There’s really no reason for me to be writing this…
And yet, I’m still writing. Weird, isn’t it. Doing something for no reason (or no apparent reason) seems irrational. A few “DEEP THINKERS” have suggested (or exclaimed) that the world we live in is inherently irrational. I buy that. Especially today.
“So what are these words for?” I hear you asking (in my head.) These words are a bit for me and a bit for my friends and loved ones, and they are also (possibly) for all the other Irrationalists and Fools and Reality Rebels out there (who I don’t know) that are trying to survive in this crazy, mixed-up, media saturated, vision destroying, big business dominated, dollar worshiping, art and humanities ignoring (unless they’re worth $$$), crap-shoot of an existence. I’m a fan of words. I’ve always written, for as long as I can remember. I’ve also drawn pictures and listened to songs and eaten cereal and rooted for monsters and hunted for ghosts (never found any), and I’ve always felt like I was about three steps outside of whatever reality everyone else seems to be living in. Out of phase, I suppose, but I get by.
Here's ME:
Now, as in RIGHT NOW, I’m a 44-year-old, Irish/English descendant, living in a former logging town (which, at the start of the 20th century, in the 19-teens and 20s, boasted one of the largest docks on the Columbia River, which was used to ship out all the “OLD GROWTH” timber that once lived in the region, but now doesn’t live anywhere because it’s all dead). At the moment, I’m trying my hand at screen-printing as career. (I’ve had other careers: writing tutor, editor, teaching assistant, disk jockey, floor manager of a music store, pizza delivery guy, cashier and clerk at a bunch of places from video game shops to department stores, and I’ve been a full time student a few different times… I’ve DREAMED of being an artist / writer / poet / curator / publisher / et-set-tur-ah, and I’ve made a couple of bucks here and there doing those things, but never enough to feed my kids.)
I’m heterosexual (please don’t hold that against me---I’ve pro-LGBTQ rights), and I’m married to a very understanding and patient woman who works as a “Licensed Dispensing Optician and Contact Lens Specialist” at an eye clinic. In other words, she makes the money and I “goof around.” Together, the optician and I have raised two daughters: one is now 23, lives with her fiancé and works at a vet clinic as a tech; the other is 19, lives at home still, works at a local department store, is taking classes at the community college (undecided, as far as major), and bowls (extremely well. Yes, she has thrown a 300---several, in fact.) These humans are the most important people in the world to me, and as long as they are happy, I’m can be (mostly) happy.
Part of the reason that I’m writing this is because of our current political climate in the country where I live. Our recent President-Elect, in my opinion, is an irrational, dangerous, corrupt, and hostile time-bomb, and I fear for what he may do, both in our homeland and in the world. His racism, anti-intellectualism, ignorance of science (or callous indifference to the damage he could do), and his apparent attempt to return the country to its “Good Christian Values,” worry the shit out of me. Unlike a majority of the people in the U.S., I’m an atheist, not a Christian, but I wasn’t born this way. My father may or may not have had any religion beliefs (he never really said), but my mom was definitely a believer. As a child, I remember her being a Jehovah’s Witness for a while, attending a Baptist church for a bit, and spending a lot of time at different Nazarene churches in various cities in Southwest Washington---and for most of my young life, I was a full-fledged believer, too. I had one of those “student Bibles” where you mark off the chapters as you read through different sections, and my book was pretty marked up by the time I graduated from high school. However, I also started taking “world literature” classes, first in high school and then later in college, as well as comparative religion courses, psychology classes, philosophy / logic / critical reasoning… I studied and read and learned. I read books on the origins of the Christian religion, on the Essenes and the Gnostics, and the creation of the current, canonical Bible. At the same time, I was studying Eastern philosophy and religion, anthropology, poetry, folklore, storytelling, and the human need to feel special. I eventually got my B.A. in Humanities with a formal minor in Anthropology, focusing on literature, cultural studies, and linguistics. Later, I went on to grad school and studied literature, poetry, and writing---although I ran out of money (and student loans) before I could complete my M.A. (I have 69 graduate level credits, and the program required 48 to complete the degree---but I couldn’t pass my foreign language exam, and I was too stupid to just take some Spanish classes, until it was too late...) Somewhere in all that studying and reading and thinking, my belief in the factuality of Christianity, in the possibility that it could be true, drifted away.
Why does any of that matter? It matters to me because the culture in this country is based on a twisted version of Christianity that has been warped by hatred, greed, segregation, exploitation, and violence. The new guy heading for the White House is making political decisions based on Christian traditions (or a misguided understanding of those traditions) that I don’t think have any place in the political decision-making process. Yes, I understand that I am a minority when it comes to religious belief, and for the most part I eschew politics in all their forms (the modern political parties seem to me like warring squirrels in different trees chattering threats at each other while the fight over the chestnuts on the ground between them), but this new era we are entering may cause me to be more politically active.
