There’s a moment, on the dancefloor, when everything falls into place — the lights, the sound, the beat, the vibe, the crowd, the lyrics, the energy, the… intangible tribal quality of moving your body in time with the universe — where you consciously toy (for a microsecond) with the idea that if that moment of pure ecstasy never ended, that you could be interconnected so completely with… everything, forever… you could do it. You could be in that moment until your neurons ceased functioning, your muscles stopped twitching, your eyes go dark and you fall into that singularity of one moment stretching to eternity… You would. You really, really would.
And it would be okay. Fuck, yeah.
And this is the remix that’d do it. In at least thirty different places. Keep it comin’, keep it comin’, keep it comin’, keep it comin’, keep it comin’, keep it comin’, keep it comin’.
I want to share with you a list of horrifyingly clichéd homilies I posted some time ago on another site. I’m prepared to hear your eyeballs scraping as they roll upward, but maybe one or two will resonate with you. The last ones are particularly dicey, embarrassingly approaching New Ageisms — which I abhor — but I nonetheless include here because… well, just because. The universe doesn’t really deliver anything to us. We are the universe, all of us made of stars.
Cliché-O-Rama:
Respect yourself,
cherish your friends,
expand your horizons,
stay open to possibilities,
be serious about having fun,
say what you mean and mean what you say,
celebrate erotic connectedness,
recognize what-you-see-is-what-you-get,
stay interested and interesting,
regret nothing except that which you’ve been afraid to try,
it’s better to be single and lonely than in a wrong relationship and alone,
don’t let the other guy have all the fun,
there will always be that certain someone whose answer will be “no”,
treat others as you want to be treated,
go forward only,
be enthusiastic about everything you do,
commit fully or not at all,
work hard for what’s important to you,
treat others with more kindness than you think is necessary,
fall in love — just a little bit — with everything (and everyone) you do,
want only that which wants you,
embrace the very real magic in the universe and
trust that the universe will deliver to you not what you want but what you need. Love fearlessly.
When I was younger — much younger — every kid in my generation embraced culture in pretty-much the same fashion and at pretty-much the same time. We had only three television channels in Winnipeg, so we all watched pretty-much the same things. A new Beatles album would come out and everyone I knew would run out to The Hudson’s Bay Company for their copy, run breathlessly home and play that vinyl until it was pretty-much worn smooth, lying on our beds with the twelve-inch-square jacket held above our heads, each note and lyric to this or that or the other song etched into our young minds. Thirteen-year-old me, vibrating in unison with countless others, in my neighbourhood and around the world but without awareness of that connectedness, sharing “oh, that magic feeling… nowhere to go.”
And in a moment measured in decades but, in retrospect, barely a breath, albums became compact discs and the sound was perfect and the accompanying booklet an unrecognizably tiny reproduction of the original release’s artwork. Flash-forward a couple more decades and the compact disc is replaced by MP3s and those albums — musical journeys crafted by artists and poets — are reduced to single-serving songs, delivered immediately, for consumption while doing something other than simply listening and experiencing the music, of middling sound quality and with “artwork” barely one inch square. Processed, marketed, tested and… utterly, utterly disposable.
And, indeed, almost all of our culture’s been reduced to the ADHD-compliant short-format. YouTube reduces meticulously-crafted cinematic experiences to ten-minute, fan-favouritey scenes. Our television news is delivered in three-fact packets, carefully crafted to ensure the viewer isn’t intimidated by any actual new information, and repeated, ad infinitum (and ad nauseam), every 20 minutes until news becomes background noise and information becomes… disposable.
Nothing truly meaningful is disposable. Or instantaneous. Or acquired without effort and risk.
And those of us who aren’t intimidated by a huge array of “facts” find ourselves belonging to social networking websites, in which our hundreds (if not thousands) of “friends” urgently inform us that they’re… shopping. Or going to the gym. Or waiting in line for a movie. Our telephone calls, in which actual information is conveyed, accompanied by modifying vocal inflections, are ludicrously replaced by Tweets and text messages of such unimportance as to make one — make me — weep. When was the last time someone sang to you in a text message?
