The Age of Theory

This is a note  Of interest In the ancient tribes of Britain, A relatively unremarked Commonality  Between those shores And these, Which perhaps  Were fresher in the minds Of explorers  Than what we have available  Today.

It’s difficult to reckon With the short history Of the 21st century  Without acknowledging  The detained, Such as the Mauritanian, Who were caught up In the same maelstrom That has battered So much Of this time. Like so much else It is a matter That will be much-considered For many years To come. And so we exist In a Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

What is American  In the 21st century, The way we would define it, The thing others would call us, Not individuals, Not circumstances, The stories that would define us, In some later time, The narratives, Unmoored; What is that, I wonder, Not the sad stories About the deaths of kings Whispered in campfire, Tapped into keyboard, But the thing that exists Without our thinking about it, And the culture that is American.

Ours is a restless era, A nation of nomads Always in the midst Of transition, A story without beginning, Without end, Perpetually somewhere in the middle, On the roads, On the roads, Always on the roads, Never close to where we want to go, Choosing for convenience  To live far from work, From family, From roots,  Shot forth from a tree Grown thick In a forest We will never see, Will stop even believing  Exists, A course barrier Having grown up Between where we came from And where we wish we were, Lost in a dream, A happy one, Yet troubling. Restless. In medias res.

Perhaps the most fascinating ideas Are the physics of imaginary objects, Constructs made reality With the force of will, Shining through darkness  Like a lantern. Although of course I never said which color.

Truth, Justice, And the American Way... In 1938 Two Jewish men Published the first adventure  Of Superman. Some have called his creation Wish-fulfillment, Not just for the lives His creators lived But for the era In which it happened. Elsewhere, There were other Jews Fighting a man Who dreamed of A different superman. Now, Oddly, These creators  First envisioned  Superman  As a villain. It was only When forced To reconsider That he became  A hero. A hero Who could Exhibit All manner Of great But relatively human  Abilities. They created Many adventures  For Superman  Over the next several  Decades. That’s kind of Forgotten. Today  They’re only seen As the creators, Not as active Participants  In his history. One in which Eventually, Superman  Passed into The hands Of others And they lost All control And it even seemed Credit. And it wasn’t  For many years Until they got that back. And then, Not until their twilight years, And their heirs Continued That fight, That never-ending  Battle.

Columbus: We have found India! Indians: This is not India. Columbus: We have found the Indians! *** Indians: We saved your guy’s neck.  Americans: Let’s do it again with King Philip! *** Americans: We would love to do our own taxes. Loyalists: We will happily accept a tax for that! *** Burr: I don’t like that guy. Hamilton: I don’t like that guy. Both: Let’s shoot bullets at each other to solve it! *** Americans: We elect Lincoln as president! Confederates: We immediately create a different country! *** Al Gore: I will keep my ideas in a lockbox. George W. Bush: I call that strategery!

Sometimes  The sword needs putting  Back into the stone.

Prometheus, O Prometheus, Your enchanted doom, The catalogue of woe, The narrative of heroes Punished for their crimes, The thief of fire, The friend of man, The god who cared. Prometheus, O Prometheus, In the ancient days Lost to myth, The first creator  In a world  Often critical  Of innovation  But envious  And covetous  All the same, Such essential madness, To shape such leisure, To increase the complexity Of conflict, The ease of ease Tolerated but shared Reluctantly. Prometheus, O Prometheus, Chained to a rock. The end.

And maybe so, Maybe those were  Three crippling deaths  We have yet To recover from, And, just maybe, We can begin The process of reclamation  By finishing that. There were no greater men Of that era, And none capable Of living up to their legacy now. So maybe The great ambition  Of our times Is to try.

You are free to think otherwise  But I choose to believe It isn’t necessary  For the parties to work Against each other.

I lament a world That loses the ability  To interpret the past. I lament a world That reinterprets, Instead, And leaves nothing of its own Because it becomes too timid, Convicted only  Of the conviction  To do no harm. It harms the world, And I lament that world, That permits its foibles  When recognized  But condemns them When regretted. What kind of world is that? A flat world, A world devoid Of shape, Of color, Where differences Are anathema  Unless accompanied  By guilt. So much lost. And we fear, Always, The coming world, The loss of everything, A climate of fear Anchored by nothing Except fear. I lament the world, Gargling gargoyles And all, For there are no frescos In San Fransisco, No artists, Everything art But artless, No legacy, All ambition suppressed, The critics only critical Of any such notion. I lament such a world.

