this way. But first, we need to talk about Journey.
I should be clear: I don’t think Journey is a bad band, or that “Don’t Stop Believing” isn’t a pretty great karaoke song. So what follows should not be interpreted as “a person is a dope if they like Journey.” That being said, Journey has no humanity—by which I mean, their records have a sterility that removes them from what should rightfully be called “music that relays recognizable human emotion.” Admittedly, it isn’t fair to single out Journey: there’s a list of more-or-less sonically interchangeable rock bands from the ‘70s and early ‘80s, like Boston, Foreigner, and so forth. To anyone not completely obsessed with their music, all of those bands sound exactly the same; what, really, is the difference between “Don’t Stop Believing” and “More Than a Feeling”?
What unites these interchangeable classic-rock-radio monsters is a sort of sterile sheen that extends not just to the production values of the songs (although it’s a big part) but to the songwriting and the vocal styles. All of the big hits from these bands feature recognizable verse structure, interchangeable vocalists, and production that polishes each track to a high gloss. This similarity doubtlessly helped the bands thrive; after all, this was the period in which radio stations realized big money could be made as long as listeners didn’t bother to change the channel, so stations pursued similar-sounding bands. If song after song sounded pretty much alike, listeners wouldn’t change the station to hunt for something else.
Again, I feel compelled to stress: this music isn’t awful, and I’m not mocking people who enjoy it. Different strokes, after all. And I’m very conscious of the fact that the argument I intend to present here can come across as elitist or holier-than-thou. I ask the reader to trust that this is not my intent, but I also admit that I may be feeling skittish because this argument actually is elitist and holier-than-thou. Oh well—damn the torpedoes, I suppose.
When you set out to create (or promote) music that sounds exactly alike, you kill off what’s interesting and human about it: the randomness, the imperfections, the (dare I say) soul of it. Embracing one’s humanity means embracing one’s flaws, admitting that perfection is unattainable, and learning to see the beauty in what we cannot control. Creating assembly-line rock music requires absolute control: anything overly unique or unexpected fucks up the reasons people listen (or, at least, don’t not listen) in the first place, so everything must be carefully constructed to appeal to a generalized taste.
In doing so, affecting little moments of humanity get cut out of the music-making process. The randomness and uniqueness of individual performance gets papered over by endless multi-tracking, tight control of pitch and feedback, and precise editing. While this level of control can create something catchy, I argue it is rarely memorable or interesting. Indeed, many of the little moments in songs that people remember and adore are little weird bits of amplifier feedback, an unintended microphone pickup, a moment when the singer’s voice catches in just that way that adds new emotional resonance. It’s the flawed, uncontrolled, human nature of these moments that makes them what they are, and you’ll never find something like them in a Journey song.
The more perfect something is, in the end, the more difficulty we have relating to it. That’s the reason why utopia literature is so damn boring. George Orwell explores this point at some length in his 1943 essay “Can Socialists Be Happy?” In that essay, Orwell contrasts works of utopia like H.G. Wells’ with portraits of fleeting, impermanent joy like Dickens’ The Christmas Carol; “The Cratchits are able to enjoy their Christmas,” he writes, “precisely because Christmas comes only once a year. Their happiness is convincing just because it is described as incomplete.” That’s a picture of bliss we can relate to: one in which we enjoy the perfection precisely because of its contrast with the daily failures of life.
Utopian literature, on the other hand, comes across as drab and dull. When an author tries to describe perfection, all sense of emotion is lost. We can see this particularly well in literary portraits of heaven and hell. As Orwell points out, “Heaven is as great a flop as Utopia—though Hell, it is worth nothing, occupies a respectable place in literature, and has often been described most minutely and convincingly.” We don’t have the vocabulary to describe a perfect existence in any sort of detail; instead, we have to fall back on vague platitudes. For something to relate to our human experience in any deep way, it needs to be flawed in a way we can understand and sympathize with.
The very title of Orwell’s essay, though, points at the political, not just the artistic, and that’s an area that requires more careful steps. When thinking about how we should order our society, it doesn’t seem quite right to say, “Well, we ought to try to preserve some imperfections so that our civilization remains noticeably human.” Clearly, we are better off trying to move society forward and making every reasonable attempt to improve the environment in which we have to live our lives. The reason we find utopia stories boring isn’t that we would hate to live in a perfect world: instead, we just lack the ability to make an invented perfect world interesting or realistic. That perfect world isn’t realistic. That isn’t an excuse to stop trying.
The difference lies in the fundamentally accidental nature of our human flaws. What makes mistakes human is the fact that we’re trying to avoid them, and we fail to do so. If we make flaws goals in and of themselves, we’re far off the mark.
This is why the accidental nature of those memorable little musical moments is so important. It would be one thing if a band decided to meticulously place a weird microphone pop in the middle of a song, but it’s quite another if that little pop just happens on its own. (I should point out here the obvious: most music is meticulously edited in post-production. But there’s a difference between deciding to leave an interesting little flaw in the final cut of a song, and trying to place it there purposefully. The latter can be interesting, but the former will be more affecting. [If, that is, we can tell the difference. Which, of course, we can’t. We can only assume, and I would suggest that we tend to assume the former.])
So we don’t run any danger of creating a sterile, uninteresting world by attempting to make society better. We can accept the fact that we’ll never be able to get it exactly right—those little problems will keep popping up—but we don’t have to abdicate agency. The world will be plenty imperfect without our trying to guard those imperfections.
By now, it’s probably clear what all of this has to do with Neil Armstrong. When he fucked up his poetic line as he made tracks on the moon, he injected a vital bit of humanity into what was at that time our species’ crowing technological achievement. He not only said something beautiful and poetic: he tried to do so, and messed it up. That’s unique, un-recreate-able, human.
This may not come as a surprise, but I believe that elegant language is a striking and uniquely human thing: plenty of organisms express themselves, but it takes a diverse and complicated language to express one’s self well. In this sense, Armstrong’s (intended) line is a thing of beauty. There’s symmetry to the two halves, while at the same time providing an interesting contrast. Structurally, it calls to mind lines like “To err is human; to forgive, divine,” and please don’t think that wasn’t a carefully chosen example. But while the poetry is good in its own right, slipping up on delivery added a human touch that elevates Armstrong’s moment.
Consider the scale of Apollo 11’s achievement. We didn’t get a person (Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin) into space until April 1961. It took barely 8 years from that first set of tentative sub-orbital space flights to land people on the moon. Most of us have used calculators more powerful than the computer that got people there. But the story of manned spaceflight in the 1960’s is made all the more interesting by its repeated failures: toppling rockets, spacecraft fires killing astronauts, probes crashing uselessly into the lunar surface. After all of that, at the moment of success—whoops! Is there time for a second take?
Well, no. No there is not. We don’t get second takes—we just have to do the best with the one shot we had. That’s why Armstrong’s [sic] is better than any sort of perfect delivery he may have practiced in his head: it reminds us that even when we manage to get everything right, we can still get something wrong. We’re only human, and we shouldn’t feel the need to bracket that fact away in the transcripts.
Monday, February 01, 2010
Carnival
Carnivals and fairs, like proper federal holidays, serve a very specific purpose on our social calendars—at the same time special and regular. On the one hand, any sort of variation from our standard routine is a welcome and exciting departure into a world in which we don’t have to go to school or work; on the other, we expect them each and every time they arrive allowing us to develop enough of a routine to properly enjoy them. Truly unique events (weddings, graduations, Super Bowl victories) are confusing—we don’t know what we’re supposed to do, and don’t get enough practice to figure it out (unless you’re Larry King or Joe Montana).
A carnival has a further advantage: not only is the day itself unique; the actual activities are sufficiently unordinary to hold our attention. This is why holidays like Independence Day (explosions!) and Halloween (costumes!) will always be better than Thanksgiving (…a bigger meal than normal!) and the like. Where else but the carnival can you win a poorly-made stuffed animal and ride bumper cars? Nowhere, that’s where.
In a town like Clark’s the carnival took on the added importance of providing a rare bit of actual entertainment. Awkwardly sized, the town was big enough to sustain a rudimentary bus system, while at the same time not of a significant enough population to boast a first-run movie theatre. Actual activities, aside from year-old films and an afternoon at the café, could be hard to come by. Even the annual state fair was hosted far enough away as to be prohibitive, meaning that when the carnival set up shop on the outskirts, the town took notice.
