Libertine
I read such an awesome introduction this morning on bart, I had to share it. It's taken from "Drinking Smoking and Screwing", a collection of essays and short stories by some well know renegade writers/livers. It's absolutely charming and I think provides a particularly eloquent argument in favor of living.... I guess "free"
INTRODUCTION- Bob Shacochis
Among the things that make life worth living for some of us wretched souls is the kind of bad- though not evil- behavior that can be roughly characterized as sin. Yet, heaven knows, these days sin- however stylish and satisfying, and despite its generous contribution to the overall texture of that state of grace known as being alive- has fallen into disrepute. Since only a fool would defend it, I volunteered, understanding of course that I would be in good company.
I've passed my HIV blood test, my most recent chest X ray reveals no horrific shadow-clump of cells, and my designated driver is out at curbside, awaiting my tipsy arrival. I know I'm not going to live forever, and neither are you, but until my furlough here on earth is revoked, I should like to elbow aside the established pieties and raise my martini glass in salute to the mortal arts of pleasure. Specifically, drinking, smoking, and screwing- those much maligned but eternally seductive temptations of the flesh, those impetuous jockeys of the spirit. Vice, after all, is not wholly without virtue and, like virtue, must sometimes settle for being its own reward. Nor has vice lacked its advocates over the years (though a great many of them now appear to be dead or in retreat). If you're a paragon of self-control and moral clarity, and perhaps think that a habit as pernicious as smoking has nothing it its dossier to recommend it, untuck your joie de vivre from its fetal ball for a moment and listen to Don Marquis's "Preface to a Book of Cigarette Papers", which appeared in 1919, a halcyon year for the mystique of misbehaving:
"All that is romantic and literary and spiritual in us holds by the cigarette. When we die and are purged all of the heavy flesh that holds us down, our soul, we home, will roll and smoke cigarettes... We have never been the person on earth we should like to be; circumstances have always tied us to the staid and commonplace and respectable; but when we become and angel we hope to be right devilish at times. And that is an idea that some one should work out- Hell as a place of reward for Puritans."
On the other hand, in an age of co-dependency, self-congratulatory illiteracy, and the crusade for correctness, what's the point in lighting up? Will today's audience, reading Corey Ford's "The Office Party," published in 1951, even know that rye is also a whiskey and not just a bread? (What they will understand, certainly, is that the merrymaking Ford describes is strictly verboten in the contemporary workplace.)
I remember- at least I think I did, it's all rather murky- when I indeed was the person I wanted to be, when it was customary for me to drink, smoke, and (attempt to) screw with liberal abandon, put my heart and soul into it. As a bon vivant and rascal, I once showed great promise; apparently I was precocious, I had a future in decadence. But then came the '80's and, even worse, the '90's, and the zealous reformation of the liberated counter-culture into a priggish, middle-aged nation of naggers and health harpies. We didn't just become our parents, we became our parents with a vengeance, determined to fashion an aggressively sanitized word that held about as much appeal for us backsliders as a date with a coed from Antioch. Can I stand in this room with you? Can I breathe your air? Can I touch your hair? How about your anus?
For reasons I have yet to fathom, in the new world order, so that we might lead better, more fruitful and lasting lives, we are all now entitled to be utterly sick and tired of one another. Fran Lebowitz, in her visionary essay "When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes... Shut Them," saw it coming: "Being offended is that natural consequence of leaving one's home. I do not like after-shave lotion, adults who roller skate, children who speak French, or anyone who is unduly tan," wrote Lebowitz in 1977. "In private I avoid such people; in public they have the run of the place. I stay at home as much as possible, and so should they. When it is necessary, however, to go out of the house, they must be prepared, as I am, to deal with the unpleasant personal habits of others. This is what 'public' means. If you can't stand the heat, get back in the kitchen."
Like myself, Lebowitz once thought that smoking, drinking, and screwing were the entire point of being an adult. They made growing up, she said, genuinely worthwhile. Now we both realize that the real point in growing up is to hire lawyers and engage in litigation. We both made the mistake of imagining that the personal was, well, a personal matter, rather than somebody else's political agenda. Sometime during the past ten years things changed. It no longer makes sense whether you keep to yourself or not: If you are doing something in your own kitchen that pisses off the surgeon general you are, ipso facto, a public nuisance.