And our RSS feeds deliver dozens — if not hundreds — of updates on the world’s goings-on, every hour of every day, and we pretend we’re plugged into the world by scanning those tiny missives. And don’t get me started on the layers of hipster irony slathered on all of the above, resulting in levels of meta-information well beyond anyone’s comprehension. Our ability to absorb our world, this world made huge by our easy and instantaneous access to it all, is hobbled by an overabundance of facts unencumbered by real meaning and which are increasingly difficult — no, impossible — to process through our fleshy selves, our squishy brains.
Gulliver, not Traveling
Technology comes to our rescue, though. Ray Kurzweil, in his spectacular The Singularity is Near, suggests — straight out of science fiction — a future where we transcend our biology by creating human/machine hybrids in which our brains are assisted in the processing and storage of all that… information. And, ultimately, as the massive storage and processing demands of such a task become technologically possible, our minds — our personalities themselves — will be uploaded to exist and interact with others in a purely digital realm. And at that moment, that singularity, we leave our biological ways of experiencing the universe behind and enter unimaginable territory.
It’s a startlingly prophetic notion. And, for me, inconsolably depressing.
In the virtual realm, will I have scars carved into my abdomen, through surgery and accident? And will I encounter an avatar who gently traces his fingertips on those binary reproductions of my wounds and looks me in my virtual eyes with an empathetic surge of nanoelectric current? Will I live an eternity interacting with a single avatar, or spend a lifetime as we measure them today in a tiny instant of information exchange with thousands, millions, of avatars?
Will I collaborate with others to create a virtual space in which a door is opened and experience genuine surprise at what the opening reveals? Will there even be such a thing as “genuine”? Will we have wrinkles in that space? Will we not notice at first the little laughline crinkles at the corners of our digital co-conspirators’ eyes until a nanosecond later, but design the noticing to be experienced in years?
Will we have bad breath? When we virtually collaborate on an orgasmic level, will we not desire — or not be capable of — anything but peak orgasm? Ultimate, quantum climax? And will we choose to feel hurt, both physical and emotional? And if we choose not to hurt, will hurt cease to exist? What purpose will “no” serve when there’ll be countless “yes”es with which to interface, each one capable of emulating the appearance of the “no”?
Will my post-singularity, information-based self grow ever more aroused by a virtual scent at the nape of his virtual neck? Would it even have meaning, if all possible facets of interaction can be experienced in short sequence or even simultaneously? Will storytelling exist if we’re all capable of imagining every possible situation and every possible outcome? Will music? Or are we bumping against notions in which current perceptions of art, so intrinsically welded to our biology — our fleshy eyes and ears and tongues and fingertips — simply don’t hold sway any more? When we are all gods, creating and destroying entire universes within our processors in a flash of whimsy or malice, what will have meaning?
I’m no Luddite but I can’t help but reject, wholeheartedly, an existence on this level. What has meaning when everything is permitted and everything is possible? There is no poetry if everyone’s a poet. And there is no poetry without surprise, serendipity, risk and denial.
Maybe I’m just too fucking addicted to the cadences of time, the exquisite symphony of all the joy and hurt which comes naturally — and necessarily — from our mortality. And to the poetry of the flesh.
The title of this post is cheerfully ripped off from the Richard Brautigan poem “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” — a typically-whimsical, typically-Brautigan meditation on a future devoid of labour and filled with connectedness, via technology, to all of the natural world — but it’s really just the title I’m stealing.
I want to tell you some stuff you already know.
Our physical selves are, stated dispassionately, nothing more than finely-crafted machines, or an aggregate of thousands of tinier machines, perfected through countless generations of evolutionary R&D. To move your arm, a signal is sent from the brain to elicit an electrochemical surge in the machines of our muscles, which respond by contracting, but only to the degree meted out by the information received by your eyes or by touch to those centers of the brain which will, in turn, stop sending the signal to move when the operation is complete.
And over thousands of years, Evolution Inc’s R&D Department imbued higher species with consciousness. And self-awareness. And since evolution is, functionally, nothing more than insurance that each species will continue to pass along genetic materials to generations following, conscious minds developed a complex, hyperintricate set of protocols not unlike the programmed circuits running practically every machine we use today. These protocols work to guarantee the survival of all sentient species by establishing bonds with or barricades against individuals (and families) within that species. And between species.