Clark took notice as well. He was just old enough to have an idea of what it meant to be adult, without being seasoned enough to actually be one. He was aware of his constraints, but not savvy enough to understand their purpose. And so that spring when the tents rolled into town he never entertained the thought of not attending with Jenny, regardless of the fact that he’d never before cruised the carnival un-chaperoned.
He assumed he loved Jenny; after all, he felt something, and adults apparently felt love, and he was now an adult, so what else was there to think about? Put aside the fact that, until he asked her to join him at the carnival, he had no reason to think she knew who he was—love was love, and he loved her. He had mustered his best eleven-year-old bravado when propositioning her, and had not been the least bit surprised when she quietly nodded “yes.” This was just how things were supposed to work. They would attend the carnival on Saturday.
Being the eldest child, Clark was a bit of a parenting experiment—his guardians were, as it usually happens, making up the rules as they went along and hoping for the best. Unsurprisingly, this led to occasional conflict, as it did in this case. Clark’s casual mention of his weekend plans over dinner on Thursday night led to a standard boundary-pushing back-and-forth, with Clark quite maturely sequestering himself in his study. Obviously, his parents did not understand the importance of Saturday’s events.
But after some consideration, the elder residents of the household began to come around. While they were first-time parents, they were not totally unaware of the town’s upbringing protocols: Clark’s father ran the town’s theatre, and his mother taught in the middle school, so they knew enough about the town’s standard child-rearing protocol. Ultimately, they decided that confining Clark to another carnival of solitude would be counterproductive, a decision Clark found most agreeable. They then retired to their separate quarters for the evening.
The following day, Friday, Clark largely spent in anticipation. Never one to totally give himself over to his studies, he let his mind wander to the unavoidable grandeur that would be tomorrow’s main event. While some outsiders may believe the carnival to be little more than a second-rate state fair knockoff, Clark could see its unique possibility. Tomorrow, as he and Jenny strolled up and down the midway raised from an empty field, the next stage of his courtship would begin. With a little luck, they might even hold hands.
During lunch period, Clark spied his love sitting off to the side with a few other young lasses. From his periphery, it seemed to him that she was watching him fondly as he strolled to his own seat. In keeping with proper decorum, Clark kept his manful gaze forward, striding forcefully across the lunchroom. No doubt, she swooned as he passed.
After staying the course for the remainder of the school day, Clark returned home to prepare for the next day’s romp. After carefully selecting the proper wardrobe, he began to put his bankroll in order. Having accumulated a respectable amount of currency through various odd grounds-keeping-related endeavors, he was sure of his ability to show his lady a properly luxurious time. Soon, having been informed by his mother that the hour was late, he turned in to accumulate the necessary amount of rest. Clark slept soundly.
Rising early the next morning, Clark went about his routine. He took his breakfast (toaster pastries and milk) in the dining room, then freshened and dressed himself. Allowing for a precise seven minutes of travel time, he departed so as to arrive at Jenny’s door at the agreed-upon hour. She lived a few blocks down the street, a straight shot west. After perfunctory greetings, they turned back east for a leisurely three minutes until they reached the bus stop, which was positioned in between their respective dwellings. Obviously, they could have chosen to simply meet at the bus stop, but this would not have been in proper form—to leave a lady to walk unattended would be most out of order.
The bus arrived within an acceptable margin for error, and they prepared to board. With a chivalrous flourish, Clark removed from his pocket proper currency for two fairs. Following Jenny up the stairs, he saw something momentarily disheartening—the city buses to the carnival were operating gratis. But a gentleman never allows himself to be rattled by unexpected events. With subtle precision, Clark returned the coins to his pocket. There was, he thought, a high probability that Jenny would not have noticed the free-of-charge nature of this bus ride, allowing him to reap the benefits of his gesture while bearing no financial cost. Clark took the seat next to her, pleased by his own quick-mindedness.
The bus ride was not a long one, so after a few minutes of pleasant chit-chat the two children arrived at the carnival site and (along with the rest of the bus’s passengers) disembarked. This time, Clark’s noble attempt at payment went much more smoothly, and he escorted Jenny onto the carnival grounds—all noise, flashing lights, whirring rides. The sheer variety of it all was paralyzing, briefly—while both of them had been to the carnival in past years, they never before had been able to direct themselves by their own wills. Seeing this moment as one requiring decisive action, Clark led the way to a nearby fried food stand for some corndog-related fortification. He took approving note of Jenny’s spurning of childish ketchup for the more proper yellow mustard, then dove into his own confection.
The searing pain of the hot breading smashing into the roof of his mouth caused Clark’s eyes to water. Most un-distinguished. A hurried pull on his soda soothed him, and he quickly verified that Jenny’s attention had been turned elsewhere during his moment of weakness. His mouth settled into an uncomfortable stinging, with little raw bits of flesh dangling everywhere like he had been attacked by a delicious cheese grater, but Clark manfully pushed on. He made a couple of wry observations about their surroundings, and was pleased by the relative lack of a speech impediment the infernal corndog had inflicted upon him. Then they turned to wander down the ramshackle midway.
The various carnival games spread out on either side of the path, with semi-enthusiastic purveyors of low-quality stuffed animals barking out their selling points to anyone who happened to amble by. One—a ring-toss game—caught Clark’s eye; after all, Clark was by all accounts the neighborhood’s premier horseshoes player, and how different could this be? Rows of posts extended to the back wall of the rickety stand, getting progressively thicker as the distance grew. A gentleman always elevates his game under pressure, and Clark had no doubt in his ability to gracefully drop a plastic ring around the most distant post—thus earning the handsome panda hanging on the back wall and earning favor with his lady.
After a businesslike exchange of currency-for-plastic-ring, Clark narrowed his gaze on one of the back posts. The sights and sounds of his surroundings dimmed and faded; he was alone with the post. Time seemed to slow. He stood, gauging the weight of the ring in his hand. He envisioned the throw—proper arc, speed, spin, dropping neatly around the post. He drew back and tossed, making sure to maintain the proper follow-through.
It clanked off the front of the post. Too low, by and inch. Curses.
Clark blinked twice, momentarily stunned. Knowing he had an audience, though, he managed to yank himself back into the moment. Composure is key. He put on his best wry grin, shrugged at Jenny, and turned to walk further down the row. He considered trying his hand at one of the other games, but decided that would appear overly desperate. At this point Jenny expressed interest in investigating the rides set up around the perimeter of the carnival, so they turned outward to see what sort of fun could be had.
“Who wants a ride?” bellowed a mustachioed man. Clark turned, and was struck by the character standing in front of the Tilt-A-Whirl. Up to this point, Clark had not taken notice of how bored most of the carnival workers seemed to be. After all, for them, all of these fantastic sights amounted to little more than another day at the office. But this fellow taking Tilt-A-Whirl tickets seemed different. There was genuine enthusiasm in his voice, and a grin framed by a perfectly manicured handlebar mustache. Clearly this was a gentleman from the great vaudevillian tradition.
Clark saw that Jenny seemed equally enraptured by this character’s charisma, so he suggested taking a spin. She agreed, and they approached the entrance. The line proved to be of a reasonable length, and they boarded for the next cycle, the dashing attendant giving Clark a wry wink as they passed. Clark stepped to the side of the Tilt-A-Whirl pod and allowed his fair companion to board, then slid in next to her and pulled the protective bar down over their laps. He noted that, for the first time, Jenny seemed genuinely excited.
And so it began, the pair lurching around in circles and they both tilted and whirled. This was Clark’s first encounter with the ride, having never previously been allowed on due mainly to parental reticence. His father had a bit of a weak stomach. As it turned out, Clark quite enjoyed himself, but tried to keep up a relatively stoic appearance. He couldn’t help but notice how the spinning force was pushing Jenny steadily closer, until they were rubbing shoulders.
The ride came to a stop. Clark lifted the protective bar, but Jenny made no immediate attempt to climb out. He felt her resting her head on his shoulder. Clark stole a glance to his side, and saw that Jenny was smiling contentedly. What was this feeling in his gut? It must be love.
Then, Clark vomited on Jenny’s shoes.
A carnival has a further advantage: not only is the day itself unique; the actual activities are sufficiently unordinary to hold our attention. This is why holidays like Independence Day (explosions!) and Halloween (costumes!) will always be better than Thanksgiving (…a bigger meal than normal!) and the like. Where else but the carnival can you win a poorly-made stuffed animal and ride bumper cars? Nowhere, that’s where.
