I recently began writing a cultural column for a website that addresses the concerns of citizens over fifty years of age. Yeah, I know. You can’t read it yet because the site’s still in beta, but rest assured, when it goes “live” I’ll let you know, even if you aren’t over fifty years of age. In any event, I sent the below to my editor warning him that the contents were a little on the “downbeat” side, and he wrote back to me saying, yeah, they were, and that’s why he was gonna decline to run it. So I have to come up with something else. FML, as the kids say. Anyway, I figured I’d put it up here so the last couple of days of downbeat cogitation wouldn’t be a total waste. N.b. that the title, the styling, and the general mode of address are undertaken with an imaginary audience not entirely like the one for this blog in mind, so bear with that, if you would be so kind.
Mr. Jones and me, and you
The short, impish, British Monkee, Davy Jones, died at the end of February at the relatively young age of 66, of a heart attack. The eulogizing that went on in the various cyber arenas rather predictably touched on the burning question of the musical validity/authenticity of the ‘60s group referred to in some quarters as “the Pre-Fab Four” (for the record, my own contribution to the Twitter debate was the bald statement “The Monkees made great records. Period.”). Which was followed by sentimental romanticizing about how Jones died with his boots on, so to speak, still plugging away on the showbiz circuit. One entertainment blogger who makes something of a specialty of demonstrating his courageous honesty by finding something vinegarish to say about every celeb whose death notice comes under his transom wrote, “I was walking south on Eighth Avenue when I happened to notice he was doing a live show in a modest venue near the corner of 42nd Street. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Well, it’s a gig at least.’” Guess it’s a good thing for this guy’s sense of self-worth that there’s no blogger equivalent of B.B. King’s Times Square nightclub, the venue in question. Which does, truth to tell, book nostalgia acts mostly. In any event, the conventional wisdom is that if you’re still doing what you love when you kick it, you’ll have gone out somehow somewhat ahead of the game.
Then again, it’s arguably all a matter of perspective. It happens I have a friend, a contemporary of Jones’, who worked with the man WAY back in the day, on stage, when they were both child and teen actors respectively. “Well,” my buddy, whose subsequent life/career trajectory was rather different from Jones’, reflected, “this business is even tougher than usual when you come into the way we did.” Jones and my friend were among the last of the “born in a trunk” kind, post-vaudevillian entertainers from childhood on, trained and thrown on a stage so early they never even necessarily got to figure out if they were in fact doing what they loved. And while I’m all for the notion that doing what you love, either professionally or as a hobby, can keep you young at heart and of brain, the culture these days does tend to spin a pretty facile narrative around that notion. That narrative contains at least two fallacies: first, that one reason doing what you love is desirable is that doing what you love is easy, or it should be, you know, provided you love it enough. The other is that doing what you love will be a kind of panacea that’ll take care of all the other ills of your life, and life in general. Going all utopian on the idea tends to, among other things, elide all sorts of economic/structural realities. But it also ties in to another rather dubious cultural meme, all about our “stories.” This week I saw the movie “Being Flynn,” which was adapted from the memoir “Another Bullshit Night In Suck City,” and the title change tells you everything you need to know about the movie, really. In any event, at one point in the movie, its hero, a young writer (who, to be fair, DOES encounter some difficulty in doing, you know) observes, “We all need to create a story that makes sense of our lives.” This observation may indeed have its roots in Joseph Campbell or someone equally venerated, but the last time I heard it put so flatly was in a damn Citibank commercial. My own takeaway from a too-soon death like that of Jones’ (a cultural figure I certainly respected but did not hold hugely dear), or anybody else’s, eventually gets to the inadequacy of our own platitudes to really deal with them.
“Au contraire”–is that what he said? He’s crazy!
Glenn, I don’t know if you saw the short piece by Mike Nesmith that’s been floating around Facebook. I don’t know how much ice it would cut with you – which isn’t a jab of any sort, because I think you and I understand each other pretty well in these matters – but it was, for lack of a better phrase, very sweet. And nice, too. Which I say sincerely.
