A Few Musings Inspired by the Mid Atlantic Popular Culture Association Convention

I had the fortune -- either "good" or "bad," I'm not sure -- of presenting a paper at this conference in Philadelphia, this weekend. And I jotted a few notes down . . .

When we turn to “God” for help and sustenance – we are really turning to ourselves. For it is the “god” within that we call upon; it is this interior force that we must ultimately rely on. It is here – in the small spot of eternity that resides deep within each of us – that faith resides.
The fact that we know, somewhere, deep down in the abscesses of our semi-conscious understanding, that it is within us, that is us, is absolutely terrifying. For a conscious acknowledgement of this fact would mean that we are saddled with the ultimate in self-determination, and responsibility. This is the last thing for which humanity yearns – ultimate accountability.
We want to be indemnified, man, not liable!
As such, we yearn for nothing so much as a parent – the kind we never had, one that is all knowing, all loving and indefatigably patient. A parentless life is far too demanding; even moreso where we (humans) define the outer edges of comprehension and responsibility in our universe.
Existential needs demand that we imagine something outside of ourselves; that we can imagine something outside of our cranium that is in control, and can be called upon. After all, if we are ultimately “in charge” – if we must truly rely on ourselves and nothing else – where does that leave us? We don’t “know” anything – and this horrifies us. We can’t see into the future, or understand this world in which we have found ourselves. If our experience is the manifestation of God in a time and place, then what worth is God?
After all, if God is nothing more than a huge question mark, what does that make us? But a question, from God to God? If so, how can we go on – with a center made of nothing more than the ultimate yearning to understand – a yearning that is insatiable, because there is no decisive, single answer, but a myriad kaleidoscope of individual questions that somehow weave together into a whole, that remains forever incomprehensible to the individual, yet defines the view of God, an ultimate question that never becomes answered, but simply evolves with the passage of universal time.
No wonder we have fabricated the god of religion! It is with a teary sigh of relief that we turn to religion’s absurd strictures – far better than taking responsibility for this mess, ourselves . . .
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"Mina Keshwar Kamal," oil on canvas, 20" x 10", 2006

It must be noted that that which defines “popular” or “mass culture” in an era, inevitably becomes marginalized and overlooked in retrospect. The lasting aspects, the defining marks of an epoch can be discerned in what is happening around the edges of culture, that which is ignored or overlooked by the “normal” contemporary majority. That which is historically memorable is not the most popular of its own time. The popular, the mainstream, the profitable – these simply represent the most successful of the mediocre, the stolidity of the norm.
Around the edges in any time are the prophets and seekers, the contemplatives and outliers that can embrace their era, yet somehow move beyond it just enough to comment on it, from some outside, though umbilically attached point. It is there, in the small hotel rooms or seedy districts, where someone like a Pessoa or Melville, a Merton or Simone Weil can be found, easily overlooked until “they” are gone, and their words ring with a truth that was easy to ignore in the thrumming hysteria of their age.
The popular culture of the late 19th century has been completely subsumed beneath the beginnings of the Modern Era, which is what we see when we look backwards. Eckhart, Ibn Gabirol, Abulafia, the Sufis – certainly marginalized in the 13th century, yet now defining one of the most important and fecund spiritual eras in the history of humanity.
To be famous and successful within the narrow confines of an era simply means that one has nothing truly creative to say. The novel is incomprehensible and irrelevant to the middling denizens of their own time, yet stands out in relief when seen from the future, where it can be sifted out from the chaff of normalcy that is forgotten, while the prophetic voices rise, defining the era, though having never truly been a part of it, contemporaneously.
So, what is history? What is culture? And what is the truth?
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An interesting concept: “Looking for oneself.”
What is this? What is this “self” in which we are in search? After all, the true “I” is the void at the center of existence, the Great Nothingness, the thrum of the energy that is God slowly, inexorably unfolding into time. This is the center of you and me.
However, there is, of course, something else, that which is mistaken as the underpinning reality of the “I.” These are the attributes and whispers, the moans and psychoses of being human – our humanity itself. Of course, each of us experiences this “humanity” in a particular manner, and it is in unearthing our unique manner of experiencing the universe – that is to say, the attributes that make up our personality and tendencies – as humans set into a specific place and time, that defines the “self” for which we are in search.
So, how to go about this, this quest for “self?” Where is it hidden? In exterior experiences, leaving us careening from church to bar, from university to yoga class, to see which of these “selfs” fits best? Or perhaps we can, in this particular time and place, define ourselves by what we purchase, which car or toaster oven or technological devices. Or might it be that we can actually get an inkling of ourselves by delving thinly into someplace within, found on the couch of a psychologists office, and in the textbooks lining their study?
Thusly it is – we can’t even understand the parameters of the search for self, let alone what it is (exactly) that we are looking for. How can we find this thing, if we don’t know the rules, nor what “it” (that is to say, “I”) will look like, if we even find it? Do we mistake “happiness” or “satisfaction” for success in unearthing a solid being within? What if we are the “type of person” that must yearn, and in this yearning we are complete? What if we are hopeless deviants, and can do nothing to stem the tide of our error? What if all we want to do is stop searching, and read and eat and screw? Is this a viable “me” in our time and place?
Hmmmmmm.
To what extent are the acceptable limits of this interior “I” defined from without, and meaningful only to the keeping of social order, and having nothing to do with the true expression of an individual personality?
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Please.
Take away all of my identifiers – scrub me clean. Not white or Jewish, American or Post-Modern. Oh, I’m not saying that I’m not influenced by these things; I am! But I certainly don’t want to be representative of any of them, or judged as coming immediately and directly from their lineage.
Is it possible?
To come clean, I mean – to denature oneself of those scrubbly little bits that glom onto us, take us over and take us so far from God, ourselves and (most importantly, as a creator?) our audience? How to do so? To come clean. In a culture fixated on packaging, on the sound-bit, on the easy identifier, on 15-seconds of fame, based on nothing so much as “being known?” We don’t have much time to give to understanding – both you and I are horribly busy – so it is only reasonable that we should sum someone up (a person who lives “out there,” on the other side of our oculars) quickly, using on the barest of essential signifiers, like “Jew,” “Black,” “Republican,” or simply, “worth my (precious) time.”
There is no space here for humanity, is there? That messy and sometimes incomprehensible thing that defines us, but only in perpetuity. Our definition within society, to the audience, to ourselves must stem from the most obvious, and least meaningful.
I don’t like it . . .