Let’s face it, I am.
Try as I might to be responsible, the fact of the matter
is that it’s just something that I’m not very good at. I’m told I should be. I
have said that before, and as I am sure that I will be told many times more.
At some things, if not a great many, it would seem that I
am something of a slow learner.
We all have our faults.
It never ceases to amaze me how being a loser inevitably
comes into style. I’ve seen a good number of people come and go who have traded
in their loserness (I know that’s not a word, but give me a little room to move
here…) to become what might pass as cool. Somehow, the misfits inevitably
become the fitted, like a well tailored suit or a specially made piece of
jewellery. There are those that would call that a just reward. After being an
outcast, it’s only inevitable and fair that the underdog would have their
moment in the sun. Every dog has it’s day as they say.
A damn shame if I may be so bold.
The idea of “fitting in” has always been somewhat
nauseating to me.
Colour me jaded thanks to the glory of my grade school
education (of which I have been reflecting on a good deal of late for some
reason, but we’ll get to that soon enough), but I realized a long time ago that
as soon as people start telling you that you’re more than what you thought you
might be, you start to believe it, and with that, have no illusions, comes
arrogance.
If you’re told enough times that you’re better than the
rest, you’ll start to believe it. A very wise, but incredibly evil man once
said that if you repeat a lie enough times, it will become the truth. This is
true. I have seen it many, many times, as we all have.
I’m getting tired of the rhetoric.
I’m getting tired of people not only getting up on their soapbox,
but thinking that they have a right to be up there. I’m getting tired of people
who think that for whatever reason, they have the right and the ability to
bestow the obvious on us. I’m getting tired of the after school special version
of reality that the successes of the world (minor or major though they might
be) feel they have the right to preach to us.
Mostly, I’m getting tired of the losers telling us how
they’re winners now, and dammit, they know better.
Here’s a simple truth.
If people can’t think for themselves, it doesn’t matter
how much you attempt to shove down their throat, they’ll end up vomiting it up.
Bile and all.
If people can think for themselves, they don’t need to be
told everything that is wrong with the world, because they will seek that out
for themselves. If people can think for themselves, they can see the obvious.
The problem with the world today is not that people don’t
know what’s wrong.
The problem is that too many simply don’t give a damn.
The problem is that people have for far too long said that
they care, when they frankly, do not. It’s a well-practiced script that we all
know.
A lie may become the truth when oft enough repeated, but
the truth is lost even easier.
It’s easier to sit back and let the status quo be just
that. The innovators become the norm, and they are all too easily lost in the
lines that we have all heard a thousand times over. You simply can’t reach
people by saying what they have come to expect.
Your government is corrupt?
No shit.
Your rights are being trampled on?
No shit.
North American culture is one based on lethargy and greed?
No shit.
Here are two more simple truths, and then we’ll move on.
First of all, desensitization is a wonderful thing. The
greatest weapon of the 20th century was not, despite what some might
say, the atom bomb and all it lead to. The greatest weapon of the 20th
century is apathy. Apathy makes you turn a blind eye, apathy makes you
disinterested in bettering things, and most crushing of all, apathy makes sure
that you turn your back on the people that have tried to help you in the past.
We learned to manufacture and bottle that, and it is the single most powerful
thing that holds us back.
Second of all, to all those that call for revolution in
any shape or form from the comfort of their secure lives, I would like you to
take brief look at the successful revolutionaries of history, and know this…
Revolution does not come without an enormous degree of
self-sacrifice. Revolutionaries are born out of being left behind. Revolution
does not come simply because you say so. Revolution comes because people can
look at what one person has done and see that if the cause, whatever it may be,
mattered enough that one person would give up so much, it must matter.
That is the only way to fight apathy.
So to all of you that want to see change, but are
unwilling to sacrifice, and more importantly, accept the flaws that you are,
kindly do me three small favours.
1)
Realize that if you think you’re fantastic or cool or
special because you’re calling for change that is so obviously needed, you’re
simply stating the obvious. Pointing out the obvious does not make you
insightful, it makes you redundant. Change is not instigated by stating the
obvious; it’s made by giving a damn, and in the name of that, being
exceptional. Not by saying that you are, but by acting in such a way that you
show that your ego or pride or whatever is secondary to your cause.
