If the people are buying dreams . . .

This morning, on the heels of writing about Oprah last night, I am remembering a song I loved, by Melanie. This kind of protest music was what was so good about the seventies.  Note the line "If the people are buying dreams, I'll be rich someday." 

We do buy dreams.  God knows I like the controlled dreams we call fictions; I like them on the page and all my screens - Kindle, TV, Droid.  I like to play the dreams like Spirit in which you try to beat back those forces of death - very realistic, because you can never win. But you get your adrenalin up trying. And it diverts you from your pain.

I don't like the dreams that are sold to us constantly on these screens.  Just watch commercial TV for an hour, or make note of the ads that come to you in an hour online, in your inbox, on Facebook, on YouTube, almost everywhere you go except here and Wikipedia (that's why I contribute to it).  For men, poor guys, the dream of a car or truck that is so masculine it can do anything, speed, drag out stumps.  For women, the feminine dream of youth, beauty, desirability.  For kids, the dream of winning.  Gender-free, the dream of Something for Nothing.  Damn.

You can't stop this sludgy flow like a river through your life unless you live off the grid in Montana.  Even there I suppose a blimp could fly over, or a plane towing a banner.  What you have to do is distinguish dream from your reality.  The news is telling me a lot of people are doing that right now, returning Christmas gifts they bought in the fever of Black Friday, and apparently got home and realized they'd been out of their minds, and couldn't afford these things they bought on credit, and are now returning them.  (That's why paying actual cash dollars is so helpful - you know when you run out of cash.)

So, this Christmas, also be careful of the dreams of perfect family, of drastically re-forming yourself with resolutions, of gaining eternal life through exercise or herbs, of giving or receiving the perfect gift.  Just take it as it comes, good old reality.  In a way, it never lets you down.

Wish I could find a good book to live in

[Melanie and pix from the Hubble - if you want to go back to 1970 for 4 minutes, this is it.]
This morning I had the blissful morning I like to have, still in pj's until noon, drinking coffee, ignoring responsibility. I have always thought this is what a writer's life should be like. My life, anyway.

In all this I journaled, wrote a poem I don't understand, which was interesting and perhaps auspicious, and got into learning things I don't have to learn, thank God. Things I probably did learn at one time, but tossed aside as no longer useless. These ideas are probably still littering my lower brain, like the dirty sweats littering these 3 guys' dorm room I saw on Oprah. In case you're wandering, the Answer was The Container Store. Miraculous transformation. Mmm-hmm, for about as long as it took to get those cameras out of there.

Anyway, I tracked strange and interesting ideas through the internet until I landed on metanarrative. Wonderfully, the professor who included this in a course glossary began "Difficult to explain." Then, as evidence, he copied a paragraph from the Free Encyclopedia.

Actually, I confess that I was a student of narrative theory, a fairly rare specialty, you'd be surprised. It has made me very hard to please when it comes to novels. So here is my plea -

I want to read a novel that has the comic attitude, which sees life as fundamentally okay, which emphasizes farce, weddings, and feasts. I want to not be exposed to terrible dark secrets, wrenching experiences, aging and death and all - see, I get those in my life. If I wanted those, I'd stick to life and not seek out novels. In short, I get changed enough by life; I don't want works of art to scratch up my frozen soul. If you know this novel, please write.

At this remove from academia (I left it in 1995), I admit to liking what I like, and it does seem far from what I am supposed to like. I like to feel good. I like TV. The evening news, controlled by NBC. DVD's from Netflix. Chocolate. Okay, everybody likes that. And, like Melanie, "a good book to live in."

I wonder where we got what you might call the metanarrative about Art, the idea that Art should reflect suffering and moreover, make you suffer. Folk art isn't like that. A friend and I talked today about another friend who has taught himself to play wooden flute, and plays it like a shaman, sending delightful stirrings all up and down the chakras. He doesn't make us suffer. We feel better after we hear him. Hey, there's an idea.

I admit, an idea about Art isn't quite the same thing as a story; but they have something in common - they are made up by our brains. And millions of these meta-concepts govern our lives, billions litter our path, like the stars in the heaven. Things we should and shouldn't like. What decent people read. How to eat. I mean, since the truth about margarine came out why does anyone listen to the Diet Police?

Well, it is late. I have brought you a truly wonderful song today, and I actually do have a novel I am enjoying, perhaps for the second time, The Burglar who thought he was Bogart. I am a great fan of this witty series by Lawrence Block, in which corpses never really bleed, so it is time for me to get reading.