Sid and Nancy
What is it about fame that makes everyone (almost without exception) squander away its advantages and opportunities, like it was a sacred duty? Fame isn't easy to achieve, and it's often not even preferable to live with, but it does afford certain things that many reasonable people might consider selling out for: financial security, freedom from drudgery, and most of all, the ability to announce to the world "I have something to say!" and have people listen. I recently got my short story rejected from a lit mag, and that got me thinking that I should start up my own indie press, just so I could get my stuff out there and make my writing more than a loner activity. Imagine if I had fame: I wouldn't even have to write to become a writer! Presses would be lined up at my door, throwing ghostwriters at me, and all I'd have to do is talk and talk and slap my name on the cover, and instantly I'm an artiste.
Then I had this thought while watching Sid and Nancy on tv last night: maybe fame is always squandered because it's something that can only be attained by those who are so far gone that it's practically meaningless to them. The mystical interpretation would be that it's God's way of apologizing and making it up to those who will never achieve happiness. The choice between conventional happiness and unconventional glory is ancient and clearly recognized: Achilles is explicitly told, before he chooses to die, that he can have either a glorious death or a fulfilling old age, but not both. It seems to me that Sid Vicious likewise faced the same choice, though it wasn't spelled out to him as such. Let's assume (for argument's sake) that Vicious really WAS the Sex Pistols - nevermind that most of the recordings were done without him, let's say that it was the live spectacle, Vicious most of all, that really captured the imagination of the movement. What were the characteristics that made Vicious iconic? In a nutshell, it was that he sincerely didn't give a fuck. He was the dregs of society; he had no ambitions and hence no desire to ingratiate himself to bosses or clients or coworkers or managers, or even family and friends; he was perfectly content to starve in a gutter and be strung out 24/7 - which, I think it's not too bold to say, most of us would NOT be willing to do. In his case, that very attitude was capitalized upon as the spirit of punk, but I think it can also be generalized as the spirit of nonconformity that makes many of the artists and innovators of history so effective. Without that attitude, people (like me) would be too afraid to step out of the safety, respectability, and happiness of conventional life; the bad part of that is we'll never have anything extraordinary to say, while the good part of it is we also won't live in garbage, crawl around on broken glass, cut outselves with razors, or set ourselves on fire.
But Sid Vicious sacrificed all the benefits of a conventional life well before he could secure the compensations of fame. One only has to look at Nancy Spungen to see that for every one person who makes that sacrifice - that gamble - and wins the jackpot, there are hundreds more who gamble away everything and are left with less than zero. In fact, Nancy is even one of the lucky ones, because at least she could score her drugs, and food and lodgings, from Sid's earnings. The rest are just another of the unwashed homeless masses, another oxygen-wasting, goods-consuming, poo-producing, zombie-like failed experiment of humanity. And who wants to be that?
The other day I happened to catch a new Avril Lavigne video, and as always, I felt pissed as all hell at Avril Lavigne. I asked myself why; because she's a poser. But a lot of people are posers, and they don't piss me off as much. Avril Lavigne pisses me off because she's rich from her poserness. Moreover, she's rich via the same corporate-pandering, power-amassing, privileged route as, say, Beyonce Knowles or Justin Timberlake, except she doesn't have to work nearly as hard as they do because she can pretend to take the non-traditional (punk) route and, essentially, exploit those who identify with the weak, deprived, real dregs of society. IN DOING SO SHE TAKES AWAY AN IMPORTANT WEAPON THAT THE BOTTOM FEEDERS HAVE AGAINST A BYZANTINE SOCIAL STRUCTURE: rebellion. This weapon was forged by the sufferings and deprivations of the Sid Viciouses and Nancy Spungens of the world, and with one fell video Avril Lavigne blunts it into another corporate gimmick, for petty personal fleeting gain.
I started to think about these objections against Avril Lavigne, and the Colonel's impassioned speech about the "helots" in Meet John Doe was still resonating unforgettably in my head (helots: they're a lot of heels!). Suddenly I realized that I too, like Avril, was trying to exploit the best of both worlds, and my discontent was stemming from the result that I was acting the biggest helot of them all, and the least successful. I wanted to shrug off the burdens of submitting to corporate power (= acting like a tool) and think freely and unconventionally, but at the same time I wanted the accolades and reinforcement of the social order (money and prestige), not to mention the security - and the ordinary happiness - that comes with being a normal, average, unremarkable conformist. I wanted both glory (of a very modest scale) and happiness, and both are simply not possible. As the Colonel says, wanting the basics leads to wanting it all ("I've seen people with less than $50 wind up with a bank account, and once you have a bank account you've been got!"), and the only way to escape that scene altogether is to be satisfied with wanting and having NOTHING. That means that to be a sincere nonconformist, I'd have to sleep under a bridge, by the huge industrial sewers I used to see riding the Metrolink. I don't think I'll ever have the courage to do that. Watching Sid and Nancy wallow and wail like that for 2 hours was excruciating enough.
So now that I've admitted that I do want the basics, I also have to accept that I'll go for it all, to the frozen limit. It's inevitable, because I know that I want to be "good" at whatever I am, and I'll be better off being a fully realized helot rather than a half-assed, reluctant, failed helot. All this means that I'll have to learn to be okay with acting like a tool.
And there, my friends, you've witnessed the incremental dying of one soul. At least it's rationally consistent.
