No doubt even Richard Petty woke up every now and again and said “The next asshole who even says the word ‘car’ is getting demoted to lug nut sorting.” In other words, that we love something, and that we are fulfilled by it, and that we are happy because of it, does not preclude occasional, immense frustrations with it. Indeed, it would be hard to have had a day as poor as yesterday without being so terribly in love with every part of it. But it’s (current year), man, and no one wants to hear about love.
Well, that’s why I asked my British Lit professor “is there any kind of movement afoot to counter the shallow relativism of post-modernism?”
“OH ABSOLUTELY.” She lit up for a moment, which was very reassuring. But she studies the crusty, lovey old brits for her scratch, so I already know she isn’t just Piss-Christ all the way down. In fact, if she is anything, I would have to say she is fair. I think she sees good and bad – or at least is willing to look equally for them – in just about any period. She likes Virginia Woolf, yet bristled at Woolf’s notion that she had no grandmothers in literature to draw upon. No female role models from the past, as it were. Who, she wondered, are Austen, Browning, Bronte, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, Christina Rosetti, and on and on?
I digress…
“Oh, absolutely,” she answered. “There’s a thing called neo-sincerity, for instance.” And last night, needing something to deform my ennui – no, not ennui. Ennui implies a lack of engagement. It is engagement specifically – too damned much engagement – that was my problem. So whatever unnui it was or wanted to be, it needed rescuing. (Again, all apologies to post-modernists, I’m perfectly happy noting out loud that I could use a little rescuing now and then.) I looked up neo-sincerity. I saw New Sincerity and David Foster Wallace. I am neither intellectually dead nor particularly brilliant, so I have heard of David Foster Wallace, but know nothing about him. I know very little more about him after a browse of the Wiki, but there were useful inflations in there. Things that could fill me out a little bit before going to bed like a cold sausage casing in a hard puddle of grease. For instance:
“Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal”. To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness.”
“To risk the yawn.” I don’t mind risking the yawn. I’ll be happy to be called banal. If the Russel Brands and Lena Dunhams of the world are going to call me boring, well, I’ll gladly take it down a notch. I’m a sober, faithful husband and father who believes in God and permanent truths. I’ll be here when you wake up.
In other words: Look upon my works, ye mighty, and swipe left.
Andy Havens 