Skipping Through the Waste Land / Bis ans Ende der Welt


"Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season."



wim wenders

t.s. eliot






Start at the beginning: everyone loves a definition. Life imitates art, art is the pursuit of beauty, beauty is truth, the truth shall set us free, and freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Therefore, life is nothing left to lose.

Or maybe it's just another game. Let's try this again.

An anonymous artist imparts wisdom unto a questioning neophyte: to sculpt an elephant out of a block of marble, simply chisel away everything that is not "elephant." In the same way we seek to define ourselves by what we are not. We occupy an unavoidably indefinite age, spanning time between what-was and what-will-be. One foot in the grave and one in thin air.

But this is nothing new; it's the condition our condition is in.

Speaking with certitude of cultural trends is inevitably presumptuous, so I will cover my ass(ertions) by directing my presumption toward the trendiest culture in the world, my alma mater: America.

For much of my life on this swiftly-tilting planet, America has been busy reducing the rest of the world to rubble in the name of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. These glorious words are written in the history books in flaming letters, the crackling fire smoke-screening their ultimate lack of any meaning.

A conclusion may be drawn: My country is, in the end, defined by what it is not.

While we travel the globe to fight the immortal specters of ideas, bombing oily tyrants in vain attempts to establish kinder gentler tyrannies, touting the voodoo-magic elixir of democracy with messianic fervor, spreading Disneyland dreams and daytime television to the needy, we allow our shining republic to perish.

Our homeland is no longer home of the brave, land of the free school lunch program. Our huddled masses suffocate in the dead-end alleys of our asphalt cities and dusty towns; Liberty's beacon steals electricity from the sweating immigrants who cook over candleflames in a soggy cardboard box. Aliens walk among us, and their ceaseless circles have no crops in which to land.

Here's the lowdown from the illiterati: our cultural common ground is shifting, sifting into sand, quaking with heavy tremors. America was built on a haunted graveyard; some prophets sigh, while others cry out with apocalyptic visions of a jealous angry God.

What is the solution? We must know, for knowledge, we know, is power.

Where is the dial to control the heating coil under that old melting pot, its contents now congealing in discolored chunks and fatty layers on the back of the stove? Where is the tapestry frame that looms large enough to support our common threads, to weave again the fabric of American society? Who holds the key to heaven's gate? We willingly swallow poison and lies, choking in our desperation for salvation, panting for the answer.

Knowledge is power, but power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lucky we picked off that God fellow early, mutter the bright-eyed snipers, nipped that blooming disaster in the bud we did.

Define postmodernism. Searching numbly for a buzzword, pretty letters to decorate the blankboard, we paraphrase Nietzsche. So saith that aspiring superphilosopher possessed of a suicidal brain: Truth is dead.

Never mind God (the original sin definer) for now we deny the existence of just any old universal concept: ideas don't kill people, people kill people. Yes . . . we declare with glee and Derrida that the old universals are merely unrecyclable unredeemable trash. No deposit, no return.

God is simply old hat. It was a mercy killing, you know. He couldn't last long in this climate anyway, not with that heavy beard and pale skin. Oh my. He looks so natural, maybe he's just sleeping. Shh.

An anonymous writer claims that everything we think, say, or write has already been thought, spoken, or written. Human creation, and even life itself, equals futility. Why boldly go where everyone has gone before?

Because. We hold this Self to be Truth evident, which throws a spanner into the clockworks.

America believes in the power and glory of undivided individuality with a religious intensity, worshipping at the altar of Narcissus, re-creating ourselves in our own imaginary image. Perhaps the unsolved midnight disappearance of Plato and his merry band of Idealists has allowed headspace for this exponential expansion of our as-yet ineradicable faith in Selfish things.

Image. Now there's a word to build a religion around. A word to set and sell a million records. Imagine.

An anonymous songwriter sputters in the backroom after mainlining too much alternative music. A one-horned dilemma: if not that, then what? Our equation lacks a factor. Let's see what happens when we define ourselves and our music in geometric terms instead . . . hey, look ma, we are the world.

We are the babes in the woods, Hansel and Gretel, our woolly red riding hoods slipping over our eyes. A little hungry, a little tired, a little lost, and fresh out of breadcrumbs. Rites of passage are never without their witches and wolves. Extradition is tradition, and happily ever after is the oldest lie on the books.

So, after all, what have I accomplished here today? Like our now-dead kindred, we move in mysterious ways our wonderlands to create. Despite the hype and circumstance proclaiming otherwise, perhaps postmodernism is indeed and fact the mischievous wayward child of modernism, skipping through the waste land until the end of the world, just trying to find its way home.



