Part Dos

I am a big fan of Henry Rollins, incidentally. Not that you care. Not that he cares, more importantly. I state that for nobody in particular, least of all myself. Nonetheless, I dig the guy, for a bunch of reasons not the least of which being our apparent shared penchant for Kiss—mine all the time and his supposedly accidental and occasional at best. Mostly, though, I appreciate what he somehow managed to communicate to a too-tall, too-skinny, too-awkward youth growing up among the moneyed Hitler youth of Houston.

I hearken back to the halcyon days of Black Flag, when he helped me find a voice for my white middle-class mediocrity agony. I raged with him. I heard the message that materialism was bad in spite of my cravings for bigger, faster cars, niftier stuff, better clothes, and, most compellingly, a more “complete” Josh in the glamed-out plasticized pop culture sense. Men on horses, German import cars and little cloth alligators. At least I knew I was wrong. I was self-aware, and in spite of my parent’s best efforts when I was younger, that’s no small achievement at the hormonally-blurred ripe age of 16. Flash forward to my mid to late twenties, and via the Rollins Band, I knew that shallowness and selfishness still lurked in the dark recesses of the human experience (darkness, ironically as it would eventually seem, that drew my focus only inwards at the expense of outward wariness). It was something he helped me be on guard for, something I fought against.

I’ve liked his writing for years. I’ve thoroughly enjoy his self-deprecating style, the introspection, the inward journey into the depths of the psyche. His works are often simple journals, glimpses into his professional struggles, a 36-inch flat screen television view into the price extracted to achieve one’s art. Television? How ironic. TV party tonight be damned, at least I had the option, the leisure to turn it off every time it became too intense. But that was—is—the brilliance in his written word. Mr. Rollins takes you on a delightfully blackened bleak journey to the deepest depths of your own pain, your own misgivings and your own self-doubt, yet he graciously allows to you draw back and save yourself before it becomes too overwhelming and drowns you.

How sophisticatedly ironic and shit, dontcha know….

I’ve sincerely enjoyed his spoken word shows, for no matter how deeply invoking or painful his other art might be, at least he allows us to share in his humanity, his humility and his humor. The bottom line, according to me and perhaps him, is that if we cannot laugh at ourselves than we are little better than roaches infesting this planetrock. Christ, I laugh at myself all the damned time. Why the shit not? Whatever, I’m getting off on a tangent. Well, not getting off exactly, per say. Crap—you know what the hell I mean (and if you don’t I highly suggest you think less and drink more).

Anyhow, I too share the love for the iron, although instead of plates provided by Standard or Olympic, I find solace, redemption and cleansing in the beautiful agony of 4,000 meters of triceps and lateralis dorsai burning pain, hours upon hours of riding the Popsicle stick saddle of my human powered steed and miles upon miles pounded into my lower spine borne upon my feet. The pain, the sweat and the discipline don’t lie. Henry was right. You are the only thing that won’t let you down as long as you are willing to pay the physical price of suffering to achieve enlightenment. Iron or integrated indexed shifting and titanium components. It doesn’t matter, for he spoke the gospel of the universal truth of the crucible of self-flagellation and the resultant transcendental purity it affords. Trust in your physical being; tear it down and it will come back stronger and better. Again, sumthin’ like that.

I’ve been to his concerts. I’ve obviously read his books. I’ve listened to his interviews. I’ve seen the shows. I’ve paid attention. And, most importantly, I’ve never asked him to spit on me.

That said, I don’t necessarily agree with him regarding the state of American art, be it written, sung or simply presented. Let us look at music.
The Boss is the Boss, point blank. The Nuge may be the Nuge, but he never wrote anything as compelling, as soul-wrenching as “Nebraska.” For all his right wing, bow hurling, little furry bunny eating hooyah, Nugent can’t reach deep inside our guts and pull out our humanity, still beating, to show it to us before our disbelieving eyes. Bruce can. And so can C,S,N and Y. And James Taylor. And Public Enemy. The thing is that there is a defined demarcation plane between art and fluff. Brittany Aguilara? In Backstreet Synch? The latter. Lots of others, both known and anonymously living in artistic self-denial embody the former. The fact is that Paul Schaefer is the World’s Most Dangerous band (leader). Stevie Wonder can funk it out with the best of them. Bootsie Collins is, in fact, from space. John Coltrane may very well embody the spirit of the Lord. And Sheryl Crow can rule my world any day. Slayer? Durst? One need not throw angry, violent riffs to be in touch with the soul of one’s art. They might be there, but that’s not necessarily the defining criteria for ascending to the pinnacle of art.

Jackson Pollock took randomness to insightful new levels in his day, Frank Lloyd Wright transcended mere geometric proportion, but I also see the wonder in the taggers who can so easily mask their names in wonderfully complex constructs sprayed onto the side of Pacific box cars. I can comprehend the sheer magnitude and profound importance of the underpaid schlub copy-editing for the local pulp rag. Art exists in every level, every facet of life.

