Don’t take it personally. I don’t really hate you. I hate that I need you.
More to the point, I hate that I need you to like me, or support me in some way. I hate that I have to have a patron. Like a seller needs a buyer, a singer needs an audience, a teacher needs a student, a black market Rolex dealer needs a gullible rube tourist, and, I guess, a blogger needs hits. We all need patrons. And I hate what that does to us. Richard Weaver once said that “language is sermonic…we are all private preachers.” Well, I say we are all private marketing reps. We’ve all got something to sell. And I hate that.
I would like to say that what I write is the ne plus ultra of authentic communication, that I would keep tossing my yawp out into the void whether you were there to read it or not, but honesty would require that I cop to the charge of bullshit. I do this because it connects me to others. As a consequence, you are always in my mind as I craft my message. I would like to get you out of there, but, alas, there you sit - my patron.
I hope that your presence in the process doesn’t corrupt the truth of what I have to say. I hope my desire for your approval never eclipses my need to tell it like I see it. But, I have lived with patronage so long, I’m not sure I would know what truth - unencumbered by rhetoric - would look like if I saw it.
For years I have enjoyed being a teacher. It has its drawbacks (like low pay and commonly unmotivated students), but my paycheck has little to do with whether my pupils like me. I think I ultimately chose education as my profession because of the lower than average position on the patronage scale.
The problem with patronage is that it shapes us. We are created and recreated in the image of our patrons. If we aren’t, we lose - financially, socially, interpersonally, etc. It seems that the freer we are from patronage, the less privilege we enjoy. With the exception of independently wealthy trust fund babies, most of us have to make decisions with one eye on the market. And I hate that.
Which is why I love “Easy Rider.” It reveals both the triumph and tragedy of freedom.
Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in Easy Rider
You might find it odd that I would choose the story of a couple of drug-dealing, social-misfitting hippies to make a point about truth and freedom. While I can’t get behind the narcissism of a cross-country trip financed by a drug deal, there’s something about the abandonment of cultural expectation in this archetypal ‘60s film that makes me feel like we were all born to be wild.
What tamed us? Was it our parents? The church? Public schooling? The marketplace? When and why did we choose to become some synthetic approximation of our former selves? Maybe it was our innate need for self-preservation.
When Billy (Hopper) and Wyatt (Fonda), aka Captain America, run into some trouble in a small town, they receive assistance from an alcoholic lawyer, George Hanson (Jack Nicholson), who harbors similar dreams of personal liberation.
Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider
Sitting around the campfire that night, they discuss what it is that makes normal people become so angry when they encounter easy riders.
Billy: They’re scared, man.
George: Oh, they’re not scared of you. They’re scared of what you represent to ‘em.
Billy: All we represent to them, man, is someone who needs a haircut, man.
George: Oh no, what you represent to them is freedom
Billy: What the hell’s wrong with freedom, man, that’s what it’s all about.
George: Yeah, that’s right, that’s what it’s all about. But talkin’about it and bein’ it—that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you’re bought and sold in the marketplace. . . . ‘Course don’t ever tell anybody they’re not free, or they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you they are. Oh yeah, they gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom, but if they see a free individual it’s gonna scare ‘em.
Billy: Yeah, man, but it don’t make ‘em runnin’ scared.
George: No . . . it makes ‘em dangerous.
Dangerous indeed. Hours after that conversation, George is beaten to death at the end of a redneck baseball bat. The end of the movie sees Billy and Wyatt taken out with a couple of shotgun blasts.
I know it’s only a movie, but substitute these scenes with assassins' bullets or crucifixions and the story is much the same: this world has little room for the truly free. In fact, most of us suffer from a chronic case of eleutherophobia: the fear of freedom. Rather than face our fear, we destroy the one who holds the mirror.
What does all this have to do with patronage? Well, I don’t want to die for my hair, or my politics, or my blog. But, I don’t want to live like a shadow either. Maybe I just wish we could all become a little easier riders.
Get your motor runnin’.
7 comments:
God Damn the Pusher Man! I said, God Damn! The Pusher, Man! Freedom isn't free, man. No, Freedom costs a buck-0-five. Yeah, Freedom's just a buck-0-five. Or, at the current exchange rate: E 0.81. AND.. if you try to buy Freedom back at the sell rate, your gonna really take a bath! @ 1.11, Freedom's worth $0.90. I'm not sure but what we've got nothin' left to lose!!