Somehow, the nation allowed propriety and good sense to become hyper-inflated commodities. While truth and good sense became relative, peccadilloes began to sag with the weight of the absolute, and suddenly the mystery of personality was a victim of realpolitik. Evidence was presented to suggest that sins against one's self were, in effect, offensive- in other words, sins unconscionably committed against one's neighbor, who roamed audaciously through one's backyard aiming a video camera. Drinkers, smokers, and fornicators were hence transformed- if you enjoy vulgar imagery (and I know plenty of you still do)- into turds battling upcurrent against the purified, utopian flow of the self-improved mainstream. Decent people could finally relax about the fall of the American Empire.
... The inescapable fact is that what you bind yourself to, either by passion, love, or duty, is going to be the end of you, one way or the other. It's true that the Marlboro Man is stone dead of lung cancer, regretting the countless small, harsh but transcendent moments of pleasure he inhaled with his tobacco. And it is true that drinking is no longer generally considered to be an upright profession, and it is outrageously true that the poets' linkage of sex and death is particularly apropos to our times, seeing as how we now kill each other with our genitals at a much more alarming rate than we do with our guns.
Frankly though, I doubt that anyone's ever pleased by the form their death takes. (And what about the Jamaican proverb: A man condemned to hang can't drown?) For the "prim marms of Puritanism" it's all about dying, isn’t it? If Charles Darwin was correct, smokers, drinkers, and libertines are doing 5the species a favor, accelerating the biological quest for perfection.
But spiritual quests aren't so simple, and sometimes they lure the seeker into smoky barrooms and the arms of an unexpected lover. Hot damn! Or maybe not. It's futile I suppose, to defend smoking, drinking, and fucking. Nevertheless, not to defend smokers, drinkers, and fuckers would be a terrible mistake. Who wants to live in a world without them, without their libidinous hunger, without their exalted obsessions? They take the joy and sometimes the pain of living to the very edge and shout back instructions, dire caveats, titillating weather reports. They inspire great writing and bring a reader's blood to the boiling point. Without them, the world might be simple and clean, but it wouldn't be deliciously, fascinatingly, pathetically human, would it?
Nor would it be much fun.
xposted to damnportlanders
INTRODUCTION- Bob Shacochis
Among the things that make life worth living for some of us wretched souls is the kind of bad- though not evil- behavior that can be roughly characterized as sin. Yet, heaven knows, these days sin- however stylish and satisfying, and despite its generous contribution to the overall texture of that state of grace known as being alive- has fallen into disrepute. Since only a fool would defend it, I volunteered, understanding of course that I would be in good company.
I've passed my HIV blood test, my most recent chest X ray reveals no horrific shadow-clump of cells, and my designated driver is out at curbside, awaiting my tipsy arrival. I know I'm not going to live forever, and neither are you, but until my furlough here on earth is revoked, I should like to elbow aside the established pieties and raise my martini glass in salute to the mortal arts of pleasure. Specifically, drinking, smoking, and screwing- those much maligned but eternally seductive temptations of the flesh, those impetuous jockeys of the spirit. Vice, after all, is not wholly without virtue and, like virtue, must sometimes settle for being its own reward. Nor has vice lacked its advocates over the years (though a great many of them now appear to be dead or in retreat). If you're a paragon of self-control and moral clarity, and perhaps think that a habit as pernicious as smoking has nothing it its dossier to recommend it, untuck your joie de vivre from its fetal ball for a moment and listen to Don Marquis's "Preface to a Book of Cigarette Papers", which appeared in 1919, a halcyon year for the mystique of misbehaving:
"All that is romantic and literary and spiritual in us holds by the cigarette. When we die and are purged all of the heavy flesh that holds us down, our soul, we home, will roll and smoke cigarettes... We have never been the person on earth we should like to be; circumstances have always tied us to the staid and commonplace and respectable; but when we become and angel we hope to be right devilish at times. And that is an idea that some one should work out- Hell as a place of reward for Puritans."
On the other hand, in an age of co-dependency, self-congratulatory illiteracy, and the crusade for correctness, what's the point in lighting up? Will today's audience, reading Corey Ford's "The Office Party," published in 1951, even know that rye is also a whiskey and not just a bread? (What they will understand, certainly, is that the merrymaking Ford describes is strictly verboten in the contemporary workplace.)
