Don Draper (Mad Men, 1950s Madison Ave Ad Man):
I can't tell whether you have everything...or nothing.
Midge Daniels (Don's mistress, an artist/commercial illustrator):
I live in the moment. Nothing is everything.
- Mad Men, Ep 2.
...
I've had a line running through my head for the past month. It's from Lupe Fiasco's 'Superstar' from The Cool. "I try to believe my own hype, but it's too untrue." Mingled in like lemon lime, the various obiter* comments of academics, interviewees and friends on the inherent nature of 'intelligent people.' Call it a vanity interest. What are these comments? That intelligent people are given to peculiarity, idiosyncracy, 'bed-hopping', bent morality and a sense that the rules governing social interaction apply only to the proles, the common people. For whom we may fight, but certainly do not belong in their ranks. We are the special people. As one interviewee told me, "It's disturbing. Here are people who would rather die than be ordinary."
Because as Angela Hayes in American Beauty put it, "There's nothing worse than being ordinary."
Hrm. Does that mean that we strive for only the impossible? Do we get our thrills from doing something that's never been done? I was asked once, as part of some classroom meet+greet, what drove me. I said, "to do something that's never been done."
Doesn't that stink of vanity? I keep saying that my ultimate ideals are to embrace, cold and clear, the flaws of this world - from markets left to the whim of neo-capitalism to dictators whose rule of law is down the barrel of a gun, or to show a way out from the closing four walls of depression - and from there, from within, from understanding and research and constant questioning, to improve the world's ills. To leave the world better than how I found it. I know - how humble. Haha.
Sometimes, every so often, I love the glow and glory. Pride and vanity. The by-lines like 'star student (wherever you go)' and 'amazing', 'driven', 'ambitious', 'genius'. Sometimes, I want to be a beautiful and unique snowflake, dammit. Haha. Tell me Doctor, is that ego? Is that bad? Do you have a fix-it? A pill cure or expensive rest house in the mountains, by the sea?
Sometimes, I spend so much of my waking life in a pitch, developing palatable spins, window-dressing disasters, being as creative with truth as I am with words, that I can't tell my own hype from what I believe.
(And on those days, I must be doing a good job.)
Haha, no, that's too cynical. Perhaps I just realised that you can make a comfortable living from being unusually persuasive, from a heady mix of idealistic dream-selling delivered in a proven formula package.
"I want you to manipulate the media. What else do I pay you for?"
- Head of Lucky Strikes to Don Draper, Mad Men.
Oh well. Perhaps it's all delusions of grandeur and I have nothing to worry my sensitive conscience over. Perhaps the ad-savvy audience of latter day noughties know better than to believe what they read in the news, on TV, on the internet, from their friends, from their favourite stars and pop culture icons. Ah. My conscience. It's very sensitive. (Some would say that's a plus. ;)
So - assume that audiences know exactly what you're doing when you say, position an article, or write one, or pitch a story you know slants facts a little. I'm not saying I've done this. After all, my clients are completely harmless...for now. There's nothing to slant, really, which is why I chose this industry to learn the fine art of media...'relations.' If you assume this, doesn't your act still deprive them of the true variety of thought, opinions and debate a free democracy needs to truly thrive?
Or in this spin-driven world that we live in, should we just forget it, channel some Paul McCartney, and live and let die?
Have a drink. Have a painkiller. Forget about it. The ability to persuade is like law itself - a tool. The law is not necessarily justice, and nor is persuasion necessarily about offering truth. Truth is personal. Truth is an understanding you hold as you crunch through autumn leaves with nothing but the ground beneath your feet and above, the blue open sky. Knowledge is not a checkbox right answer in the exciting life challenges of academic exams or career climbing. It's cycling in the dawn through the streets of a foreign city, on a bicycle so unsteady you expend every effort just to stay upright. Your mind clears. It forgets to think. A definite virtue. The mind too, is a tool. We - the 'intelligent people' with our brains packed full of IQ points and pride bursting with all our brilliant possibility - are so busy worshipping our clever minds, we forget this fact.
And if you let your mind rule, it will forge an empire for you alone, within the confines of your own skull. You, as the warm burning heart of the universe. With your life of dramas and affairs, scandals and successes. Your narrative arc. Your three act finish.
This, of course, is untrue.
Still, we are living. The dramas keep rolling. The camera's on you. If you don't 'do something', some very great something within the designated time appropriate with your so-called 'life plan', you're clearly a lost cause. You know what I'm talking about. The life plan that some might say ensures you are engaged by 22, married by 24, scaling Everests and conquering the wild unknown on the cover of Time by 27, ready for children by 29, and onward, upward. Ad altiora. No? Don't know it? Your life plan might be a little different. I'm referring to the overachiever's life plan. Lisa Simpson. "Grade me, grade me!"
I am not sure whether I have deftly sidestepped that life plan or found an even more novel way to fall right into it. What I do know is that when you step close to the vertiginous abyss, the blank oblivion depth...and find within it, the possibility of freeing yourself from the tangle of all these...dramas...you are craving peace. The kind you can find deep in a forest. High on a mountain. "I know this from gazing at mountains months on end," said Jack Kerouac.
I know this from watching the dusk strike the sky alight, a smoky sunlight, ignored by the world below. Busy and important with their own private concerns. I know this from watching a girl cry over scoring 97% on a meaningness mid-term Maths exam - because it wasn't 100%, and this clearly meant her life was doomed. (I wasn't this girl, by the way. I was a consistent 80%...97% would have had me in serious hallelujah.)
Mmm. I know this from the way words, strung together, mere symbols of our language, of our souls, can sink a writer, reader, into reverie. Which some say is better than sex. Some, I said. Not...in my experience. Haha.
Ah. I know this from those very few moments you might let yourself be. Breathe, and be.
Maybe, Doctor, you just think I'm crazy. What else am I paying you for?
Still. Talking this way helps me feel a little less crazy in what is really a mad, mad world.
Or perhaps all of you out there know exactly what you mean to be, need to say, wish to do, and no such questions trouble you.
So, thanks for listening. How much do I owe you? $400 for an hour? Give me a receipt. I'll claim it as a business expense.
...
* Obiter: legalese to mean a comment made 'in passing.' Frequently turns up in judgments where a judge expresses a digression which might later become law. Or cloaks an irrelevant remark on say, the importance of realising international law via case law, as a human rights norm, bypassing parliament. Obiter. Because even passing comments are a betrayal of intentions perhaps more subversive.
Posts