In a truculent sea In the midst of an indifferent world, The white whale swam on. The whale was just a whale. In later years, As the whale swam on, The strange mass hanging upon its back Clinging to some forgotten matter, Broke off little by little  Until there were only scars left, And then even the whale perished, And its great mass dissipated, And there was no loss of wonder in the world. The whale was just a whale. There was a human,  And a family, And a legacy That spent time brooding over these things But even they were lost to time, In a world that did not have a book But had a story, out of which Many perish without trace. The whale was just a whale. In the world that had the book, The story ends quite differently, And the whale is not a whale, But that’s only life.

The value of a two-party system Is that even if one fails you There’s always another.

Dan Brown States as fact The existence of  The Priory of Sion. And in fact He’s right. A basic fact-check Would indeed Clear it As a credible claim. Of course, Its existence  Is part of a fraud. Which in turn Makes the fact-check itself A fraud. This is worth noting  Not to discredit  The work of Dan Brown Or the value of his fiction But as a matter Of demonstration. That is all.

“Langdon frowned. The French, It seemed, Loved to ask  Americans this. It was a loaded question, Of course. Admitting You liked the pyramid  Made you  A tasteless American, And expressing dislike  Was an insult  To the French.” -D. Brown

The idea The very idea Is to resist the urge To insist on partisanship  At every turn. If that’s all you’ve got You’ve got nothing. Sorry, You’ve got One thing. You’ve got  Partisanship. You’ve got The inability  To see clearly. Even if you’re convinced  There’s nothing good On the other side, You have to acknowledge  That there are people  On the other side Who say the same thing  About you. And that’s not helpful. And you can’t justify this By hyperventilating  About the worst elements  Of either side. That is also Unhelpful. Unless they’re literal Nazis. I mean, Literal Nazis, At which point It helps no one To encourage them, Which everyone did, By omission, Before joining a war Against them. Literally everyone. The high ground On that one Didn’t exist then And it doesn’t apply In hindsight. That’s not How it works. Even if that’s your narrative, But a false narrative  Doesn’t count. People can absolutely  Change their minds, But a literal Nazi Is still a Nazi. It doesn’t take Exhum

It is a contradiction  To preach inclusion  While practicing exclusion.

One should always be wary Of idle minds. You never know How they’re balanced. It’s as likely as not That they’re not.

Life is surely exhausting When it’s a constant waltz Among self & society, Constantly checking To be sure You’re thinking the right thing, Fighting the right fight, Never knowing, In fact, What you think Until you’ve heard Someone else think it first, A vicious meme That dominates And subjugates, And of course Always Fighting the right fight, Always on the search For the next one, Always belligerent, Terse, Grumpy, All the good stuff, At odds with a world You are constantly trying  To mold to what you think Already exists, Fighting the right fight As if you know exactly what it is, That self-fulfilling battle In self & society, You know to be true Because it looks like something  That happened yesterday.

Such are the times And so desperate The need  To find villains That Ted Cruz Is magically turned Into Marie Antoinette. You don’t have to wait Until history makes An absurdity of that To realize Maybe Just maybe You can maybe Back off Just a little  From the juice. Texas got snow. Period. End of story. (Here It’s also worth noting That even Marie Antoinette  Wasn’t  Marie Antoinette, That she was A victim of narrative.)

What happens when you control the narrative? It doesn’t even matter How complete The control happens To be. When you have any control Of a false narrative  It’s deadly. It’s deadly  When you control The fates Of any Who die Because you choose To do nothing And say nothing While proclaiming  Your righteousness, When you fundamentally  And completely  Declare You’re doing the right thing Not as subject To human fallibility  But as a deliberate choice, Spoken and unspoken, As a matter of course, And rephrase The problem To make it sound better, Even while your actions amount  To mass murder. Yeah, murder. When that happens  While you control the narrative, Then no matter of spin Will redeem it When looked upon Later, When your terms Are reevaluated, When you no longer Control the narrative. Perhaps  You ought to consider that, When making your Sanctimonious headlines Today, That tomorrow  They won’t read So well. Because you will not always Control the narrative.