I remember- at least I think I did, it's all rather murky- when I indeed was the person I wanted to be, when it was customary for me to drink, smoke, and (attempt to) screw with liberal abandon, put my heart and soul into it. As a bon vivant and rascal, I once showed great promise; apparently I was precocious, I had a future in decadence. But then came the '80's and, even worse, the '90's, and the zealous reformation of the liberated counter-culture into a priggish, middle-aged nation of naggers and health harpies. We didn't just become our parents, we became our parents with a vengeance, determined to fashion an aggressively sanitized word that held about as much appeal for us backsliders as a date with a coed from Antioch. Can I stand in this room with you? Can I breathe your air? Can I touch your hair? How about your anus?
For reasons I have yet to fathom, in the new world order, so that we might lead better, more fruitful and lasting lives, we are all now entitled to be utterly sick and tired of one another. Fran Lebowitz, in her visionary essay "When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes... Shut Them," saw it coming: "Being offended is that natural consequence of leaving one's home. I do not like after-shave lotion, adults who roller skate, children who speak French, or anyone who is unduly tan," wrote Lebowitz in 1977. "In private I avoid such people; in public they have the run of the place. I stay at home as much as possible, and so should they. When it is necessary, however, to go out of the house, they must be prepared, as I am, to deal with the unpleasant personal habits of others. This is what 'public' means. If you can't stand the heat, get back in the kitchen."
Like myself, Lebowitz once thought that smoking, drinking, and screwing were the entire point of being an adult. They made growing up, she said, genuinely worthwhile. Now we both realize that the real point in growing up is to hire lawyers and engage in litigation. We both made the mistake of imagining that the personal was, well, a personal matter, rather than somebody else's political agenda. Sometime during the past ten years things changed. It no longer makes sense whether you keep to yourself or not: If you are doing something in your own kitchen that pisses off the surgeon general you are, ipso facto, a public nuisance.
Somehow, the nation allowed propriety and good sense to become hyper-inflated commodities. While truth and good sense became relative, peccadilloes began to sag with the weight of the absolute, and suddenly the mystery of personality was a victim of realpolitik. Evidence was presented to suggest that sins against one's self were, in effect, offensive- in other words, sins unconscionably committed against one's neighbor, who roamed audaciously through one's backyard aiming a video camera. Drinkers, smokers, and fornicators were hence transformed- if you enjoy vulgar imagery (and I know plenty of you still do)- into turds battling upcurrent against the purified, utopian flow of the self-improved mainstream. Decent people could finally relax about the fall of the American Empire.
... The inescapable fact is that what you bind yourself to, either by passion, love, or duty, is going to be the end of you, one way or the other. It's true that the Marlboro Man is stone dead of lung cancer, regretting the countless small, harsh but transcendent moments of pleasure he inhaled with his tobacco. And it is true that drinking is no longer generally considered to be an upright profession, and it is outrageously true that the poets' linkage of sex and death is particularly apropos to our times, seeing as how we now kill each other with our genitals at a much more alarming rate than we do with our guns.
Frankly though, I doubt that anyone's ever pleased by the form their death takes. (And what about the Jamaican proverb: A man condemned to hang can't drown?) For the "prim marms of Puritanism" it's all about dying, isn’t it? If Charles Darwin was correct, smokers, drinkers, and libertines are doing 5the species a favor, accelerating the biological quest for perfection.
But spiritual quests aren't so simple, and sometimes they lure the seeker into smoky barrooms and the arms of an unexpected lover. Hot damn! Or maybe not. It's futile I suppose, to defend smoking, drinking, and fucking. Nevertheless, not to defend smokers, drinkers, and fuckers would be a terrible mistake. Who wants to live in a world without them, without their libidinous hunger, without their exalted obsessions? They take the joy and sometimes the pain of living to the very edge and shout back instructions, dire caveats, titillating weather reports. They inspire great writing and bring a reader's blood to the boiling point. Without them, the world might be simple and clean, but it wouldn't be deliciously, fascinatingly, pathetically human, would it?
Nor would it be much fun.
xposted to damnportlanders