@ Bill: Yeah, I did see and like Nesmith’s piece, which reminded me a bit of some of the thoughts my late pal Lee Lipsenthal put forward in his book “Enjoy Every Sandwich.” It is perhaps no accident, as Marx would say, that they’re both folks who spent a lot of time in Marin County…but seriously, yes, it was sweet and kind and decent and CONSTRUCTIVE, and I do sometimes wish the default direction of my own musings on these issues was more in line with theirs.
Having read my share of Lex comments, I’d say that’s a long way from ‘full suicidal depression.’ And a thought-provoking read, so thanks.
I have never yet been paid to ‘do what I love,’ but I do get to do a little of it for free, and hope to do more, and can manage to do that by virtue of being paid to do what I like. So, all in all, I call myself rather blessed at this moment in time. (The matter is admittedly complicated by the fact that I often find ‘doing what I love’ to be a terrifying and exhausting prospect. But that’s a matter for me and my therapist.)
Glenn, again thanks for some space about this and much else.
And you aint even 50 or 60!
The only constant when you get older is how shockingly “BARREN” the mindspace is outside there, apart from the glitter of Godardian wallpaper. Or is it the fuckin remembered glitter from all those NY screenings.. I dunno.…
It’s a real joy being old. Some of it is for sure. Physical. Or is it – on the other hand there’s a whole lot of physical avoidance shit: fix yourself/ illness shit that greets you just as you think you’re OK. Rich or Poor. It’s like Eastwood and his great great movies. So you enter (or not) the hideous SYSTEM. I recommend NOT. You’ll be OK , trust me. When you get there, with beloved at your hand…(like me.)
Then the SUICIDAL DEPRESSION floats by your way (This is something I used to suffer like a fuckin booze/meth addiction in my 30S.)
Then I realize I’m 62, half my friends are dead and the other half died during the fuckin AIDS thing. I dont get depressed or even angry anymore partly because it’s not possible to have another emotion, or at least because because life’s a fact. And so am I. So I dont remember being depressed anymore. Like fuckin smoking. Which I think Ive forgotten about for 20 years until tonight.
So I miss that. Maybe. But I can still get drunk (and shouldnt but wont do the 12 fuckin step) and remember that. Maybe. But, ya know, even that takes longer to remember now, and by then Im even flat.
So…
I wish I was in the head room now to do a rave about how much I love Clint Eastwood and how wonderful and simple and direct and formally superb and Melodramatcilly musical I think he is. And why I think Changeling is the best American movie in twenty five years. And then I remember how I know six, maybe ten people who think as crazily as I do and as viscerally as I do about movies. (We act scnes out for each other phsycially like we’re children of fucking actos in Godard). And then I guess Im happier. So Clint, well he’s all just shy a generation older than me.
Now that sure feels better.
Nice rap Glenn. Your inner Gail Sheehey struck some chords. That whole Joe Campbell follow your bliss is a sticky wicket. For every half written screenplay in a drawer to a half built boat in garage there’s a geek’s comic book collection that fetches millions of dollars after he dies (imagine real life copying an old Spielberg Amazing Stories plot!)As far as nostalgia acts performing at modest venues I remember seeing Tiny Tim towards the end of his life deliver an awesome show. So The Monkees did make great records. So Marcia Brady having a crush on Davey Jones was zeitgeist major. Around that same time a promising director like Michael Reeves offs himself on barbiturates at 26 that spares himself a too soon death at 66.
I don’t know what this means about me or the community of Glenn Kenny followers, but I just caught up with Witchfinder General this weekend. I was duly impressed.
Afterward, I couldn’t help thinking… If the film had starred Terence Stamp and Julie Christie opposite Vincent Price and, for the sake of this thought experiment, Jon Finch (instead of Ian Ogilvy, Hilary Heath, and Robert Russell, respectively), would the critical reaction in England have been more akin to the reception of something like Bonnie and Clyde in the States?