That said I’ve got to agree on one particular subject with Henry. While the Kiss Army might seem anachronistic to the uninformed, it only takes a cursory exploration of the phenomena that is Kiss to explain an art that helped define a genre and is still as viable, as energetic today as it was in 1977. Think about the deeper ramifications, free yourself from the banal messages of “Love Gun” or “Detroit Rock City” or “Destroyer” or “Dynasty.” It’s not about packaging, no matter how much the industry machine would like us to believe that. It’s about some Jewish guys breaking their mothers’ hearts on an entirely different order of magnitude. God, Allah, Buddha, the Great Spirit bless ‘em. I whish I had that fortitude and that gumption.

And that’s where Henry’s message to me comes in. I live my life for the things that I think define “right.” At least I do now, and I’ve “been there, done that,“ so blow me if you don’t agree. Whatever.

I try to do right by others, to avoid doing wrong, harm or inflicting pain. Pain is a crucible reserved for the self, not something to be wielded against others. Who the hell am I to pass judgment on others such that I’d hurt them? My body is my one and only possession and therefore mine to do with what I please. But others? I think not.

Where then, does evil fit in to my warped view of the world? Well, I can say with certainty that evil cannot be found anywhere in the glass of Balvenie that I have gently melting beside me. Nor can it be found in the fish taco that I have preternaturally craved since my forced “relocation/reallocation” to a uniquely disenfranchising plane of existence an agonizingly lengthy but chronologically short time ago. (Confusing? Try being me some time…it gets worse.) I liked my beach bungalow, and I can say with fair certainty yet again that there was no evil there either. Evil, it seems, rests in the hearts and minds of a minor few humans. Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe can get fucked for all eternity for all I care; mankind is essentially good in spite of New Coke, the Spice Girls, Pokeman and Other Occurrences. We don’t need heroic sacrifices to prove anything differently, for in every culture throughout time there have existed basic rules that define how one plays kindly with the other kiddies in the sand box. Break the rules, and you’re right out. It’s that simple. The problem is those rare, powerful few who suffer from megalomania, delusions of grandeur or simple meanness and cruelty. These are the same creeps, mind you, who beat their children, abuse animals, engage in genocide or participate in aberrant behavior, and murder Innocent Women in parking lots. It’s not about corporations trying to take over the globe, nor is it about secret conspiracies of a select few to rule the earth. Evil is easy to identify in others. But, at the same time, it’s also harder to identify in others.

Fortuitously, providence and evolution have provided the means with which to gain clarity of vision, the ability to accurately survey the world around us and take stock of the good and the bad. Emancipate your self from mental slavery, Brother Bob told us—a lesson that I’ve taken to heart since first hearing his gospel in a dingy bar in Gainesville, Florida many years ago. I listened, and more importantly, I heard. But it was a lesson I lost over time. Perhaps it’s time for everyone else to do the same. Maybe it’s time I once again pay attention too.

And that’s where I get back to Henry. I listened, I heard, and I understood. Or, at least, I am trying to understand, and that’s all-important, all-consuming. There was once a time when I provided safe harbor for hatred and evil, when not-so-long-ago I lost the one who defined me, who was more to me than I. “A crushed larynx” the coroner’s report said, “strangulation following forcible coitus”—rape. I dwelled in the land of hatred; I subscribed to its tenants whole-heartedly. My word was consumed by darkness and hatred and putrid evil. A dragon that lived deep within for years and decades suddenly made its presence known and every day became a battle of will and force against the ultimate powers of evil that lay within me, the seed having been planted and nurtured darkly by the singular action of one anonymous person who stole Her from me. Shit. I understood murder, Nazism, race hatred—the whole gambit of the darker side of human existence that stood in stark contrast to the essential good of mankind, the things that She taught me to appreciate and foster.

Fuck. Fuckers.

The accused were never caught, or at least haven’t been to this day, and I lived in a waking nightmare state where I hoped sincerely to be able to exact my revenge. Death and suffering at my hand. (Him or me; in retrospect, I don’t know.) Slow, bloody and painful. That’s how the movies portray it. Stalwartly and stoically strong, the hard jaw line betraying only a hint of the power yet to be unleashed upon the wrongdoers. That’s how the movies portray it, dammit. …Except at night, for it was in those dark hours that my gawd-awful normality came upon me like a tsunami in the tidal flats, overwhelming my every defense and driving home the harsh reality that I had been graced with far more than I deserved in her, and I would never be able to exact a measure of revenge. Emancipation from the mental slavery of others is one thing, but the emancipation from the bonds of self-hatred and self-recrimination are another thing entirely.

Henry and the iron at that time were the on-ramp to my salvation. They were the means with which I sought the ability to rise forth every day from bed to face a cruel, cruel world. And it worked, well…for a time. No offense intended to Henry, but I’ve realized of late, that absolution and forgiveness are hard to come by in a cold, cold world, particularly from oneself. Especially for oneself.

Mostly for oneself.