In a town like Clark’s the carnival took on the added importance of providing a rare bit of actual entertainment. Awkwardly sized, the town was big enough to sustain a rudimentary bus system, while at the same time not of a significant enough population to boast a first-run movie theatre. Actual activities, aside from year-old films and an afternoon at the café, could be hard to come by. Even the annual state fair was hosted far enough away as to be prohibitive, meaning that when the carnival set up shop on the outskirts, the town took notice.
Clark took notice as well. He was just old enough to have an idea of what it meant to be adult, without being seasoned enough to actually be one. He was aware of his constraints, but not savvy enough to understand their purpose. And so that spring when the tents rolled into town he never entertained the thought of not attending with Jenny, regardless of the fact that he’d never before cruised the carnival un-chaperoned.
He assumed he loved Jenny; after all, he felt something, and adults apparently felt love, and he was now an adult, so what else was there to think about? Put aside the fact that, until he asked her to join him at the carnival, he had no reason to think she knew who he was—love was love, and he loved her. He had mustered his best eleven-year-old bravado when propositioning her, and had not been the least bit surprised when she quietly nodded “yes.” This was just how things were supposed to work. They would attend the carnival on Saturday.
Being the eldest child, Clark was a bit of a parenting experiment—his guardians were, as it usually happens, making up the rules as they went along and hoping for the best. Unsurprisingly, this led to occasional conflict, as it did in this case. Clark’s casual mention of his weekend plans over dinner on Thursday night led to a standard boundary-pushing back-and-forth, with Clark quite maturely sequestering himself in his study. Obviously, his parents did not understand the importance of Saturday’s events.
But after some consideration, the elder residents of the household began to come around. While they were first-time parents, they were not totally unaware of the town’s upbringing protocols: Clark’s father ran the town’s theatre, and his mother taught in the middle school, so they knew enough about the town’s standard child-rearing protocol. Ultimately, they decided that confining Clark to another carnival of solitude would be counterproductive, a decision Clark found most agreeable. They then retired to their separate quarters for the evening.
The following day, Friday, Clark largely spent in anticipation. Never one to totally give himself over to his studies, he let his mind wander to the unavoidable grandeur that would be tomorrow’s main event. While some outsiders may believe the carnival to be little more than a second-rate state fair knockoff, Clark could see its unique possibility. Tomorrow, as he and Jenny strolled up and down the midway raised from an empty field, the next stage of his courtship would begin. With a little luck, they might even hold hands.
During lunch period, Clark spied his love sitting off to the side with a few other young lasses. From his periphery, it seemed to him that she was watching him fondly as he strolled to his own seat. In keeping with proper decorum, Clark kept his manful gaze forward, striding forcefully across the lunchroom. No doubt, she swooned as he passed.
After staying the course for the remainder of the school day, Clark returned home to prepare for the next day’s romp. After carefully selecting the proper wardrobe, he began to put his bankroll in order. Having accumulated a respectable amount of currency through various odd grounds-keeping-related endeavors, he was sure of his ability to show his lady a properly luxurious time. Soon, having been informed by his mother that the hour was late, he turned in to accumulate the necessary amount of rest. Clark slept soundly.
Rising early the next morning, Clark went about his routine. He took his breakfast (toaster pastries and milk) in the dining room, then freshened and dressed himself. Allowing for a precise seven minutes of travel time, he departed so as to arrive at Jenny’s door at the agreed-upon hour. She lived a few blocks down the street, a straight shot west. After perfunctory greetings, they turned back east for a leisurely three minutes until they reached the bus stop, which was positioned in between their respective dwellings. Obviously, they could have chosen to simply meet at the bus stop, but this would not have been in proper form—to leave a lady to walk unattended would be most out of order.
The bus arrived within an acceptable margin for error, and they prepared to board. With a chivalrous flourish, Clark removed from his pocket proper currency for two fairs. Following Jenny up the stairs, he saw something momentarily disheartening—the city buses to the carnival were operating gratis. But a gentleman never allows himself to be rattled by unexpected events. With subtle precision, Clark returned the coins to his pocket. There was, he thought, a high probability that Jenny would not have noticed the free-of-charge nature of this bus ride, allowing him to reap the benefits of his gesture while bearing no financial cost. Clark took the seat next to her, pleased by his own quick-mindedness.
The bus ride was not a long one, so after a few minutes of pleasant chit-chat the two children arrived at the carnival site and (along with the rest of the bus’s passengers) disembarked. This time, Clark’s noble attempt at payment went much more smoothly, and he escorted Jenny onto the carnival grounds—all noise, flashing lights, whirring rides. The sheer variety of it all was paralyzing, briefly—while both of them had been to the carnival in past years, they never before had been able to direct themselves by their own wills. Seeing this moment as one requiring decisive action, Clark led the way to a nearby fried food stand for some corndog-related fortification. He took approving note of Jenny’s spurning of childish ketchup for the more proper yellow mustard, then dove into his own confection.
The searing pain of the hot breading smashing into the roof of his mouth caused Clark’s eyes to water. Most un-distinguished. A hurried pull on his soda soothed him, and he quickly verified that Jenny’s attention had been turned elsewhere during his moment of weakness. His mouth settled into an uncomfortable stinging, with little raw bits of flesh dangling everywhere like he had been attacked by a delicious cheese grater, but Clark manfully pushed on. He made a couple of wry observations about their surroundings, and was pleased by the relative lack of a speech impediment the infernal corndog had inflicted upon him. Then they turned to wander down the ramshackle midway.
The various carnival games spread out on either side of the path, with semi-enthusiastic purveyors of low-quality stuffed animals barking out their selling points to anyone who happened to amble by. One—a ring-toss game—caught Clark’s eye; after all, Clark was by all accounts the neighborhood’s premier horseshoes player, and how different could this be? Rows of posts extended to the back wall of the rickety stand, getting progressively thicker as the distance grew. A gentleman always elevates his game under pressure, and Clark had no doubt in his ability to gracefully drop a plastic ring around the most distant post—thus earning the handsome panda hanging on the back wall and earning favor with his lady.
After a businesslike exchange of currency-for-plastic-ring, Clark narrowed his gaze on one of the back posts. The sights and sounds of his surroundings dimmed and faded; he was alone with the post. Time seemed to slow. He stood, gauging the weight of the ring in his hand. He envisioned the throw—proper arc, speed, spin, dropping neatly around the post. He drew back and tossed, making sure to maintain the proper follow-through.
It clanked off the front of the post. Too low, by and inch. Curses.
Clark blinked twice, momentarily stunned. Knowing he had an audience, though, he managed to yank himself back into the moment. Composure is key. He put on his best wry grin, shrugged at Jenny, and turned to walk further down the row. He considered trying his hand at one of the other games, but decided that would appear overly desperate. At this point Jenny expressed interest in investigating the rides set up around the perimeter of the carnival, so they turned outward to see what sort of fun could be had.
“Who wants a ride?” bellowed a mustachioed man. Clark turned, and was struck by the character standing in front of the Tilt-A-Whirl. Up to this point, Clark had not taken notice of how bored most of the carnival workers seemed to be. After all, for them, all of these fantastic sights amounted to little more than another day at the office. But this fellow taking Tilt-A-Whirl tickets seemed different. There was genuine enthusiasm in his voice, and a grin framed by a perfectly manicured handlebar mustache. Clearly this was a gentleman from the great vaudevillian tradition.
Clark saw that Jenny seemed equally enraptured by this character’s charisma, so he suggested taking a spin. She agreed, and they approached the entrance. The line proved to be of a reasonable length, and they boarded for the next cycle, the dashing attendant giving Clark a wry wink as they passed. Clark stepped to the side of the Tilt-A-Whirl pod and allowed his fair companion to board, then slid in next to her and pulled the protective bar down over their laps. He noted that, for the first time, Jenny seemed genuinely excited.
And so it began, the pair lurching around in circles and they both tilted and whirled. This was Clark’s first encounter with the ride, having never previously been allowed on due mainly to parental reticence. His father had a bit of a weak stomach. As it turned out, Clark quite enjoyed himself, but tried to keep up a relatively stoic appearance. He couldn’t help but notice how the spinning force was pushing Jenny steadily closer, until they were rubbing shoulders.