Restore the narrative. Restore the narrative  And give US Grant His due. Restore the narrative  And give the US Another hero. Restore the narrative. In the years after the Civil War, In the decades, In the fifty years following, The narrative went off the track. Not just  The irredeemed  But an entire nation Which we reflect In The Birth of a Nation , In Gone with the Wind , Changed the narrative. We have no concept Of how narratives change, Of how they’re hacked And hijacked. We have no idea. And we never even stop To reconsider. Change the narrative. Restore the narrative  And let us remember. Let us remember  There was a hero In the field And in the office. Even in letters. Let us remember Ulysses S. Grant, Our Uncle Sam Personified. Restore the narrative. Give Grant back to us.

Here’s the thing: Sophistication isn’t always sophisticated. It tends to be relative. What’s sophisticated to one person Isn’t to another And you will never really know Because we don’t tend to care  About such distinctions. We think they don’t matter But they do. So, Having a conversation with someone  Or any kind of relationship  Is trying to figure out How sophisticated they are, Both in the needs of the moment And what that relationship is. You can be a jerk And assume Even when it isn’t true That naturally you’re the one Who’s more sophisticated  (Although the assumption alone Kind of proves otherwise) Or you can choose to be better. When you know With absolutely certainty  That you are more sophisticated  Then the onus becomes Responsibility. You have to accept That they are less sophisticated. You can still think In your head How stupid they are, But tact suggests  You don’t say so Aloud. Or you can try And try And try To help them grow, Even if the results Never show, Because s

Such are The vagaries  Of social media That the context In which someone dies Is considered  Only if it says Something about What you mean To say. If the context matters You care about the life, If it doesn’t you don’t. Which is A terrible way To live. If you intend To represent  Some manner Of morality, You don’t really get To pick and choose. If you do Your morals Are worth Very little. You can still have Your opinions But you don’t have to be A jerk.

“How do you kill A bad idea? You have  A better one.” That’s, That’s pretty much it.

The rat was in the White House. Vile, Diseased, Infested, Vermin. And yet for all that There was also Something exotic, Challenging every preconception, And sometimes that Provokes Inspiration, Shaking loose The doldrums, The humdrum, The routine. It was an interesting four years. And it will be For many years To come. History won’t soon Forget. Although, You know, Stranger things Have happened.

You would also have to Be willing  To link These two things: 1) The peaceful protests of daytime  2) The belligerent riots of nighttime  From last summer. But somehow  I don’t think That’s going To happen.

Here’s the thing, Though, Right? This is a story Of hearsay And No smoking gun. If the court Rules in favor Of one Without the other This is a sham. Period. And before you say it, You don’t need to. We the jury Of public opinion Already know What everyone said.

The Queen of Hearts And the Reign of Terror Were equally obsessed With severing heads from necks. Now, this obsession puzzles me. It puzzles me Because I’m Catholic. This will puzzle you Since at least  For the last five hundred years Being Catholic  Has hardly been universally  Synonymous  With virtue. Um, ironically. Well, let me explain. Being Catholic, For me, Means not just living A good life But being good To others. This is not merely A way to say “Charity.” Being good To others Goes deeper than that. The Catholic idea Is that the metaphor Of original sin Means that we’re all Quite capable  Of human folly. Now, Most people Spend a lot of time Vilifying Catholics  Because of human folly, Which is surely An irony If there ever was one. They’re determined To condemn the whole idea Because of it. Or, You know, So they say. I can only assume  They have no idea What being Catholic  Means. Being Catholic  Is being able to forgive. We don’t have that Today. We have the opposite of that

Recently in A grumble of tweets, Was featured the name “Lavar Burton.” Now, I had no idea who “Lavar Burton” Is, but from the context I could guess. This happened at all because  A grumble of tweets  Cares little for actual insight, Just the appearance of being Right. I don’t much care for what A grumble of tweets Has to say, Usually, But it’s always interesting  To see, To keep this phenomenon, A grumble of tweets, In perspective. By the way, The name  They were actually looking for Was “LeVar Burton.” (It doesn’t matter if A grumble of tweets Supports a good or bad cause; The results will make the same sound Anyway.)