Modern World
by The Pogues

Jim and Jane hit the grapevine
'Cause they're looking for a party
A secret number knows where it can be found
So they pick up Pete and Sheila
And they head down the M40
But someone said they closed the country down

Meanwhile I've locked myself in the kitchen
Waiting for the storm to pass
And if there's too much damage
I think I'll get the fuck out fast

THIS IS THE MODERN WORLD
THIS IS THE MODERN WORLD
THIS IS THE MODERN WORLD . . .




"Oh do not ask what is it,
Let us go and pay our visit."




April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in a forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock . . .

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.






Sax and Violins
by The Talking Heads

Falling falling
Gonna drop like a stone
I'm falling through the atmosphere
On a warm afternoon
If lovers discover
That ev'ryone dies
So don't tell me, please hold me
It's a dangerous life

Daddy dear
Let's get outta here
I'm scared
10 o'clock
Nighttime in New York
It's weird

If you're looking for trouble
That's what you will find

Mom & Pop
They will fuck you up
For sure
Love so deep
Kills you in your sleep
It's true . . .

They're searching for diamonds
They're grabbin' at straws
Sex 'n' sin
Sax 'n' violins
It's hell
Wooden heads
Furniture with legs
For sale --

Love keeps us together
And love will drive us insane

And we -- are criminals that never
broke no laws
And all -- we needed was a net
to break our fall

Going home
Back where I belong
To stay --
Rays of light
They will turn the light
To day --

Birds travel together
Birds follow the sun
And I -- am watching
as the birds go flying home
I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.
(115-116) 

                                            "Do
"You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
"Nothing?"

	I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.

. . .

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.





The river's tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard . . .

But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.

Once Upon a Time
by The Pogues

The bottles broken
the glasses are cracked
The cards are all dealt
and the chips have been stacked
The lamp shades busted
and the curtains are torn
The door keeps knocking
but there's nobody home
I stood by the road
brushed a tear from my eye
Cursed the cars and the rain
and the rolling grey sky
I turned around
turned my back on that town
And I never looked back again.

 






Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
                              A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
                              Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and
tall as you.




After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience.

. . .

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses

. . . 

             If there were water
   And no rock
   If there were rock
   And also water
   And water
   A spring
   A pool among the rock
   If there were the sound of water only
   Not the cicada
   And dry grass singing
   But sound of water over a rock
   Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine tree
   Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
   But there is no water (358)
It Takes Time
by Patti Smith & Fred Smith

No equation
to explain the division of the senses
No sound to reflect
the radiance of time
In the beginningest dream
Halls of disorder
Where we are swept to encircle dawn
Strapped in a low car
Racing thru silence
Trumpeting bliss
You could kiss the world
goodbye

Standing outside the courthouse
in the rain
Seemed like a lost soul
from the chapel of dreams
With a handful of images
Faces of children
Phases of the moon
One little thing you get wrong
changes the dimensions
Streets, swept memory
Diffused and lost
Like a prayer in the sun

Sometimes you can't tell
whether you're waking up
or going to sleep
Spiralling
Unnumbered streets
All the games cannot be yours
All the sights, the treasures of the eye
Does the divided soul remain the same?
No equation to explain
Destiny's hand
Moved, by love
Drawn by the whispering shadows
Into the mathematics
of our desire




Then spoke the thunder
 DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed

Calling All Angels
by Jane Siberry

calling all angels
calling all angels
walk me through this one
don't leave me alone
calling all angels
calling all angels
we're cryin' and we're hurtin'
and we're not sure how it goes
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

Death's Door
by Depeche Mode

Well I'm knocking on Death's door
Will I take my rest
Among the blessed?

Mother are you waiting?
Father are you pacing?
I'm coming home

I've been away too long
For so long it was strong
I've been away too long
I know that it was wrong
But I'm coming home
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands







                             I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

. . .

These fragments I have shored against my ruins.
At the Beginning of Time
by Jane Siberry

at the beginning of time
before there were waves
we'd sit in our boats
we'd float there all day

each in our own boat
each in our own thoughts
sometimes you could hear people talking
amongst themselves but . . .
(someone had a boat with wheels and i said
you're a bit early but i know how you feel)
but mostly it was just silence

and the silence was only broken by
the absence of the clinking of the masts
and every now and then a bird would not fly by
and someone would look up and say -- what wasn't that?

we were waiting in the darkness
waiting in the darkness . . .

we were waiting for the world to begin

we were waiting for the world to begin

now?
no.




Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.




We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.





naomi | images