It’s hard to speak of these protocols, these emotions, in a dispassionate fashion. I won’t even try. Hey, take a look at the greatest, most perfect music video ever crafted:
A number of friends and web-correspondents have been trying to find some peace, some grace, in their emotional selves following recent — and even longer-term — disappointments in their romantic lives. I have, too. We rage, we despair, we achingly long for an end to those sleepless nights, to that soul-corroding loneliness, to that overwhelming fear of connecting with another and being hurt again or, worse, we fear never again being able to connect with another. I have no tangible solution to offer to you. Or to myself.
And we are still human. We’re still machines which need to move and fuck and eat and shit and feel. We can’t not. It’s how we’re built.
We’re built to experience exhilarating joy, impenetrable sadness, debilitating fear, warm contentment, searing hurt and the gentle embrace of love. We can’t not eat, we can’t not move and we can’t not feel. We’re programmed that way, we electrochemical-machines. We emotion-machines.
So, go. Do. Feel. Accept with grace that it’s never easy, never painless and never without crushing disappointment. But it’s also undeniably built into the very fabric of our bodies, of our consciousnesses. To deny that is to deny our humanity. We machines of loving grace.
I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.
It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos—but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.
So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it’s just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth’s surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalisms is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.
Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.
Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known.
I’ve been uncluttering my life lately, tossing stuff into piles labeled “Need”, “Want” and “Discard” — alternately: “Love”, “Like” and “Lose” — and nothing escapes scrutiny.
Nothing.
Including This. That. No Other.
A lot has happened since my last posts and I suppose an apology is in order for the broken promises to update here. I’m sorry. Stuff happened. Some good, some bad, some downright awful. And all of it leads me to variations on a theme: The End.
In late November I was enjoying the delightful company of the denizens of Vancouver’s The Pumpjack bar and although I was hungry, I felt full. So, rather than enjoying further the company of one gentleman in particular, whose staggering hotness is matched by his ultrafirm handshake, I beat a hasty retreat home and then out for a dinner which I didn’t — couldn’t — really enjoy. I slept not a wink that night, running periodically to the bathroom in an attempt to expel, from either end, that which seemed reluctant to be expelled.
The next day was worse. Chills, sweats, fever, excruciating abdominal pain and much rolling around in the fetal position on my bed. I begged to be taken to the hospital where I was quickly diagnosed not with food poisoning but with acute appendicitis. This was something I’ve been dreading for, oh, 40 years or so, as my mother (and her father) had had nightmarish, near-death experiences with their appendix removals. Mine wasn’t close to rupturing; it had practically disintegrated. Once discovered, however, I was treated quickly and professionally and sent out the door a couple of days later to recuperate.
While I was lying in the Emergency Room in mind-shattering pain, thinking that I might actually see The End (of My Life) before the night ended, my relationship — the one which brought me to Vancouver — was secretly ending, too. I found this out a few days later, amends were made and promises… promised. Two months after that, it officially ended. There are some events from which no relationship can recover, I suppose, and without question we’re now both better positioned to pursue that which we separately want to pursue. I wish him well. Honestly.
So I am a man alone now. And I am much happier for it, for the record.
Recovery from the surgery was slower than I’d have liked and I was deeply frustrated at not being able to exercise at all. But I healed and got back into shape. And was struck down, again, by a nasty, four-week flu. Not that you need to be told this, but you seriously do not want to be assessing (and reporting on) your life while engaged in a flu-fight.
The Olympics came to Vancouver and it was pretty spectacular — recent official break-up notwithstanding — and I had a helluva good time. But… again I was feeling poorly. And I wound up, once again, in the Emergency Room. It seems I developed prostate problems as a result of a 35-year-old cycling injury. I won’t go into details but I will say that I’m really fuckin’ tired of taking antibiotics and I have two more weeks to go. And then surgery. But, honestly? I’m eager to have it done as, like my appendix, this inevitable surgery has been hanging over me for the greater part of my life, cropping up every four or five years and that, I hope, won’t happen after May.
So, yeah, The End. Of my appendix, my relationship, the last flu of the season and my recurring prostate issues.
And The End of this blog as you know it.
Since moving to Vancouver, the flavour of my posts here has changed quite radically, and its whole raison d’être — railing against the serious dysfunction in Toronto — seems moot. I’m happy here. Really happy. No city is perfect, but this city is perfect for me.