The ride came to a stop. Clark lifted the protective bar, but Jenny made no immediate attempt to climb out. He felt her resting her head on his shoulder. Clark stole a glance to his side, and saw that Jenny was smiling contentedly. What was this feeling in his gut? It must be love.
Then, Clark vomited on Jenny’s shoes.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Merlot and a Thousand Little Stars
Channeling the energy of black coffee from the Spyhouse Coffeeshop in Minneapolis, Sharkey explores the concept of context through three stories. The result, I like to believe, is very similar to the wondrous visual sensation you get when you press you your fists to your eyes for five minutes.
Regardless, by the end, you to will be asking yourself for the Merlot.
Enjoy.
Regardless, by the end, you to will be asking yourself for the Merlot.
Enjoy.
If Knowing is Half the Battle, I'd Rather Lose
Something that happened:
A few comrades and I were spending a summer night lounging on the shores of a heavily-developed North Dakota lake. A still night, pretty clear—the sort of night where sound can carry for miles across the water. It doesn’t matter what we were doing, because I don’t remember. In fact, I only remember one thing about that evening. From somewhere across the water, a male voice proclaimed: “I am not getting on this fucking boat without my fucking merlot!”
Something that probably didn’t happen:
The weekend wasn’t going as well as Chad had hoped. He had big plans, after all—sure, a gentlemen’s weekend might seem cliché, but it was a rare thing indeed to have the whole crew in one place. Good times would be had on the water.
Things started to go sour when Teddy missed his flight. At least, they were pretty sure Teddy missed his flight; in any case, he never got off the plane. His whereabouts remain unknown. And shortly after, Vinny arrived with his new lady, Tina, in tow. So much for a manly, blue-talking, hard-drinking weekend.
Tina and Chad had a bit of a history, which we don’t need to bother recounting here; suffice it to say things were satisfactorily awkward. Chad was displeased, but committed himself to enjoying the weekend anyway. After all, they had an entire case of wine.
Most of the day turned out to be surprisingly bearable. The wine helped. But having the rest of the gang around improved Chad’s mood to the point that he was nearly enjoying himself. As the sun set the situation deteriorated, though. It started with a friendly game of charades. For some reason, Jim was unable to correctly identify Chad’s exquisite, Brando-esque performance of an emu. Then Tina was clearly mouthing words, in clear violation of charade protocol, while attempting to perform Abraham Lincoln.
Hope remained, though, for the evening boat ride. Chad has always enjoyed being out on the water, so the opportunity to wander the lake seemed like a good way to calm his party game-induced nerves. And cramming a dozen people onto a small pontoon boat would assuredly make for ideal opportunities to casually push people into the drink.
The kitchen had plenty of cooks, so Chad decided to let the rest load up the boat with the essentials: drink, cigars, dice, and some fireworks of questionable legality. Chad and a few others hung back and watched Baseball Tonight. Priorities, you know.
Anyway, after a spell the remainder wandered down to shore. As they were boarding, Kevin was checking off the list of supplies:
“High Life… Black Cats… Canadian Club… Hey, anybody grab the wine?”
Chad stopped. All he wanted to do was hang out on a boat and lay the groundwork for a vicious red wine hangover.
“God dammit,” he said. “How hard could it possibly be to remember to grab a couple bottles of wine? Now I have to go back up for it.”
Tina rolled her eyes. “For fuck’s sake, forget the wine. We’ve got everything else. Let’s hit the water already.”
This proved to be too much.
“No. Fuck this. I am not getting on this fucking boat without my fucking merlot!”
Something even less likely to have happened:
I woke up on the floor.
In and of itself, this would not normally be alarming. I frequently wake up on the floor. This floor, however, was unfamiliar. For one, it was hardwood, and I have made it a point to carpet every inch of my domain—among other things, it’s more pleasant to wake up on. And, there was a dead moose staring out of the wall at me. I found this fact alarming, mostly because it took me a few seconds to conclusively conclude that the moose in question was, in fact, dead.
Attempting to get my bearings, I scanned my surroundings. An associate of mine was dozing peacefully in an easy chair. I gently awoke him.
“Holy hell! Where are we?”
“What?”
“Where are we, and why are we sharing a room with dead beasts?” By this point, I had noticed the stuffed beaver and half-dozen mounted fish. I also seemed to be wearing a high school class ring that didn’t exactly belong to me.
“North Dakota. A weekend on the lake. Don’t you remember?”
“Does it look like I remember? Why in sam-hill would we go to North Dakota? That’s the shitty Dakota.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. With the amount of tequila you were putting away, I’m shocked you woke up at all. Anyway, just relax. These people are friendly.”
“These people? What people? And how did we get here? And since when does North Dakota have lakes?”
“For chrissakes, calm yourself. He’s an old friend. Works in oil now. We flew up in his Cessna last night. He was in Colorado for the weekend. Any of this ringing a bell?”
“I remember the tequila. Foul stuff.”
“Fine. We’re here for a bit of relaxation. I think we’ve earned it. A weekend on a heavily-developed lake, free hooch, some meat cooked over fire. Don’t worry. We’ll be back in Denver by Monday morning. We can finish it then.”
This all seemed reasonable enough. A weekend out of town sounded fine, and the whisky he’d pushed into my hand during the reorientation was unwinding the vise clamped around my skull. Things were looking up.
“Okay. So where’s the oilman? I should thank him for this hospitality.”
“I think he’s putting gas in the boats. I heard him leave about an hour ago.”
“Hmmm. Boats, you say? What kind of equipment are we—“
I didn’t have to finish. The rumble outside answered my questions. We strolled outside to soak in the sight, near-comical: a slim fiberglass beauty with a pair of monstrous out-boards. To say the machine didn’t fit its surroundings would be a crippling understatement.
“What do I call him?”
“Just Jim.”
Jim slid the boat onto the lift and clambered ashore.
“Holy mother of fuck, I didn’t think you’d live through the night. We made sure we had you on your side, at least; you can put away a hell of a lot of shitty tequila.”
I just nodded and tipped my tumbler of whiskey in his direction. “Breakfast of champions,” he said. At least I knew he could read.
A proper breakfast was prepared. Jim got some wood out of a plastic bin in a clearing on the east side of the house, flame was created, and bacon was fried. Eggs were cooked in the fat. I was fortified.
“Well boys, I think it’s time to hit the water.”
My associate and I agreed. We stocked the boat with cheap domestics and a bottle of scotch and took to the lake. The lake itself was less an open body of water than a winding series of connected bays, which only heightened the absurdity of such a high-powered aquatic beast—with the throttle wide open, it was rarely more than a few seconds before we would need to rapidly change course.
This is exactly my style. High speeds, twisting turns, constant vigilance: a true test of a man’s reflexes. Since I had a free hand (with the scotch in my left), I commandeered the controls and pointed us west towards one of the more expansive stretches of water.
My associate wasn’t too amused by my talent of spooking water-skiers with a quick weave, but Jim seemed to be enjoying himself. My senses were running full-tilt; the lake was pretty shallow, and most of the points hid some serious rocks at minimal depth—at the speeds we were going, they’d be enough to rip a fresh asshole right down the length of the hull. Luckily, Jim seemed to be a man of grit.
“Fuckin’ a, boy. They aren’t used to this up here. There’s another one—eleven o’clock!”
As it happened, our morning boat ride had started around three in the afternoon, so after a couple hours of raising hell on the water we retired to shore to begin preparations for a proper evening feast. The house had a fully-outfitted kitchen, but we were committed to doing this properly—thick, heavily-peppered stakes in a cast-iron pan, cooked nice and rare; thick Idaho golds wrapped in tinfoil and tossed in the coals, with another bottle of Scotland’s finest malt.
This process, as you might expect, took a few hours. Can’t rush these sorts of things. And besides, by now there was wine to drink—essential to mellow us out for the coming evening. After all, there was a whole ‘nother boat to test.
This one fit its surroundings a bit better. A modestly-sized pontoon boat, albeit one that suited our need for luxury. Comfortable seats and more than enough cup holders boded well for our future endeavors. After polishing off one more round of dead cow, we began preparations. This excursion would require endurance, so we packed accordingly—plenty of sugars, carbohydrates, and most importantly, the wine. It would be crucial to steady our hands while docking afterwards; a good red wine calms a man and brings clarity of thought. Especially since we’d be dealing with no light.
I briefly retired to the lavatory to attend to some business, leaving my companions to stock the vessel. When I returned a short time later, things seemed to be in order.
“We have the potato chips?”