Anyhow, we all need an audience. Some of need one all the time. So a lot of us; more than some, will goof our way through adolescence and clown our way thru adult hood, leaving our spouses and children and parents in stitches. Or sometimes just bruises.
Jet lag, man. Ponderous. Sorry 'bout the typos. Among the literati, it don't take much to make one feel iliterati, know whut I mean?
What tamed us? A thousand little things, I'd say, starting when we were very young. I don't think we fully become conscious of it until we're finally grown up and consciously adding responsibilities that limit our freedom of movement. Only then do we realize, or at least I did, that the possibilities I'd given up were ones I wouldn't have seized anyway.
Mrs. Tool and I had a conversation not terribly long after we married in which we discussed the pros and cons of our arrangement (and marriage in general). We agreed that the biggest letdown was that we were no longer free to, as she put it, "run off and join the circus" if we wanted to. We were honor- and love-bound to our home and sensible professions. But I realized that I probably wouldn't have run off to join the circus even if I hadn't fallen for and married her. That realization, was, to me, the real letdown.
Even so, I wonder if there is a way to live the life of home and responsibility under the watchful eye of family and friends and yet still extricate yourself from the bonds of expectation, to live a more fully free and authentic life. Balancing the needs of the home and family against those of the soul is a damned difficult thing to do, and I'm not sure that any but a very lucky few get to escape the inevitability of compromise and sacrifice of the self for the family.
Don't get me wrong, there is true beauty in that sacrifice, and it can be a joyful thing, but it as with all things it has its limit.
What is truly dangerous is to disassociate and let that little tiny demon run free. That, dear friends is where religion and the sanctions of marriage, family, and community enter. Go ahead and join the circus! But don't worry about it if you never really wanted to. You would very likely have to be the guy giving the elephants their enemas. Once knew a guy who did that very thing. Had to: Otherwise the elephants will poop whenever they feel like it and it becomes very inconvenient. When I asked him why he, being a handsome, clever fellow, continued to perform such a distasteful job, He said "What, and leave show business?"
I know freedom ain't free, and that a buck-O-five is a hefty fee...Okay, no more Team America references.
I think there is a big difference between the personal sacrifices that are part of meaningful relationships, and the loss of self that comes from being a gameplayer. One is done for the good of another, the other is done out of ambition or some misguided allegiance to social norms.
When I look at pop culture, I see the inexorable decline of authenticity. Maybe it's no worse than ever before, but my sense is that illusion has become reality. Maybe the turning point was when Nixon refused makeup in the 1960 presidential debate. JFK was pretty and kicked Nixon's ass with the TV audience, while the radio audience thought Nixon won. I mean, can you imagine showing your face on camera today without bleaching, nipping, tucking, augmenting, or spinning a well-oiled set of talking points?
I was once accused of being a contrarian. I responded, "Am not."
This topic strikes a chord with nearly everyone... Westerners, at least. In a culture that prides itself on individual freedom, in a country who broke away from the yoke of its monarchy, I think it's safe to say that most of us have this deep longing which rarely, if ever, is realized.
Thank you, Reacher, for making the distinction between the complete bachelor-like abandonment of all commitment, and the beauty and satisfaction of commitment to authentic relationships. I currently struggle with the tension between abandoning reserve to chase after God and the "ministry" He's called me to without reservation and being everything my family needs me to be for them, as He has called me first to that.
So often I start feeling like my family is "in the way" of God's will for my life. But then I stop, take a deep breath, and just look at them, and think, "Ahh, this is the most beautiful ministry I could ever have." Man, it sure is harder and dirtier and more mundane than the spotlight of many "ministry" opportunities. They see you at your worst... when you wake up in the morning, when you get home from work after a long, hard day (for everyone, really), when you go to sleep at night, when you're furious, when you're broken, when you're foolish... when you're vulnerable.
What a different place the world would be if we all took seriously the calling we each have to love without reserve the families God has entrusted us with. But we're too busy, right? Saving for a fat retirement, for college funds, for that new Lexus, for that bigger house, for that cruise, for that next promotion... for that better life. Right? Or wrong?
Since the original blog quoted "Easyriders" allow me to quote the lyrics from Bob Segers song "Beautiful Loser"
He wants to dream like a young man
With the wisdom of an old man.
He wants his home and security,
He wants to live like a sailor at sea.
Beautiful loser, where you goona fall?
You realize you just can’t have it all.
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