2)
Accept the fact that in no way by condescending or making
yourself out to be a guru will you advance what you believe. You can’t reach
people by only showing them what is wrong or abnormal about them. You can only
reach people by making them realize that they are in fact, not alone, and that
all of their flaws are shared by many. The apathy of the human condition cannot
be changed by telling someone all of the things that are wrong with them. If
you show them what is right, they will eventually figure out what is wrong on
their own, because all of the things that are wrong will conflict violently
with that.
3)
If you can’t get the first two, here’s my third favour to
ask. Please, Fuck off, you’re doing more damage than good.
Enough with that, let’s be amusing for a bit, shall we?
I haven’t.
At least not to my memory.
I can’t be entirely sure, memory being what it is. I do
know that the only opportunity that I would have had to be at a clambake was
during my brief period living in the United States of America.
I was only about 8 at the time, so I can’t be blamed.
For the record, save a few ignorant bigots and racists,
the vast majority of the people that I met while living there at that young age
were very kind folk.
Many gave me lemonade on the hotter days.
On the hot days, Washington D.C. can be a real bitch.
A real nice and well thought out bunch in my experience
(limited though it is as an 8-or-so-year old).
God only knows what happened.
I like to think that all of the kind people that I met
were among the folk that are disgusted at the current political climate south
of the border, but one can only hope.
Most of those that I met were well under the poverty line,
and most of them were black. That leads me to believe that they wouldn’t have
voted for the current incumbent, so hope lives on.
I could attempt to regale you with stories of giant
cockroaches and Egyptian mummies and the political planning of the racist
educational elite that I barely met (and if I at a child of my age could
recognize it, that should tell you how bad it was…) and ghosts of confederate
armies, but that would be digression.
And lord knows I’ve never been a victim of that.
So back to the possibility, though quite remote, that I
have ever been to a clambake.
There were several days when my family traveled down the
east coast away from the dirt of the city to some very nice beaches. I remember
very clearly doing some surfing on a styrofoam surf board, and I remember very
clearly the discover of a giant horseshoe crab and a Man O’ War jellyfish (he
was about 18 feet long as I remember but it was from quite a tall bridge so it
could have been much larger), but I can’t say for certain that while taking in
all the local activities that my family never found it’s way to a clambake.
I remember playing in a field with several other kids my
age and squishing the behinds of fireflies in order to paint ourselves with
their innards (brutal though that now sounds in hindsight) so that we could
glow in the dark.
I remember catching a couple of fireflies and placing them
in a jar so that I could bring them home and show the kids in my neighbourhood
the wonders of incandescence.
They died within a day or two.
Nowhere in this, do I remember a clambake. Though trying
to remember what was almost twenty years ago is a challenge, I’m quite sure
that my family never found a clambake.
We may have.
But I don’t think we did, and I certainly don’t remember
it if we did, so for all intents and purposes…
I have never been to a clambake.
To be honest, I don’t actually know in detail what a clambake
is, but I hear nothing but good things about them. I suppose that I could use
the wonders of the internet to look up all the details, but I find these days
that the legends of our time have disappeared thanks to fact.
Principally, mercury.
I don’t know what the east coast is like these days, but I
do know that whenever I have entertained the idea of finding a clambake on my
various visits to the west coast, I have been told that such things simply
don’t happen because any shellfish have by and large become terribly toxic, and
any eating of such shellfish could easily lead to a host of illnesses. Up to
and including cancer.
I used to smoke quite heavily, so I suppose that I
shouldn’t worry, but I do. Enough to dissuade myself from thinking of trying to
have a clambake on the west coast.
Silly really, when you think about it.
Also completely not the point.
The point is, to my knowledge, I have never been to a
clambake.
And in my mind, that is nothing short of a damn shame.
If you listen hard enough, you can hear stories of
clambakes from days past. Most, if not all of them seem to involve camaraderie
between the folks involved that cannot be matched save for the clambake arena.
There seems to be a mythos involved with the idea of a clambake that leads
inevitably to discussion on how to make the human race a better and more equal
competition. That and beach balls.
That and surf competitions where the local kids inevitably
beat out the big hotel owner or local developer hell bent on ripping up some
beautiful piece of beach.
I remember hearing (albeit a decade or so late) about
Annette Funicello not showing her belly button because Walt Disney said that it
might encourage unclean thought.
That was the innocence of a clambake.