As the song goes, Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story? And that, I mean to talk about here, Is the whole crux of it. It’s in the telling. It’s not even in the facts But in the telling. Consider, Once more, The Boston Massacre. Here’s one of the most famous American stories, Enduring from even before There technically was a country at all, And It Is  False. But, clearly, A very good story. Something really did happen, But in the telling It became something else. It became legend. It became, Well, Propaganda. Which of course Was what it was always intended  To be. And then John Adams Defends the bad guys in court, And wins his case. And the story never Ever Goes away. Such is the power Of stories. There is literally No longer any reason To tell the story Except to illustrate  The passion of patriots, Of a revolution, And yet still The story goes on. This is an age Of iconoclasts And yet  This story Remains Untouchable. That’s the world we live in. In essence We’re saying If we were

With all due respect, The real inconvenient truths Aren’t the kind you build movements around But rather the ones you never hear about, The truths everyone lives with every day And silently justify In all manner of hypocrisies, For the sake of convenience, Even though they inconvenience everyone  By existing And endlessly strain The truth of civility As functioning reality. If this were a religious discussion, I would call this sin, And far worse than any we routinely condemn, Worse because it means We’re okay with being assholes, And never calling this behavior  To account. But you don’t have to take my word for that. There’s a whole sitcom that was built around it. It’s called The Good Place (Even though secretly it’s set in the Bad Place). But those people redeemed themselves, Given a chance. So it’s possible? But only if the idea of honesty Finally factors in.

What happened last night Of course Wasn’t supposed to happen  But of course it did anyway Because  Tom Brady doesn’t follow the narrative. He just won his seventh Super Bowl, In his tenth appearance in the game, Which of course is also not supposed to happen But Tom Brady doesn’t follow the narrative. The guy was literally twice the age Of the opposing quarterback, Which only happens  Since Tom Brady doesn’t follow the narrative. This was not supposed to happen. It certainly wasn’t supposed to happen  At least eight other times. The narrative for a guy like Tom Brady Is that maybe he wins one Super Bowl. But not seven. The narrative of Tom Brady Has always been Improbable. He wasn’t groomed for greatness. But he embodies it anyway. His critics keep saying His success is because  He cheats. But you don’t win seven Super Bowls Much less appear in ten of them By cheating. That could happen  Maybe one time. But not seven And contending in ten. You’re wrong If you think so. He’s proven that

The worst thing, I mean literally the worst thing, Is when you choose to believe lies That could very easily And completely  Be dispelled. No one wins in that scenario, No matter how much better It makes you feel  Or how harmless  You think it is. Such poison seeps, And you will never even notice, Because this poison doesn’t kill, It contaminates Generations. It’s insidious heredity.

The thing of it is it’s really just a matter of Unresolved pretension. And, Maybe it’s better that way? Or maybe worse. Because the language always obscures And so of course no one really knows What’s being discussed.

But if you want to cross the political divide, You’d still be waiting some two hundred fifty years later. So there’s that.

And the emperor,  Meanwhile, Is still quite naked.

Verisimilitude is incredibly rare. Verisimilitude is incredibly rare Insofar as the convictions You’re liable to find Are not reliable. I know a guy  Who says his kids are geniuses  Failed by the system But when confronted With a real genius Whom the system demonstrably failed He changes his tune. So that’s a little of what experiencing Public discourse Is like. But I suppose It’s rare Because it’s also  Incredibly difficult  To have the courage Of your convictions. So you state what you think is right And don’t care if you prove yourself wrong.

The thing that’s kind of funny Until you realize some people Really believe otherwise, Is the arbitrary archive That is the sum of our experiences. We are assaulted by the world And yet believe we’re holistic detectives And can certainly make sense of it all. Listen,  Even if it were possible, Not everyone could actually do it. And that’s true of anything. For instance, I am quite incapable of executing  A triple axel, And don’t feel bad admitting it. Although I suppose I could try.

I read a book (A series of books) That revolves around the concept of Narrative horror. Now, the author intended it to mean Personal horror, The life that went off the tracks, But here I think of it in more abstract terms. In social media Narrative horror Is the older idea Of things “not being as good As they used to be.” But what I mean here Is the idea of The fixed narrative, The inability to modulate  Your interpretation of the world, Which is also to say, The older idea of everything being in Black & white. And to my mind, This is certainly a Narrative horror.