The Religion the Audience & Me Works Out Betwixt Us

I forgot to get a pic of the cosmic potato -- or potato cosmos -- mentioned in yesterday's post. However, that doesn't mean I can't describe it. I suppose it would be easier to do so in a podcast, but I'm partial to the view expressed by a writer that writers shouldn't do that. Rather, they are writers, and writing is hard enough without cheapening it with... cheap talk (https://www.gawker.com/culture/writers-shouldnt-talk?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email).

conversation does not allow for revision or retraction. Why should writers be exempt from an otherwise universal indignity? They, too, are people, and people speak and misspeak. Still, I have always thought that there is something peculiarly invidious, even offensive, about the expectation that writers talk, at least in their capacity as writers.

I am particularly conscious of this, since writing for me is still an aspiration and not an accomplishment. I have only to peek at my early posts to appreciate this. Much of it is winceworthy by today's laughty standards. 

My inner standard would combine the piercing meta-intelligence of Schuon with the aphoristic irony of Davila and the perfectly crafted humor of Wodehouse. Speaking of which...

Lately I've been spending my spare timelessness dilating the mind and just letting the light flow in. However, it's not conducive to writing, this for two reasons. 

First of all, it's a passive modality, when writing is an active one. Second, it is as general as general can be, when writing must be particular. While I would like to write about "everything," one must of course begin with something.

Get back to the potato. We're dying of suspense.

I will, but I need to mention something else. How to put it... It's that, over the years, it seems that I have written myself into a corner, in that the person we know of as Gagdad Bob has coevolved with his audience, such that each evokes the other.

So, the other day I began writing a book, the sequel to One Cosmos. I didn't get far -- three sentences, I think -- before it dawned on me that it just wasn't working, because without my already existing audience, I myself don't really exist. We've come too far together for me to even know what it was like to write in the abstract to no one in particular. Who are all these assouls? 

No, I'm not getting sentimental about my wonderful audience, like some Grammy award winner. Rather, it reminds me of Duke Ellington. Conventionally speaking he was a "piano player," but in reality his instrument was the orchestra. 

You probably know next to nothing about Ellington, but even folks who know a little would probably lump him in with the big swing bands of the the 1930s, but as we discussed before on that other blog, there are geniuses and there are idioms, and the two should not be confused.  

I'm especially intrigued by "primitive" musical geniuses such as a Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf, who expressed their genius via the idiom of blues. But to reduce them to "blues musicians" is to overlook the more universal category of genius. "Genius" is a kind of x-factor that distinguishes the musical magician from the mere musician, whether that musician is merely workmanlike or a virtuoso. 

Analogously, as there are saints who are not sages, there are true artists who are not virtuosos.  

Getting back to Ellington, although he was a complete musician who also happened to be a fantastically expressive pianist, this simply wasn't enough for his musical vision, which required the whole orchestra and the individual voices within it.

The big bands of the 1930s began breaking up during the war years, and by the 1950s were largely a thing of the past. But for Ellington, the orchestra remained his primary idiom.  

Which leads to my "idiom." It seems that it has become "blogging," with all its spontaneity and creative immediacy. But not just in the abstract. Rather, a certain sensibility has emerged in the ever more... selective space between blog and audience, such that I wouldn't know how to write for any other audience. Rather, I'd have to start all over and invent a whole new audience, so to speak.

What's the word, Petey?

Parasitic? 

No, the other one.

Exploitive? 

No... symbiotic. And synergistic. 

I suppose the ironic thing is is that it all started out as a pretend cult, only to become a real one. 

I wouldn't put it that way, oh Mystic B'ob, 11th Degree Peltmaster of the Benevolent Order of Transdimensional Cosmic Achievers.

That's not how I mean it. Rather, it's more like the well-known phenomenon of having a favorite band that few people know about. To the extent that the band later goes on to widespread success, it's usually at the cost of betraying its original sound and audience. The band gains millions more fans but loses the original cult of hardcore loyalists.

This has happened to me many times. For example, I was an early adopter of Springsteen in 1975, before he became the vulgar arena-rocker, painfully self-conscious pseudo-artiste, and super-wealthy progressive fascist. Likewise R.E.M. before they too went that way in 1988.

THE POTATO!

That right there illustrates the problem. I will discuss the cosmic potato -- in great detail -- but imagine doing so to a wider audience beyond the twelve? I literally couldn't do it, because it would require 17 years of explanation to get them up to speed. All of you will get it. Just not the other 7 billion soyim.

So, it looks like I've written myself into a corner cult, the kind that no one can join but no one can leave. And every member is a follower and a leader. Because I think we've all, in some form or fashion, adopted the Raccoon sensibility of THE RELIGION THE ALMIGHTY & ME WORKS OUT BETWIXT US.