“Indeed.”
“Both of the cakes?”
“Check.”
“The wine?”
“Ah, I think it’s still inside. Forget it; we’ve got plenty to drink.”
“No, you don’t understand its importance. I am not getting on this fucking boat without my fucking merlot!”
Thoughts:
Wasn’t that fun? I know I enjoyed myself, and for a very specific reason: I don’t have the slightest idea who wanted his fucking merlot, or why that bottle of wine was so damned important. Every time I think about sitting on that lake and overhearing that snippet, I ponder the endless number of possible backstories that bubble up in the back of my mind. (Kind of like the bends, actually.) Since no single one is true, any of them could be. That lack of knowing opens up fantastic possibilities.
Think of your favorite suspenseful movie. What’s the best part? The big reveal at the end? Doubtful. Sure, there might be some satisfaction in finally figuring out what was going on, especially if the ending is particularly well executed. But I’d be willing to wager that the real reason you like that movie so much is the way it leaves you knowing so little about what’s actually going on. That lack of grounding context opens up fantastic possibilities.
I’m particularly smitten by the TV show Lost. The reason is simple. Lost does an excellent job of giving you just enough information to be able to dream up all kinds of fantastic theories, without revealing so much that you’re forced to settle on one interpretation. (This is becoming, inevitably, less true as the show hurtles towards conclusion, but that doesn’t detract from the earlier seasons’ excellence on this front.)
All art is improved by contextual ambiguity. Would knowing why the Mona Lisa grinned, or to whom Shakespeare wrote his sonnets, add anything to our interpretation? Of course not. This may be a rather uncontroversial statement to make about art, but we treat all sorts of everyday happenings the same way, glorying in what we don’t know.
How else to explain people-watching? That’s most of the appeal of state fairs, after all. When we consider the visage of someone we’ve never met—and will never meet—we’re filling in all sorts of little pieces of backstory on our own. That sickeningly-sweet couple over there, or the father ready to rip his own hair out because his kids won’t shut up, or the guy riding the impractically tall bicycle, are all interesting insofar as we can imagine just what’s going on with them. If we found out, any appeal they may have would depend on how they really were. Those interesting people we imagine could be lost forever.
We have entire websites devoted to this phenomenon, which just allow us to further satisfy our desire for contextlessness. We don’t have to bother moving to be able to create all kinds of wonderful little worlds, populated with interesting people, right in our heads.
Now, the wonders of context-free living do have their limits. In certain situations—romantic letters, foreign policy negotiations, capital murder trials—context can be everything. (Context free: “I’m going to kill him,” says the accused. Context: “…in that next game of parcheesi.”) So we must be willing to occasionally allow context to guide us to more accurate conclusions.
But we shouldn’t let our natural desire for knowledge constrict the wonders of our imagination. Context replaces what could be with what is. Without it, we can spend our time pondering the significance of a certain bottle of fucking merlot to our heart’s content.
A few comrades and I were spending a summer night lounging on the shores of a heavily-developed North Dakota lake. A still night, pretty clear—the sort of night where sound can carry for miles across the water. It doesn’t matter what we were doing, because I don’t remember. In fact, I only remember one thing about that evening. From somewhere across the water, a male voice proclaimed: “I am not getting on this fucking boat without my fucking merlot!”
Something that probably didn’t happen:
The weekend wasn’t going as well as Chad had hoped. He had big plans, after all—sure, a gentlemen’s weekend might seem cliché, but it was a rare thing indeed to have the whole crew in one place. Good times would be had on the water.
Things started to go sour when Teddy missed his flight. At least, they were pretty sure Teddy missed his flight; in any case, he never got off the plane. His whereabouts remain unknown. And shortly after, Vinny arrived with his new lady, Tina, in tow. So much for a manly, blue-talking, hard-drinking weekend.
Tina and Chad had a bit of a history, which we don’t need to bother recounting here; suffice it to say things were satisfactorily awkward. Chad was displeased, but committed himself to enjoying the weekend anyway. After all, they had an entire case of wine.
Most of the day turned out to be surprisingly bearable. The wine helped. But having the rest of the gang around improved Chad’s mood to the point that he was nearly enjoying himself. As the sun set the situation deteriorated, though. It started with a friendly game of charades. For some reason, Jim was unable to correctly identify Chad’s exquisite, Brando-esque performance of an emu. Then Tina was clearly mouthing words, in clear violation of charade protocol, while attempting to perform Abraham Lincoln.
Hope remained, though, for the evening boat ride. Chad has always enjoyed being out on the water, so the opportunity to wander the lake seemed like a good way to calm his party game-induced nerves. And cramming a dozen people onto a small pontoon boat would assuredly make for ideal opportunities to casually push people into the drink.
The kitchen had plenty of cooks, so Chad decided to let the rest load up the boat with the essentials: drink, cigars, dice, and some fireworks of questionable legality. Chad and a few others hung back and watched Baseball Tonight. Priorities, you know.
Anyway, after a spell the remainder wandered down to shore. As they were boarding, Kevin was checking off the list of supplies:
“High Life… Black Cats… Canadian Club… Hey, anybody grab the wine?”
Chad stopped. All he wanted to do was hang out on a boat and lay the groundwork for a vicious red wine hangover.
“God dammit,” he said. “How hard could it possibly be to remember to grab a couple bottles of wine? Now I have to go back up for it.”
Tina rolled her eyes. “For fuck’s sake, forget the wine. We’ve got everything else. Let’s hit the water already.”
This proved to be too much.
“No. Fuck this. I am not getting on this fucking boat without my fucking merlot!”
Something even less likely to have happened:
I woke up on the floor.
In and of itself, this would not normally be alarming. I frequently wake up on the floor. This floor, however, was unfamiliar. For one, it was hardwood, and I have made it a point to carpet every inch of my domain—among other things, it’s more pleasant to wake up on. And, there was a dead moose staring out of the wall at me. I found this fact alarming, mostly because it took me a few seconds to conclusively conclude that the moose in question was, in fact, dead.
Attempting to get my bearings, I scanned my surroundings. An associate of mine was dozing peacefully in an easy chair. I gently awoke him.
“Holy hell! Where are we?”
“What?”
“Where are we, and why are we sharing a room with dead beasts?” By this point, I had noticed the stuffed beaver and half-dozen mounted fish. I also seemed to be wearing a high school class ring that didn’t exactly belong to me.
“North Dakota. A weekend on the lake. Don’t you remember?”
“Does it look like I remember? Why in sam-hill would we go to North Dakota? That’s the shitty Dakota.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. With the amount of tequila you were putting away, I’m shocked you woke up at all. Anyway, just relax. These people are friendly.”
“These people? What people? And how did we get here? And since when does North Dakota have lakes?”
“For chrissakes, calm yourself. He’s an old friend. Works in oil now. We flew up in his Cessna last night. He was in Colorado for the weekend. Any of this ringing a bell?”
“I remember the tequila. Foul stuff.”
“Fine. We’re here for a bit of relaxation. I think we’ve earned it. A weekend on a heavily-developed lake, free hooch, some meat cooked over fire. Don’t worry. We’ll be back in Denver by Monday morning. We can finish it then.”
This all seemed reasonable enough. A weekend out of town sounded fine, and the whisky he’d pushed into my hand during the reorientation was unwinding the vise clamped around my skull. Things were looking up.
“Okay. So where’s the oilman? I should thank him for this hospitality.”
“I think he’s putting gas in the boats. I heard him leave about an hour ago.”
“Hmmm. Boats, you say? What kind of equipment are we—“
I didn’t have to finish. The rumble outside answered my questions. We strolled outside to soak in the sight, near-comical: a slim fiberglass beauty with a pair of monstrous out-boards. To say the machine didn’t fit its surroundings would be a crippling understatement.
“What do I call him?”
“Just Jim.”
Jim slid the boat onto the lift and clambered ashore.
“Holy mother of fuck, I didn’t think you’d live through the night. We made sure we had you on your side, at least; you can put away a hell of a lot of shitty tequila.”
I just nodded and tipped my tumbler of whiskey in his direction. “Breakfast of champions,” he said. At least I knew he could read.
A proper breakfast was prepared. Jim got some wood out of a plastic bin in a clearing on the east side of the house, flame was created, and bacon was fried. Eggs were cooked in the fat. I was fortified.
“Well boys, I think it’s time to hit the water.”