The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.
–Joseph Campbell
Eighth grade Spanish teacher and frustrated opera singer Bill “Billy” Brown attempted to disseminate his vitriol and quash all vocational illusions we may have harbored that first day of class: “The secret in life is not to do what you like…but to like what you do.” A philosophy so outrageous as to yank my canthus-straining eyes off the amplitude of Bobbi S’s purple sweater (an Italian lineage savior and a true saint of an angel, dear Bobbi).
Outwardingy I objected to the sacrilege of such a statement but inwardly shivered at the prospect. I thought not doing what you loved–nevermind liked–would lead to certain insanity. But such a limiting outlook coming from a teacher whose only Spanish lesson I recall consisted of serenading us with songs containing “mi corazon” and “mi esposa” (in a not half-bad baritone) and one who took vindictive misogynistic pleasure performing behind-the-back mockings of said St. Angel’s long lustrous fluttering black lashes, I vowed right then never would I succumb to his hopeless abandonment (laschiate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate), and no matter what I would following my corazon.
Alas tonight, nearly two score and three years later I now find myself preparing (not) for a truely lurid, mind-numbing job I start tomorrow (today), indeed not even bothering to sleep in anticipation of the assured work-psychosis that awaits, and here at the eleventh hour with Jungian ‘meaningful coincidence’ I stumble for the first time upon your site and this posting with its Hauntingly Prophetic Title.
A sympathetic friend assures me “nobody likes their job.” Still, I rail at the injustice that all these decades and all these non-jobs later it turns out that Disgruntled Billy-Boy, the corpulent perspicacious slob, was right?! And now, finally, this here trickless old dog has to learn the goddamn lesson he (Señor Brown) tried to operatically impart so long ago in that ‘celotex interior with floursecent tubes!?’
Bobbi! Bobbi! Mi corazon!
(silence…)
I lay on the gurney, tighten the belts and rehearse my Rock Hudson impersonation (his finest on screen moment) in the final scene of John Frankenheimer’s “Seconds,” wildly thrashing with ball gag in mouth. And not in any semblence liking what I’m doing.
Damn you Billy Brown. Damn you.
Posted by: Robert Andropolis |
I think we can all relate to having one of those “Billy Brown” days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0E6TUklW7g&feature=fvwp
Well, I’m nowhere near 50 (yet) and I found this extremely relatable, but then maybe I’m just prematurely pessimistic. And I’m sure I’m not the only one to muse that however frustrating, it is somehow fitting that this article on the inadequacy and perhaps perniciousness of feel-good cultural cliches ended up being declined by the (cultural publication?) editor who was going to run it! Thank God for blogs…
And Robert’s follow-up is great. I don’t start a job today (I wish) but I will be seeking & interviewing quite a bit in the next few days (and in most cases, not of the look-Ma-I-landed-a-well-paying-9-to-5-job-that-I’m-existentially-frustrated-with-but-gee-it-is-convenient-to-have-the-bills-paid-while-I-fret-about-“selling out” type employment that movies about twentysomethings would have you believe are just out there for the taking, not to mention sniffily rejecting – personally, I suspect that passionate pursuits are usually extracurricular activities, certainly initially and probably permanently, and that a secure job makes said pursuits easier, not more difficult). At any rate, having recently arrived in a strange city all by my lonesome, the time&money clock is ticking. Y’know, following your dreams and all that…(gulp)
Anyway, RIP Davy. Breitbart went out on top though, right? Not everybody’s idea of what the top looks like, but hey to each their own…
Glenn posts an article with the term ‘full suicidal depression’ to his blog.
Glenn’s blog then goes silent for longer than it has in quite a while.
Glenn – howzabout a quick pop-in here, just to say hello?
Whoops.