We were screwing in a mirror when we realized our mistake. Since the handyman was unavailable, we had to do it ourselves. Certainly it was very pleasurable to know that we could, but we screwed-up.
Lurid sexual news is common these days; it grabs people’s attention. It titillates the public’s imagination like nothing else, even murders and celebrity scandals. Forget wars and genocide and a world teetering on the edge of nuclear annihilation when there is sexual news to keep you focused.
The bombs smoke the air with the smell of death rising everywhere. It’s the air we breathe.
But back to the screwing. Maybe I have reeled you in and you want more details. Okay, let me tell you.
As we were screwing in the mirror, we realized we had placed the drywall anchor too low, so it was behind the mirror and not slightly above. A simple measuring mistake. So relax. Perhaps you were getting too excited.
Let’s get to the smoke. No, we had not been smoking an intoxicant, we were just a bit incompetent.
Smoke comes from many directions; it’s usually meant to shroud our ability to see the truth of our situation, as in the phrase “smoke and mirrors” – the magician’s trick. Who are the magician’s running our show?
Sometimes it’s innocent smoke that turns day to night, such as the smoke that’s drifted down from Canada that has just forced me to turn lights on at midday.
Sexual titillation is not innocent smoke. That it is everywhere is obvious; it has been so for decades now. The German-American sociologist Herbert Marcuse posited this in 1964 in his book, One-Dimensional Man, in which he argued that a new totalitarianism was developing in the U.S. A. and Western Europe that “manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference.”
This was happening both culturally and politically. This unification of seeming opposites – “democratic unfreedom” that prevents qualitative change – was facilitated by what he called “repressive modes of desublimation.” One important aspect of this method of social control was the offer of increased satisfaction of the sexual variety that would draw off instinctual energy from significant social change in societies where technological rationality was the underlying fact. Localized sexuality and the sexualization and titillation of everyday life would reduce genuine erotic living. This faux-sexuality would seem to many people like liberation from the then fading traditional religiously-based forms of sublimation, which were also repressive. But rather than freedom, Marcuse argued, it was the commodification of sex as another commercial product to keep people gratified and happy with their condition in a society of growing inequality and technical control.
This “Happy Consciousness” has prevailed, and today we find ourselves incapable of imagining significant political change as the latest American president, Donald Trump, “of grab them by the pussy” fame, presides over multiple wars and growing internal repression.
Once many people smoked one or more packs of cigarettes a day. Doctors recommended them as good for your health. One of my sisters used to smoke in the shower and our family doctor smoked as he examined us kids. He was the team doctor for a major university’s basketball team. In times past, many a man went out for Lucky Strikes or Camels and never came back.
Do they still go out? For what? Do they ever come back?
In my little town of Great Barrington in western Massachusetts there are ten or so pot shops, which is approximately one shop for every 700 people. I wonder if they have read Baudelaire’s “Be Drunk”? “You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.”
Simon and Garfunkel once asked:
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you,
wo wo woWhat’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson
‘Joltin Joe’ has left and gone away,
hey hey hey
Joe, the mythical man, is long dead. Yet dreams of mythical men perdure and they will be dredged up with the next elections. Sexual scandals will follow. What’s new pussycat?
We think we have come to our senses, that the smoke does not get in our eyes. But that’s an extreme form of mental myopia. The neo-fascist vulgar Trump is our present nightmare, but his presence has a past and a future, which Chris Hedges correctly notes in “Requiem for America on the Fourth of July”:
Neoliberals peddle their own form of magical thinking. Neoliberalism is as absurd and infantile as the Christian Rapture and Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. Trump lies like he breathes, but so did previous presidents including Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Trump embraces fantasies, but so did they. Trump, like his Democratic predecessors, enriches himself and his family, although with far more ostentation and greed. He, like them, facilitates the ongoing pillage by the billionaire class. Trump is the fascist iteration of the neoliberal con. [my emphasis]
This is Marcuse’s point about the unification of ostensible opposites. But most people still don’t get it, for one-dimensional thinking is the norm. And in a digital world the tyranny of the moment dominates peoples’ attention, even as the moment itself is immediately superseded by the next. As the Red Queen said to Alice in Through the Looking-Glass, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
So we rush on, getting nowhere fast, forgetting that we are all getting screwed in a looking-glass world.
Edward Curtin: Sociologist, researcher, poet, essayist, journalist, novelist….writer – beyond a cage of categories. His latest book is AT THE LOST AND FOUND: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope (Clarity Press) edwarcurtin.com
Excellent yet again Ed. Thank you.
There is no hope now that the Zionists (Jewish and Christian) have completely captured America. No one is coming to save us. Anyone who tries, and gains the slightest critical mass, will be crushed. The only question is how long the slide into the ashbin of history will take.
The paradox exists that its never been harder to escape yet easier to understand the illusory nature of the paradigm propagated by those in power to keep the rest of us bolted in as cogs in the machine.
In the local jail, at the poor people’s campaign, at the grocery store, and among co-workers I am seeing more people questioning the rational of the current system.