For instance, and this is a HORRIBLE THING for me, I am now making a massive sacrifice in my life for political reasons: I’m giving up Nestle’s Quik Chocolate Milk. For the last four decades, I have consumed an unfathomable quantity of chocolate milk, and I consider it one of my greatest pleasures, but the Nestle company is run by MASSIVE SHITHEADS who are attempting to steal all the drinking water in the world and sell it back to us common folks at a ridiculously high price. The WORST PART of my decision, which will have a terrible impact on my morale and mental wellbeing, is that the bastards at Nestle won’t even notice that I’m denying myself one of LIFE’s greatest pleasures. It’s a conscience move on my part, and I hate that. I hate that those jerks are making me do it…. Stupid shitheads…
So let’s see: hetero, married, kids, atheist, fledgling political activist… Oh yeah, while we’re on the political front, let’s get this stuff out in the open, too: I am pro-gay marriage (as long as the weddings are fabulous), I am pro-science, I HATE racism and think we need to make a serious effort to eradicate it (but understand how ingrained it is in most cultures, and how difficult it is to combat.) I am NOT in believer of any religions (but if you want to believe, more power to you, just don’t get any on ME or MINE), although as a former anthropologist in training I am a fan of the STORIES of most religions, and I SERIOUSLY wish more people would actively create art, writing, clothing, environments, and unique personal experiences for themselves instead of passively consuming whatever pops up in their electronic feeds or menus. I consider myself an artist, a philosopher, a writer, a cultural theorist, and a mystic (in the psychological sense, instead of the supernatural), and I like to DIG through cultural artifacts looking for forgotten and oddball THINGS, which I then work into my art and stories in an effort to help my “subscribers” (for lack of a better term) experience the WEIRDNESS of our world. (I’ll talk more about my ART in the next post…)
Another fundamental element of my personality: I love music, and I hate when people say they listen to “ALL KINDS” of music, when I know that’s not true. I listen to and enjoy all of the following: techno, electro, new wave, disco, old school punk, post-punk, industrial, goth, ska, reggae, dub, dancehall, ambient, trance, breakbeat, big beat, jungle, drum & bass, dub-step, psychedelic, experimental, classical, opera, contemporary classical, synth, funk, jazz, Dixie-Land, fusion, be-bop, big band, rockabilly, some old school country, old school blues, old school rhythm and blues, funk-rock, electro-funk, breakdance music, some hip hop, a bit of old country / bluegrass / folk, singer-song writers, yacht rock, soft rock, classic rock, hard rock, some old school metal, some grunge, some alternative rock, lounge (particularly “space lounge”), world beat, novelty songs, parodies, synth-pop, acid-jazz, trip-hop, no wave, spoken word junk, some field recordings of found sounds, and even some other weird shit, like contemporary pop and dance. (Just off the top of my head…)
Music is important to me (sound in general, but as John Cage said, anything can be considered music---except rock and roll, in his opinion). I’ve always connected with music, even as a little kid. I used to listen to my mom’s and my dad’s and my aunts’ and my uncles’ records, and radio fascinated me as a kid. I made hundreds of mix tapes throughout my teens and twenties, then CD mixes, then podcasts, then online playlists… I’ve worked at a couple of music stores, even worked my way up to “Floor Manager” at one of them. I’ve been a DJ and music collector since the 1980s. I’ve DJ for weddings, funerals, school dances, company picnics, house parties, rave parties, and at dance clubs and bars, playing everything from techno and electronic dance music to goth and industrial to rock and blues. I currently have 26,478 songs cataloged on my computer, and I still have a bunch of CDs left in my garage that I haven’t “computed,” yet…and that’s not counting any of my RECORDS, which I haven’t even started on!!!! (I’m a particularly big fan of 7” singles, which are great time-capsules.) I’ve written for and edited music zines, I’ve booked bands for nightclubs, I’ve done interviews with bands for zines and for radio shows, I’ve ordered product for the store I worked at, and I even had a special room of my own that I was allowed to curate, painted a mural on the ceiling for, and had my own clientele, and everything. I’ve been to hundreds of concerts, I’ve had friends in hundreds of bands----and I can’t play a SINGLE NOTE myself or carry a tune in a bucket. It’s a type of magic I enjoy when produced by others, but I have to enjoy it without make it myself…
Where was I going with this??? Perhaps I’ve lost the plot again.
That’s about enough for now, anyway. I’ll write more as soon as I’m up for it.
---Richard F. Yates