My associate and I agreed. We stocked the boat with cheap domestics and a bottle of scotch and took to the lake. The lake itself was less an open body of water than a winding series of connected bays, which only heightened the absurdity of such a high-powered aquatic beast—with the throttle wide open, it was rarely more than a few seconds before we would need to rapidly change course.
This is exactly my style. High speeds, twisting turns, constant vigilance: a true test of a man’s reflexes. Since I had a free hand (with the scotch in my left), I commandeered the controls and pointed us west towards one of the more expansive stretches of water.
My associate wasn’t too amused by my talent of spooking water-skiers with a quick weave, but Jim seemed to be enjoying himself. My senses were running full-tilt; the lake was pretty shallow, and most of the points hid some serious rocks at minimal depth—at the speeds we were going, they’d be enough to rip a fresh asshole right down the length of the hull. Luckily, Jim seemed to be a man of grit.
“Fuckin’ a, boy. They aren’t used to this up here. There’s another one—eleven o’clock!”
As it happened, our morning boat ride had started around three in the afternoon, so after a couple hours of raising hell on the water we retired to shore to begin preparations for a proper evening feast. The house had a fully-outfitted kitchen, but we were committed to doing this properly—thick, heavily-peppered stakes in a cast-iron pan, cooked nice and rare; thick Idaho golds wrapped in tinfoil and tossed in the coals, with another bottle of Scotland’s finest malt.
This process, as you might expect, took a few hours. Can’t rush these sorts of things. And besides, by now there was wine to drink—essential to mellow us out for the coming evening. After all, there was a whole ‘nother boat to test.
This one fit its surroundings a bit better. A modestly-sized pontoon boat, albeit one that suited our need for luxury. Comfortable seats and more than enough cup holders boded well for our future endeavors. After polishing off one more round of dead cow, we began preparations. This excursion would require endurance, so we packed accordingly—plenty of sugars, carbohydrates, and most importantly, the wine. It would be crucial to steady our hands while docking afterwards; a good red wine calms a man and brings clarity of thought. Especially since we’d be dealing with no light.
I briefly retired to the lavatory to attend to some business, leaving my companions to stock the vessel. When I returned a short time later, things seemed to be in order.
“We have the potato chips?”
“Indeed.”
“Both of the cakes?”
“Check.”
“The wine?”
“Ah, I think it’s still inside. Forget it; we’ve got plenty to drink.”
“No, you don’t understand its importance. I am not getting on this fucking boat without my fucking merlot!”
Thoughts:
Wasn’t that fun? I know I enjoyed myself, and for a very specific reason: I don’t have the slightest idea who wanted his fucking merlot, or why that bottle of wine was so damned important. Every time I think about sitting on that lake and overhearing that snippet, I ponder the endless number of possible backstories that bubble up in the back of my mind. (Kind of like the bends, actually.) Since no single one is true, any of them could be. That lack of knowing opens up fantastic possibilities.
Think of your favorite suspenseful movie. What’s the best part? The big reveal at the end? Doubtful. Sure, there might be some satisfaction in finally figuring out what was going on, especially if the ending is particularly well executed. But I’d be willing to wager that the real reason you like that movie so much is the way it leaves you knowing so little about what’s actually going on. That lack of grounding context opens up fantastic possibilities.
I’m particularly smitten by the TV show Lost. The reason is simple. Lost does an excellent job of giving you just enough information to be able to dream up all kinds of fantastic theories, without revealing so much that you’re forced to settle on one interpretation. (This is becoming, inevitably, less true as the show hurtles towards conclusion, but that doesn’t detract from the earlier seasons’ excellence on this front.)
All art is improved by contextual ambiguity. Would knowing why the Mona Lisa grinned, or to whom Shakespeare wrote his sonnets, add anything to our interpretation? Of course not. This may be a rather uncontroversial statement to make about art, but we treat all sorts of everyday happenings the same way, glorying in what we don’t know.
How else to explain people-watching? That’s most of the appeal of state fairs, after all. When we consider the visage of someone we’ve never met—and will never meet—we’re filling in all sorts of little pieces of backstory on our own. That sickeningly-sweet couple over there, or the father ready to rip his own hair out because his kids won’t shut up, or the guy riding the impractically tall bicycle, are all interesting insofar as we can imagine just what’s going on with them. If we found out, any appeal they may have would depend on how they really were. Those interesting people we imagine could be lost forever.
We have entire websites devoted to this phenomenon, which just allow us to further satisfy our desire for contextlessness. We don’t have to bother moving to be able to create all kinds of wonderful little worlds, populated with interesting people, right in our heads.
Now, the wonders of context-free living do have their limits. In certain situations—romantic letters, foreign policy negotiations, capital murder trials—context can be everything. (Context free: “I’m going to kill him,” says the accused. Context: “…in that next game of parcheesi.”) So we must be willing to occasionally allow context to guide us to more accurate conclusions.
But we shouldn’t let our natural desire for knowledge constrict the wonders of our imagination. Context replaces what could be with what is. Without it, we can spend our time pondering the significance of a certain bottle of fucking merlot to our heart’s content.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Fake, Plastic Treehouses?
I don’t consider myself a particularly jealous fellow. Generally, I’m able to live with myself if someone has a sweeter car, nicer apartment, or larger slice of cheesecake. However, there is at least one man of whom I can say I am unequivocally jealous: Horrace Burgess of Crossville, TN. Why? Because he owns the sweetest treehouse in the world.
Now, I’ve built (read: mostly watched my grandpa build) a treehouse or two (read: one) in my time. And it was pretty sweet. There was (or, is; the tree’s still there) a tree in my backyard that was prime for housing. About ten feet or so off the ground, it split off, Y-shaped, and continued on. That joint was an excellent spot for some hot treehouse action. By building the base platform on both sides of the joint, we could create two—yes, two—rooms. Granted, one room was about two feet wide, but still: you could stand on either side. Awesome: my treehouse could hold three, and maybe even four, people at once. Now, I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is “yes”: there was a rope ladder. Were there hand-rails along the perimeter? You bet your ass.
I admit, though, that Mr. Burgess has me beat. Where my treehouse had 20-odd square feet of floor-space, Burgess can counter with 8,000. I had one story; Burgess has ten (and counting). This is enough to earn my jealousy, because treehouses are awesome. And this awesomeness gives the treehouse an important power; the concept of the treehouse is powerful enough to make a grown man sink a huge wad of cash into a treemansion. Even if the treehouse is to some extent fading from modern childhood[1] it remains a significant symbol of what it means to be a boy.
Of course, here is where the questions set in. Why is a treehouse a boy thing (at least in theory)? There’s no reason why girls can’t think treehouses are the bee’s knees. And gender questions aside, the treehouse is a symbol of a very specific, idyllic version of American childhood—one that probably obscures more than it reveals.
In its ideal pop-culture form, the treehouse serves as a powerful metaphor for boyhood. It’s outdoorsy and it involves a hammer, nails, and sweat; these are traditionally “male” traits, and girls who dare enjoy such things are often tagged with the “tomboy” label. Consider Calvin and Hobbes, the greatest comic strip of all time. His considerable vocabulary aside, Calvin is the prototypical boy, and so he must have a treehouse. His treetop fort is home to G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS), the secret society headed by Supreme Dictator for Life Calvin and President/First Tiger Hobbes. But G.R.O.S.S. lets Calvin do more than bestow upon himself impressive titles; its primary purpose is to exclude Susie, Calvin’s antagonist (and possible crush, but we’ll get back to that in a minute).
Children are powerless: they can’t drive, vote, or buy guns (not even at gun shows!). And as we all know, that helplessness can be maddening for a kid who is just getting old enough to realize all of his/her limitations. Enter the treehouse, where the kid is king—or Supreme Dictator for Life. (At least until bedtime.) It’s a space in which the child can control everything: rules, decorum, access. And as a preferred space, the treehouse holds several advantages over a child’s other choices. The bedroom is fine, but it’s only a province within the larger nation-state of the house, and as such occasionally (for example, when it’s time to pick up dirty laundry) falls under superior jurisdiction. Public places, like the mall, lack discerning taste in those allowed inside. Plus, no other choice is as ideal for SuperSoaker fights as is the treehouse.
The treehouse does have some limitations, though: namely, not having a whole lot to do once you’re up there. You can chuck water balloons, or install a piece of plywood on which to rest snacks. But really, beyond that feeling of control, the treehouse affords relatively little in the way of positive, active power. You can do anything, but there isn’t anything to do. And so, enter exclusion.
