Health, Solitude, Modernism, and the Anti-Hipster

And suddenly, I'm just well.  And you might think there would be some sort of mad joy about that, but I am just me and have garnered no super powers, and in the end it is just as disappointing as ever before.  I don't want to be this way.  I want to be thankful for being released from the jaws of whatever horrible thing had hold of me, want to see the world fresh and new and to be thankful.  But I have merely come home to a cluttered house with many unattended things accumulating, come back to factory work and the mundane problems that are merely part and parcel of my life.  I am certainly an ingrate.  A sad sack with dark clouds circling my head.

But I blame modern literature.  Did it appeal to me because I am melancholy by nature or did I learn melancholy from reading too much of it?  And is that a danger or a necessary defense in a hard, uncaring universe?  I am trying to think of a character, any at all, who was happy in the work of the greatest modernist writers.  I run through the names--Joyce, Woolf, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald. . . .  I'm sure I have it, that Modernist's Disease.  Antibiotics won't help that one.

One of my favorite books of the past couple years has been "Knockemstiff" by Donald Ray Pollock.  Tomorrow, his new book will be released.  It is called "The Devil All the Time."  You can read a review in today's New York Times.  I'm sure it will be a happy novel full of bluebirds and sunshine, just the thing to pick me up.  In truth, though, it will.  The power of literary works is purgative.  I will know my life is like a picnic comparatively.  One more time.

Literature and art are important to me, I think, because I am a loner.  Invitations go unanswered.  And the longer it goes on, the worse it gets.  I saw a friend of mine on Sunday who I had not seen for a very long time.  He asked how I was getting along.  It is a painful question for me to answer.  I give the short version that we usually use ("Fine, Great") and deflect the question back upon the inquisitor, but I tend to squirm when I say it, the cadence of my words just off a bit.  I can't help it.  I'm not really inviting more inquiry and fortunately most people are not interested anyway.  This particular friend, though, asks direct and pointed questions.  He drove right into the heart of my solitary existence wanting to know what sort of liberties I'm taking with my freedoms.  Hearing that I am taking no liberties at all now for a very long time (he is a friend of the Russian Jewess who cuts my hair and I recounted the story I told you a few days ago to him), he barked, "You've got to come up to the bar."  He owns a small, hip, second floor lounge downtown where, I understand, the very cool people go.

"I don't go out much."

"Come down.  You will be like a Prince.  I'll take care of you.  You can't believe the women."

"Listen, I've never met a woman in a bar in my life.  I'm really very shy about all that.  I'm nothing like you.  You can walk up to a woman and say, 'Yo, baby, what's up,' and make a proposition.  I can't do that.  You just look for a woman.  I'm always looking for the woman.  I'm always looking to fall in love."

"Dude, that's sick.  What in the hell are you talking about?  Love?  C'mon, man.  You're kidding.  Come down to the club.  I'll find you all the love you want."

"Yea, yea, maybe I'll come down."

I'm not going, though.  I would be miserable, I'm sure.  Besides, I don't want to stay up that late.

I watched "Wild Man Blues" the other night, the documentary on Woody Allen's tour through Europe with his jazz band.  It is not a good documentary in any way but if you are curious about Allen you might get a kick out of it.  Watching it, I realized why I like his movies and his persona.  He is the anti-hipster.  His life is constricted by what he doesn't like, what he doesn't want to do.  Keaton.  Chaplin.  The Little Man.

Good.  I will take this with me today, and I will be happier.  I'll remember that I don't have to go downtown, that it is O.K. to go to bed early, too.  Hell, I'm happier already.