I started noticing, too, a growing, personal frustration at the fake compartmentalization of my life, a life in which there really isn’t much compartmentalization at all. My online existence is represented by four different and distinct personæ and yet… in real life there is but one. And the ranty, curmudgeonly, bstewart23 persona, which served as useful a purpose as, say, William Burroughs’ “routines” — which eventually became Naked Lunch — needs an overhaul. Concurrent with this deeply personal observation was the increasingly-incandescent, online self-immolation of a former confidant, who now seems incapable of slowing his descent into unintentional self-parody. I so don’t want to do that.
Over the past four months or so, I’ve been recommended Alan Downs’ The Velvet Rage, an exploration of the consequences of growing up gay in a straight society, by four or five people whose opinions I value greatly. I’d avoided it because the central premise — that all gay men are affected by the deep shame resulting from their differentness — doesn’t quite mesh with my experience; I don’t really exhibit any symptoms of shame (of which, of course, you were already very much aware, right?). I picked it up and wish I’d done so much earlier.
The Velvet Rage is a deeply-affecting work, and I cannot recommend it highly enough to all gay men, especially those older than 30. If you don’t recognize yourself within its pages, you will certainly recognize your friends and your lovers, past and present. And having your eyes opened to a significant cause of the truly shitty things we do to ourselves and others, we can set out on a path to authenticity.
Which brings me back to this blog, which had become increasingly inauthentic. So it’s over. Done. The End. Besides, the updates to the software seriously fucked the commenting system, so the whole damn thing needed an overhaul anyway.
I hope you’ve been well. I’ve missed you. And I’ll see you here soon. New, improved, more authentic. I’m really fuckin’ excited. No, really, you guys. Life is good. I’m working on “Love”, “Like” and “Lose”. And it’s great.
I’ve never been fond of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. It’s cold, bereft of useful traveler connection-time-wasters and, for airlines, one of the most expensive airports in the world to set up shop. (Although, for the record, landing fees and terminal charges have been reduced from stratospheric levels). It’s always a giggle to pass through YYZ, though, and see the high-speed walkway beside the regular-speed dealio:
YYZ High-Speed Walkway (2 October 2009)
To my knowledge, it’s never worked, never made its way past testing in the nearly five years since Terminal 1′s been open. Enormously expensive, too, as you might imagine. Worse, YYZ was the first airport for which the manufacturer had been contracted for this particular system. It was doomed to failure from the beginning, though, as its whole intent — moving inbound passengers from flights to baggage carousels — seemed enormously flawed in the first place: passengers quickly are transported to baggage claim areas where they still have to wait ages for their luggage.
Returning to YYZ from TLV was a lesson in security incompetence, too. After five security checkpoints at the Tel Aviv airport, in which we were screened by trained personnel clearly adept in ferreting out ne’er-do-wells and scofflaws (and, apparently, anyone with a Russian accent) we were treated to a wait in line while a Brazilian traveler was detained for her attempt to bring a dangerous vial of cheesy perfume through the checkpoint. She was questioned by four security agents while the entire line was held up behind her, each security agent unsure of how to handle someone bringing more than 100ml of liquid through, as if it was the first time it had ever happened. I am never disappointed by Canada’s first (and only) line of defense against troublemakers.
After witnessing dozens of people wiping handkerchiefs, staggeringly cheesy dimestore trinkets and, I do believe, their panties on The Stone of Unction in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, I can’t help but totally love the latest from the Hebrew Badgirl:
Video: Sarah Silverman, “Sell the Vatican, Feed the World”
Oh, bygone eras of sublimated male eroticism! Before there was Xtube there was newsgroup photo-sharing and before those there were dirty videos (βeta!) and magazines. And before those there were International Male catalogs and “fitness” magazines and before those there were the swimsuit and underwear sections of Sears and Eaton’s catalogs.
And before those there were Ivory soap ads:
“Ivory soap had a good many unusual experiences during the war…”
“Not the least of the pleasure of a hard game is the bath that follows it.”
I believe it’s safe to say that I’ve devoted the latter part of my life to being 0 56/100% pure. And I can’t help but think that ads like these got Mad Men‘s Sal into advertising.
I should totally be packing for our trip while waiting for the next round of tests to come down the pipe from Toronto but find my mind wandering south, not east or even Middle East. Hunh.
flickr’s being hardass about the images hosted on their servers, which is their right, so in an effort to ease their concerns, I’m moving the ones they consider contentious to another server. That’ll mean there’ll be quite a few broken images until the move is complete. My apologies for the inconvenience.
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Gulliver, not Traveling
Love fearlessly, y’all.
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