Then I had this thought while watching Sid and Nancy on tv last night: maybe fame is always squandered because it's something that can only be attained by those who are so far gone that it's practically meaningless to them. The mystical interpretation would be that it's God's way of apologizing and making it up to those who will never achieve happiness. The choice between conventional happiness and unconventional glory is ancient and clearly recognized: Achilles is explicitly told, before he chooses to die, that he can have either a glorious death or a fulfilling old age, but not both. It seems to me that Sid Vicious likewise faced the same choice, though it wasn't spelled out to him as such. Let's assume (for argument's sake) that Vicious really WAS the Sex Pistols - nevermind that most of the recordings were done without him, let's say that it was the live spectacle, Vicious most of all, that really captured the imagination of the movement. What were the characteristics that made Vicious iconic? In a nutshell, it was that he sincerely didn't give a fuck. He was the dregs of society; he had no ambitions and hence no desire to ingratiate himself to bosses or clients or coworkers or managers, or even family and friends; he was perfectly content to starve in a gutter and be strung out 24/7 - which, I think it's not too bold to say, most of us would NOT be willing to do. In his case, that very attitude was capitalized upon as the spirit of punk, but I think it can also be generalized as the spirit of nonconformity that makes many of the artists and innovators of history so effective. Without that attitude, people (like me) would be too afraid to step out of the safety, respectability, and happiness of conventional life; the bad part of that is we'll never have anything extraordinary to say, while the good part of it is we also won't live in garbage, crawl around on broken glass, cut outselves with razors, or set ourselves on fire.
But Sid Vicious sacrificed all the benefits of a conventional life well before he could secure the compensations of fame. One only has to look at Nancy Spungen to see that for every one person who makes that sacrifice - that gamble - and wins the jackpot, there are hundreds more who gamble away everything and are left with less than zero. In fact, Nancy is even one of the lucky ones, because at least she could score her drugs, and food and lodgings, from Sid's earnings. The rest are just another of the unwashed homeless masses, another oxygen-wasting, goods-consuming, poo-producing, zombie-like failed experiment of humanity. And who wants to be that?
The other day I happened to catch a new Avril Lavigne video, and as always, I felt pissed as all hell at Avril Lavigne. I asked myself why; because she's a poser. But a lot of people are posers, and they don't piss me off as much. Avril Lavigne pisses me off because she's rich from her poserness. Moreover, she's rich via the same corporate-pandering, power-amassing, privileged route as, say, Beyonce Knowles or Justin Timberlake, except she doesn't have to work nearly as hard as they do because she can pretend to take the non-traditional (punk) route and, essentially, exploit those who identify with the weak, deprived, real dregs of society. IN DOING SO SHE TAKES AWAY AN IMPORTANT WEAPON THAT THE BOTTOM FEEDERS HAVE AGAINST A BYZANTINE SOCIAL STRUCTURE: rebellion. This weapon was forged by the sufferings and deprivations of the Sid Viciouses and Nancy Spungens of the world, and with one fell video Avril Lavigne blunts it into another corporate gimmick, for petty personal fleeting gain.
I started to think about these objections against Avril Lavigne, and the Colonel's impassioned speech about the "helots" in Meet John Doe was still resonating unforgettably in my head (helots: they're a lot of heels!). Suddenly I realized that I too, like Avril, was trying to exploit the best of both worlds, and my discontent was stemming from the result that I was acting the biggest helot of them all, and the least successful. I wanted to shrug off the burdens of submitting to corporate power (= acting like a tool) and think freely and unconventionally, but at the same time I wanted the accolades and reinforcement of the social order (money and prestige), not to mention the security - and the ordinary happiness - that comes with being a normal, average, unremarkable conformist. I wanted both glory (of a very modest scale) and happiness, and both are simply not possible. As the Colonel says, wanting the basics leads to wanting it all ("I've seen people with less than $50 wind up with a bank account, and once you have a bank account you've been got!"), and the only way to escape that scene altogether is to be satisfied with wanting and having NOTHING. That means that to be a sincere nonconformist, I'd have to sleep under a bridge, by the huge industrial sewers I used to see riding the Metrolink. I don't think I'll ever have the courage to do that. Watching Sid and Nancy wallow and wail like that for 2 hours was excruciating enough.
So now that I've admitted that I do want the basics, I also have to accept that I'll go for it all, to the frozen limit. It's inevitable, because I know that I want to be "good" at whatever I am, and I'll be better off being a fully realized helot rather than a half-assed, reluctant, failed helot. All this means that I'll have to learn to be okay with acting like a tool.
And there, my friends, you've witnessed the incremental dying of one soul. At least it's rationally consistent.
posted by Rex at 12:07 PM
2 Comments:
Maybe it's a matter of degrees. I think artists and musicians want to do what they love, but they also want recognition (whether that's money or just prestige, i.e. recognition from people who are respected in their community) for their work. And drama is not necessarily part of the life of the artist; a lot of really awesome scientists, musicians, writers, and actors have stable bases and stuff, but it's just given less attention because people love to hear about the messes. Sometimes the fascination with bad behavior totally outweighs someone's merit as an artist. Like , someone has a respectable, even middling body of work that owes a lot to the toil of others, but the glamor of bad behavior makes this person a celebrity superstar (Amy Winehouse and Pete fucking Dougherty). Well, also consider the example of Paul Newman--awesome actor with a very long career, happily married for decades, and a philanthropist. Or Darwin, super innovative thinker, devoted to his wife, and the best example of scholarly generosity ever. Or, George Harrison, crafter of beautiful melodies, family man, philanthropist (and tax hater). Plus, I think a lot of it has to do with whether one's background is middle class (raised with some sort of expectations about life), or gutter (living in the here and now because the idea of making something of one's life or planning for the future was never presented as an attainable goal). I think you can be a nonconformist thinker and still expect not to be cutting yourself under the bridge in between drug deals.
Yeah, you're right. I forgot about all the happy successful people. And the fact that Sid Vicious is not the best example of success. People should talk more about the Paul Newmans of the world, to sustain hope for the rest of us.
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