Serial killers become celebrities in America and around the world, their personal things collected, their images polished, and their lives endlessly studied by wanna-bes. This despite serial killers having reduced everything to a mindless stupidity: Kill. They are boring imbeciles, despite some being superficially charming or glib, able to fake intelligence, etc. Yes, I think of politicians when I say such things.
Copycat killers arise because people aspire to be “famous” like their idols, so they, too, go kill, torture, and maim. It is the lowest common denominator path to what passes for success in their dull, diminished worlds. Easy to kill garishly for notoriety because if it bleeds, it leads.
In Jazz there is a belief that heroin makes you play better, that you have to beat addiction to have soul. It’s referred to as paying dues. Gotta suffer, in short, in order to be “deep”. This moronic myth, which sprang up because a few of the best ever, such as Bird Parker, did also have drug problems or tangled personal relationships, (think there’s a connection maybe?), has destroyed countless talents and lives.
In rock, excess rules, and the 27 club is celebrated, as if dying young from abusing chemicals is a superb achievement and intoxication solely responsible for all musical brilliance. We see as a result kids use drugs, booze, and sex to excess thinking it will somehow make them like their idols. “I play better when I’m stoned,” or “My shows go better when I’m drunk,” are like those drunk drivers who firmly believe a few drinks not only doesn’t impair them, it sharpens their skills. Yeah, right.
Music group managers and recording companies routinely look the other way when excess kicks in, which often follows the first flush of money. They indulge the excess, hoping to get as much from the “talent’ as possible before inevitable burn-out, rather than helping the person. Scott Wieland they tried to help repeatedly, to the detriment of the group’s sales, but it didn’t take. Fake lifestyle won. Kurt Cobain they literally threw away, as Neil Young angrily sang about.
In the UK, mocking signs are found saying VAN MORRISON SUFFERED HERE. Angst sells and gains you credibility, no matter how unfairly. Why so serious? Because, as Vonnegut said, “Have as much fun as you want when writing but never let them see you smile, or all is lost.” That smile lost Frank Zappa due respect; oh, his stuff? Just goofy. Einstein’s family is desperate to expunge the picture of Albert sticking out his tongue in a silly moment because they know any sign of silliness diminishes the genius reputation. Having fun is not allowed.
Shallow splashes wider. Marketing knows this. Best-sellers aim at the fat part of the Bell curve, Popularity, not at the outliers of Truth or Art. Those latter two are sucker bets. You’ll lose money on them every time. We want to drench as many as fast as possible and sell towels before they dry off and forget they’re wet. We need to be ready with other towels when the next drenching happens. When we make it happen.
Writers are notoriously often alcoholics, the constant rejection and isolation of the pursuit of a true sentence and good paragraph being chronic, so naturally every journalist has to become a two-fisted boozer to be any good, and literary writers have to nurse their lost weekends for all the milked, tattered glory they can wring from them. Can’t be any good without a huge burden, goes the thinking. Confession is good for the bottom line.
The Ever-Popular Tortured Artist Effect, as Todd Rundgren called it once, is a myth. “Creating is a result of pain,” Lennon once quoted someone as having said. He was wrong and certainly he, of all people, most infantile of the Beatles, should have known it: Creating is a result of PLAY, even of playing with pain. Pain itself stops us until it passes, or drags us down as we trudge forward.
Pain inhibits experience and expression. Play liberates and transforms experience and expression. This is partly why art is not taken seriously unless and until it’s exploited for big money; it is viewed as play, as children having fun with what ever is at hand in their life experiences. So many broken people “succeed” in the money and fame spheres that others try to adopt those seven habits of successful people.
What we see repeatedly as a result is jump-to-cause illogic. Being successful isn’t about being a better person or enjoying life more deeply, it’s having “fuck you” money, (What’s the use of having fuck-you money if you never say fuck you? a current HBO ad for their new show about 1970s music asks), and acting like the bully Trumps and Putins of the world, which is equated with being “smart”, (if you’re so smart how come you’re not rich?), or admirably ruthless, (it’s just business, nothing personal when I destroy lives for profit). Success on capitalist terms means being able to buy and sell “average” people.
“I just use money to keep score” – Warren Buffett. What game is being played? That’s the key question to ask yourself.
We’re seeing the fruition of the dual sickness of capitalism; greed and excess, which brings along self-destructive tendencies as a paid companion.
We’re reaping what chaos and death we allowed the psychopaths to sow.
/ geste