Indeed, the most important benefit of the treehouse (when properly equipped with retractable access) is the ability to pick and choose those allowed inside.[2] That’s real power—power which Calvin uses to its full effect in his ongoing struggle against the forces of cooties. As the name of G.R.O.S.S. makes clear, it is an essentially sexist organization, existing solely to isolate those lacking the slime-repelling Y chromosome.
Definition-by-exclusion is such a common adolescent process it probably doesn’t require much exploration; suffice it to say that when we’re just beginning to form self-identities, being clear about what we are not is an easy starting point. G.R.O.S.S. and the treehouse allow Calvin to physically manifest this idea, as he excludes Susie and occasionally pelts her with buckeyes.
But secretly, Calvin is torn. He puts up a macho front, but there’s a side of him that finds the opposite sex intriguing. That side is, of course, Hobbes, who frequently fraternizes with the enemy. (The enemy apparently gives good belly-rubs.) As long as we remember that Hobbes only exists in Calvin’s head, we can see how the combination of G.R.O.S.S. and the treehouse serve as a tree-top flirtation device. Since Calvin is only six, he isn’t quite ready to admit that (and part of him clings to a cootie-free philosophy), but the seeds are planted.
Assumedly, as Calvin ages his treehouse will take on a slightly different role in his life—perhaps the role illustrated in South Park. In the second-season episode “Clubhouses,” Stan and Kyle set out to build a treehouse. Since both lads are a few years older than Calvin, their goal has shifted. The treehouse is still all about girls, but now the idea is to bring them in, not shut them out; specifically, they must build a treehouse so that they can play truth or dare in it. Stan is sure that once they have a treehouse, they can use it to play truth or dare with girls, and he will get dared to kiss Wendy (his girlfriend). They still do some excluding, but instead of cutting out the girls, they organize against their friend Cartman (who proceeds to build his own treehouse). And while the rickety treehouse never does get Stan any action, in the end it saves his parents’ marriage: on the outs, Stan’s parents meet in the treehouse and rekindle their romance with a game of truth or dare.
The point here (insofar as an episode of South Park can be said to have a point) is to illustrate the power of nostalgia for one’s childhood—it’s strong enough to save a seemingly-doomed marriage. But the story of the parents, combined with what we see Stan and his friends experience, suggests something slightly different. The treehouse affects much more strongly the lives of the adults than those of the kids, because they can look back on tree-top encounters through the rose-colored glasses of time. The contrast between the experience of the kids and that of the adults is the key: the kids are living in a real-world, present version of their childhood, in which things are imperfect. But when the adults play truth or dare, they can rely on perfect memories of things that may never have happened.
Once you cut through the rest, South Park is suggesting that the way we look back on childhood deviates wildly from how it actually was. All the bad, awkward bits get forgotten over time—washed over in favor of a sterile, pleasant ideal. This is how the treehouse-as-symbol works generally within pop-culture. It is the ideal that maybe never was. But this is not the treehouse’s fault (because, remember: treehouses are sweet). Instead, it’s part of a much more general phenomenon.
Think of all the assumptions involved the aforementioned ideal treehouse childhood. For one, it’s male, erasing any female role except that of object (to be either excluded or lured inside). There’s an expectation of heterosexuality, too: no room for a group of boys playing truth or dare. And the whole picture is either suburban or rural. Calvin has a forest behind his house, and the South Park kids live in a quiet little mountain town. For any of this to work, a kid has to have at least a back yard with a tree in it. And once we’re into a rural/suburban environment, we’re talking about an overwhelmingly white setting.
The treehouse, as it exists in the popular conscience, is part of the larger tendency to consider the white, male, hetero, suburban experience the universal one. But, of course, that has never been an accurate picture. I don’t think I’m breaking any stunning new ground by pointing that out—embracing the ideal of the treehouse childhood ignores the way in which the vast majority of the country grew up.
Every time a TV talking-head makes a casual reference to white males as the “regular folks,” we’re dealing with the same tendency. Or when a major-party vice-presidential candidate talks about how small towns are the “real America.” Or when a craggy old pol writes a column titled “Traditional Americans are losing their nation,” and ends it by saying, “America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.” When Buchanan, Palin, and Matthews use that kind of language, they’re calling on a very specific type of nostalgia—the treehouse America, where everyone left it to Beaver and occasionally took fishing trips with Andy Griffith. As I mentioned before, that isn’t the America that most people experience. The chattering class is embracing a supposedly-shared cultural memory that is more fiction than fact.
So, the treehouse seems to symbolize nothing more than pure invention. As a marker of a larger common culture, it has meaning only to a specific slice of the population. And as the South Park example shows, those of us who feel a particular personal nostalgia towards the treehouse are using it to symbolize a clean-scrubbed, idealized version of our own pasts. This is an understandable situation; after all, nostalgia is a powerful force. It gives us an escape from an imperfect present by offering an imagined version of that perfect past. Unfortunately, innocent bystanders like the treehouse get swept up in the nostalgic current.
That’s where Horrace Burgess comes in. What his skyscraper in the trees offers us is a way out of nostalgia’s grip. Building a ten-story treehouse in adulthood is a statement: he has decided not to rest on nostalgia. Obviously, Burgess has some fond memories of a childhood perch, but instead of simply succumbing to some kind of falsified memory of youthful awesomeness he acted to make his present tangibly kick-ass. That’s a hard thing to do. Memories don’t take any work. You don’t have to drive a few thousand nails to remember sitting on a rickety wooden platform when you were nine. Acting on that memory to make something enjoyable in the here-and-now is admirable.
And that’s why I envy him—not because he put a basketball hoop in a treehouse (although that is sweet as well), but because he had motivation and drive enough to create a present-tense piece of excellence that takes the role of idle (and generally falsified) nostalgia. That’s an impressive display of carpe diem, one worthy of some genuine jealousy.
[1] It doesn’t seem to be popping up as much nowadays—but then again, a reliable source informs me that a treehouse makes an appearance in a High School Musical movie. Maybe I’m just out of touch.
[2] “Inside” here used in a relative sense, of course. Unless you managed to build a roof, in which case: bravo.
Now, I’ve built (read: mostly watched my grandpa build) a treehouse or two (read: one) in my time. And it was pretty sweet. There was (or, is; the tree’s still there) a tree in my backyard that was prime for housing. About ten feet or so off the ground, it split off, Y-shaped, and continued on. That joint was an excellent spot for some hot treehouse action. By building the base platform on both sides of the joint, we could create two—yes, two—rooms. Granted, one room was about two feet wide, but still: you could stand on either side. Awesome: my treehouse could hold three, and maybe even four, people at once. Now, I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is “yes”: there was a rope ladder. Were there hand-rails along the perimeter? You bet your ass.
I admit, though, that Mr. Burgess has me beat. Where my treehouse had 20-odd square feet of floor-space, Burgess can counter with 8,000. I had one story; Burgess has ten (and counting). This is enough to earn my jealousy, because treehouses are awesome. And this awesomeness gives the treehouse an important power; the concept of the treehouse is powerful enough to make a grown man sink a huge wad of cash into a treemansion. Even if the treehouse is to some extent fading from modern childhood[1] it remains a significant symbol of what it means to be a boy.
Of course, here is where the questions set in. Why is a treehouse a boy thing (at least in theory)? There’s no reason why girls can’t think treehouses are the bee’s knees. And gender questions aside, the treehouse is a symbol of a very specific, idyllic version of American childhood—one that probably obscures more than it reveals.
In its ideal pop-culture form, the treehouse serves as a powerful metaphor for boyhood. It’s outdoorsy and it involves a hammer, nails, and sweat; these are traditionally “male” traits, and girls who dare enjoy such things are often tagged with the “tomboy” label. Consider Calvin and Hobbes, the greatest comic strip of all time. His considerable vocabulary aside, Calvin is the prototypical boy, and so he must have a treehouse. His treetop fort is home to G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS), the secret society headed by Supreme Dictator for Life Calvin and President/First Tiger Hobbes. But G.R.O.S.S. lets Calvin do more than bestow upon himself impressive titles; its primary purpose is to exclude Susie, Calvin’s antagonist (and possible crush, but we’ll get back to that in a minute).