All the dots have yet to be connected but for the first time in my life I am seeing the ordinary person see and feel the palpable failures of the system, some even going further to call them evil features of the evil men (and women) in power.
I believe this growing awareness this growing skepticism, although fragmented and unscientific, is the first element needed to spark the organization, mobilization, and challenging of the system by its constituent groups.
With the rise of the machines and the centralization of sinister power, time is not on our side.
But as long as good people are alive we have a chance, there is hope.
May we make use of the time we have left to resist in any way that we can with the end goal that our resistance grows and we can unify on common grounds to punish the true criminals in power and free ourselves and our people from the illusion that keeps us in hierarchical bonds ranging from the self-selected slaves to their phones all the way down to our children that have been enslaved against their will from Gaza to Tripoli to the NYC foster homes.
Dear Edward, I was thinking about you because I’ve been reading a book called “Tuned-In: The Paranormal World of Music” by Grant Cameron, Desta Barnabe, and Katarina Castillo. In the book’s description, the authors claim there’s a link between professional musicians and mystical or paranormal experiences, citing songs like “After the Gold Rush” by Neil Young. I’ve always wondered about the connection between rock music and mystical experiences.
“Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin is another incredible song with powerful lyrics, written primarily by Robert Plant while traveling through the desolate, single-track roads of southern Morocco. The song serves as a metaphor for the epic journey of life, limitless exploration, and the quest for spiritual freedom.
Description of the book “Tuned-in: The Paranormal World of Music” by Grant Cameron; Desta Barnabe; Katarina Castillo
In the spring of 2014, Grant Cameron received an astonishing message from his friend Chris Bledsoe. Chris had an extraordinary encounter with beings he called “the Guardians”. Chris relayed this message to Grant and told him that “the message is in the music”. Grant Cameron was never musically inclined, and rarely showed any interest in music until he heard the song, “After the Goldrush” by Neil Young. The message that Chris relayed to Grant now resonated with him. Grant wondered if the lyrics in that song, were part of the message. He then became very interested in musicians who have had experiences with various unexplained phenomenon. And so, the trip down the rabbit hole began… What emerged from the investigation was evidence of a very weird world where many musicians have reported bizarre occurrences such as: unexplained sightings of craft, encounters with other worldly beings and telepathic transmissions from outside our known reality. Many musicians have reported musical downloads and that they have tapped into a non-local consciousness. Many are influenced or inspired by paranormal forces and have written songs with UFO themes. There are even accounts of UFOs that have showed up at their concerts! Many musicians seem to be heavily influenced by supernatural or mystical forces and Grant’s investigation expands into many of other aspects to the paranormal world of music. This book examines the parallel stories in pre-rock music and assesses what “the message in the music” might be. Is there a plan by a higher-level consciousness to influence, enlighten and disclose information into our level of reality
Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush” is an apocalyptic, environmentalist song that uses time travel to explore the decline of humanity. The three verses jump between the Middle Ages, the 1970s present (where “Mother Nature is on the run”), and a dystopian future where the “chosen ones” evacuate a dying Earth in spaceships.
Inspiration from a Lost Screenplay
The title and apocalyptic themes were heavily inspired by an unproduced, similarly titled screenplay written by actors Dean Stockwell and Herb Bermann. The original script was an environmental thriller set on the day California was meant to wash into the ocean, following a character carrying the “Tree of Life” through Topanga Canyon to the sea. Young read the script, which then inspired a dream that formed the basis of the song’s cryptic, surreal imagery.
Lyrical Progression and Meaning
The song’s three verses tell a chronological story of the decline of humanity
The Past: The first verse uses medieval, Robin Hood-style imagery (knights, archers, and a queen) representing the early, romanticized history of human civilization.
The Present: The second verse shifts to a personal, reflective tone. The narrator is in a “burned-out basement” with hopes of a better future, while confronting the reality of a degrading environment (the famous line: “Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s”).
The Future: The final verse depicts the apocalypse. Humanity destroys the planet, leaving the Earth in a “yellow haze”. In the face of this, the “chosen ones” escape on silver spaceships to carry “Mother Nature’s silver seed to a new home in the sun,” suggesting a desperate exodus to start life anew
After The Gold Rush lyrics by Neil Young
Well, I dreamed I saw the knights
In armor coming,
Saying something about a queen.
There were peasants singing and
Drummers drumming
And the archer split the tree.
There was a fanfare blowing
To the sun
That was floating on the breeze.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.
I was lying in a burned out basement
With the full moon in my eyes.
I was hoping for replacement
When the sun burst thru the sky.
There was a band playing in my head
And I felt like getting high.
I was thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.
Thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.
Well, I dreamed I saw the silver
Space ships flying
In the yellow haze of the sun,
There were children crying
And colors flying
All around the chosen ones.
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun.
They were flying Mother Nature’s
Silver seed to a new home in the sun.
Flying Mother Nature’s
Silver seed to a new home.
The other, previous mistake was having drywall installed. It’s popular, used often, it’s crap ! What’s the alternative? Thinking!
Should we replace all of the drywall. Why Not? Where to start? In the room you are in. What to replace it with? Imagine with an empty mind.