Children are powerless: they can’t drive, vote, or buy guns (not even at gun shows!). And as we all know, that helplessness can be maddening for a kid who is just getting old enough to realize all of his/her limitations. Enter the treehouse, where the kid is king—or Supreme Dictator for Life. (At least until bedtime.) It’s a space in which the child can control everything: rules, decorum, access. And as a preferred space, the treehouse holds several advantages over a child’s other choices. The bedroom is fine, but it’s only a province within the larger nation-state of the house, and as such occasionally (for example, when it’s time to pick up dirty laundry) falls under superior jurisdiction. Public places, like the mall, lack discerning taste in those allowed inside. Plus, no other choice is as ideal for SuperSoaker fights as is the treehouse.
The treehouse does have some limitations, though: namely, not having a whole lot to do once you’re up there. You can chuck water balloons, or install a piece of plywood on which to rest snacks. But really, beyond that feeling of control, the treehouse affords relatively little in the way of positive, active power. You can do anything, but there isn’t anything to do. And so, enter exclusion.
Indeed, the most important benefit of the treehouse (when properly equipped with retractable access) is the ability to pick and choose those allowed inside.[2] That’s real power—power which Calvin uses to its full effect in his ongoing struggle against the forces of cooties. As the name of G.R.O.S.S. makes clear, it is an essentially sexist organization, existing solely to isolate those lacking the slime-repelling Y chromosome.
Definition-by-exclusion is such a common adolescent process it probably doesn’t require much exploration; suffice it to say that when we’re just beginning to form self-identities, being clear about what we are not is an easy starting point. G.R.O.S.S. and the treehouse allow Calvin to physically manifest this idea, as he excludes Susie and occasionally pelts her with buckeyes.
But secretly, Calvin is torn. He puts up a macho front, but there’s a side of him that finds the opposite sex intriguing. That side is, of course, Hobbes, who frequently fraternizes with the enemy. (The enemy apparently gives good belly-rubs.) As long as we remember that Hobbes only exists in Calvin’s head, we can see how the combination of G.R.O.S.S. and the treehouse serve as a tree-top flirtation device. Since Calvin is only six, he isn’t quite ready to admit that (and part of him clings to a cootie-free philosophy), but the seeds are planted.
Assumedly, as Calvin ages his treehouse will take on a slightly different role in his life—perhaps the role illustrated in South Park. In the second-season episode “Clubhouses,” Stan and Kyle set out to build a treehouse. Since both lads are a few years older than Calvin, their goal has shifted. The treehouse is still all about girls, but now the idea is to bring them in, not shut them out; specifically, they must build a treehouse so that they can play truth or dare in it. Stan is sure that once they have a treehouse, they can use it to play truth or dare with girls, and he will get dared to kiss Wendy (his girlfriend). They still do some excluding, but instead of cutting out the girls, they organize against their friend Cartman (who proceeds to build his own treehouse). And while the rickety treehouse never does get Stan any action, in the end it saves his parents’ marriage: on the outs, Stan’s parents meet in the treehouse and rekindle their romance with a game of truth or dare.
The point here (insofar as an episode of South Park can be said to have a point) is to illustrate the power of nostalgia for one’s childhood—it’s strong enough to save a seemingly-doomed marriage. But the story of the parents, combined with what we see Stan and his friends experience, suggests something slightly different. The treehouse affects much more strongly the lives of the adults than those of the kids, because they can look back on tree-top encounters through the rose-colored glasses of time. The contrast between the experience of the kids and that of the adults is the key: the kids are living in a real-world, present version of their childhood, in which things are imperfect. But when the adults play truth or dare, they can rely on perfect memories of things that may never have happened.
Once you cut through the rest, South Park is suggesting that the way we look back on childhood deviates wildly from how it actually was. All the bad, awkward bits get forgotten over time—washed over in favor of a sterile, pleasant ideal. This is how the treehouse-as-symbol works generally within pop-culture. It is the ideal that maybe never was. But this is not the treehouse’s fault (because, remember: treehouses are sweet). Instead, it’s part of a much more general phenomenon.
Think of all the assumptions involved the aforementioned ideal treehouse childhood. For one, it’s male, erasing any female role except that of object (to be either excluded or lured inside). There’s an expectation of heterosexuality, too: no room for a group of boys playing truth or dare. And the whole picture is either suburban or rural. Calvin has a forest behind his house, and the South Park kids live in a quiet little mountain town. For any of this to work, a kid has to have at least a back yard with a tree in it. And once we’re into a rural/suburban environment, we’re talking about an overwhelmingly white setting.
The treehouse, as it exists in the popular conscience, is part of the larger tendency to consider the white, male, hetero, suburban experience the universal one. But, of course, that has never been an accurate picture. I don’t think I’m breaking any stunning new ground by pointing that out—embracing the ideal of the treehouse childhood ignores the way in which the vast majority of the country grew up.
Every time a TV talking-head makes a casual reference to white males as the “regular folks,” we’re dealing with the same tendency. Or when a major-party vice-presidential candidate talks about how small towns are the “real America.” Or when a craggy old pol writes a column titled “Traditional Americans are losing their nation,” and ends it by saying, “America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.” When Buchanan, Palin, and Matthews use that kind of language, they’re calling on a very specific type of nostalgia—the treehouse America, where everyone left it to Beaver and occasionally took fishing trips with Andy Griffith. As I mentioned before, that isn’t the America that most people experience. The chattering class is embracing a supposedly-shared cultural memory that is more fiction than fact.
So, the treehouse seems to symbolize nothing more than pure invention. As a marker of a larger common culture, it has meaning only to a specific slice of the population. And as the South Park example shows, those of us who feel a particular personal nostalgia towards the treehouse are using it to symbolize a clean-scrubbed, idealized version of our own pasts. This is an understandable situation; after all, nostalgia is a powerful force. It gives us an escape from an imperfect present by offering an imagined version of that perfect past. Unfortunately, innocent bystanders like the treehouse get swept up in the nostalgic current.
That’s where Horrace Burgess comes in. What his skyscraper in the trees offers us is a way out of nostalgia’s grip. Building a ten-story treehouse in adulthood is a statement: he has decided not to rest on nostalgia. Obviously, Burgess has some fond memories of a childhood perch, but instead of simply succumbing to some kind of falsified memory of youthful awesomeness he acted to make his present tangibly kick-ass. That’s a hard thing to do. Memories don’t take any work. You don’t have to drive a few thousand nails to remember sitting on a rickety wooden platform when you were nine. Acting on that memory to make something enjoyable in the here-and-now is admirable.
And that’s why I envy him—not because he put a basketball hoop in a treehouse (although that is sweet as well), but because he had motivation and drive enough to create a present-tense piece of excellence that takes the role of idle (and generally falsified) nostalgia. That’s an impressive display of carpe diem, one worthy of some genuine jealousy.
[1] It doesn’t seem to be popping up as much nowadays—but then again, a reliable source informs me that a treehouse makes an appearance in a High School Musical movie. Maybe I’m just out of touch.
[2] “Inside” here used in a relative sense, of course. Unless you managed to build a roof, in which case: bravo.
Monday, January 19, 2009
About Sharkey
Why, hello! My name is John. What's yours?
Mmm, I see. Yeah, at least the music's good. Who do you know here?
Ah, no shit? Yeah, we've known each other for... a while, at least. I'm going to go grab a drink; you need anything?
Right on. I'm having the gin. Let's take a walk--then I don't have to carry two cups.
Yeah, I did the English major thing. Oh shit, this is a good song. Someone has taste.
Oh, the Proofread thing. Right. Yeah, I was one of the hosts, back in the day when it plodded along in podcast form. Matt and I, right. I've got a good feeling about the essay-of-the-week setup now.
Alright, I gotta jet. Stay in touch; I'll get you my email: jsharkey(dot)proofread(at)gmail(dot)com.
Mmm, I see. Yeah, at least the music's good. Who do you know here?
Ah, no shit? Yeah, we've known each other for... a while, at least. I'm going to go grab a drink; you need anything?
Right on. I'm having the gin. Let's take a walk--then I don't have to carry two cups.
Yeah, I did the English major thing. Oh shit, this is a good song. Someone has taste.
Oh, the Proofread thing. Right. Yeah, I was one of the hosts, back in the day when it plodded along in podcast form. Matt and I, right. I've got a good feeling about the essay-of-the-week setup now.
Alright, I gotta jet. Stay in touch; I'll get you my email: jsharkey(dot)proofread(at)gmail(dot)com.
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