You don’t generally get that around the wood of a bar or
any other common meeting place these days.
Mostly it’s about how there is a lack of hockey. Either
that or the latest playboy centerfold, and how she could have showed a little
bit more.
Which, for the record, I haven’t even noticed. Either or.
Given the choice, I would much rather sit on a beach
surrounded by the smell of salt water and the sound of waves and an acoustic
guitar while discussing the betterment of humanity as opposed to watching a
small black dot make its way on ice.
But as I said, I have never been to a clambake.
And thanks to the wonders of mercury, I most
likely never will.
Maybe one day, I’ll import some clams, from beaches not
yet toxified, just so I can.
If I do, you’re all invited.
But I think you know as well as I do, that won’t be
happening anytime soon.
At one point, I decided that if for nothing more than an
exercise in writing, I would attempt to write, in as great detail as my memory
would allow me, my life story.
And then my computer crashed.
All 100 and some odd pages leading up to the first 12
years of my life, simply deleted in a vicious act of reformatting.
That might almost say something.
You should spend a week in my life.
Seriously.
In a universe of infinite possibilities, it is without
fail that the most interesting and unexpected will rear their heads.
You might think that you will see it coming, but don’t
fool yourself.
You won’t.
Not at all.
Here’s a working definition of peace.
Sometimes, the age old adage of “what is understood need
not be discussed” rings true. When it does, that’s quite a cool thing.
In the last week I have seen two things come about that I
never would have dreamed possible.
One week.
Seven days.
One Hundred and sixty eight hours.
Ten thousand and eighty minutes.
Six hundred and four thousand seconds (with about thirteen
left to spare).
I wouldn’t have seen either of these things as being possible.
But I quite like that they are.
Back to the heavy shit.
Let’s face it, I am not.
I’ve done my damage in my day. I have left more than a few
smoking catastrophes in my wake. I have worn my fair share, and perhaps a
little more than that, of darkness. I’ve been the bad man, and I have been the
sad man. I am, to be honest, more than a little sick of it.
I would like to think that on the odd occasion I have done
a little bit of good as well though.
For what it’s worth.
Checks and balances.
At some point, the equation equals zero, and when it does,
it’s time to reassess. I’ve been told that my particular equation may have done
just that, and while it happens at the tail end of The Year Of The Dead Rock
Star (which I seem to have missed out on despite my best intentions), I’m told
it has happened nonetheless.
So this is it then.
This is where it stops and maybe begins. This is where all
the finality that we have both dreamed of starts to hint at it’s presence. This
is where the maybe’s become nothing more than dreams. And that’s ok really,
because I’ve always been very, very good at sleeping in.
Holding yourself to your own convictions can be, and
probably is, one of the hardest things that a person can do. Standing up, even
when you can feel your knees buckle beneath you, that is one of the hardest
things that I have ever found. Speaking out, even when you know that you are
simply spouting into a void, that comes with a weight that can crush even the
strongest of bones to dust.
Because you know that you will never be heard, but it
still had to be said.
At one point, a good number of people may have listened to
what I had to say, but I fear that I may have bored them. Given time, I think
that anyone can become boring, and luckily, time is all that I have.
Seems that I’m one of the few these days.
Coming into my 28th year, I find myself
measuring what I have become. Inevitably, I tend to see my failures with a
greater clarity than my successes, but that is to be expected. I can only hope
that in my time so far, I might have left the world a little better than I
found it. So far at least.
Anger is a wasted effort. In this little life of mine I
have learned that.
Why bother with it?
In a way, this will be my last reprisal of the year. Next
month is the last installment of Wally, so this is, in a way, the last chance
of the year to speak my mind. I won’t go adding my silliness into Wally’s
story, he doesn’t deserve that.
So here we are.
Things have gone and shaken themselves up again. That’s
their nature and I suppose that’s a good thing. I think it is. Common Ground,
having lasted slightly more than a month, has split up. The simplest
explanation is that the idea of common ground was an easier idea than a
practice, and that for our own reasons, we have decided to go our separate
ways.
Good thing that www.natepike.com
domain name was paid for the entire year…
I’m back to being just Nate Pike, but I’ve been just Nate
Pike for as long as I can remember, so there’s no big change there. What will
be changing is the way that I approach playing music. Enough with the ego and
the expectation of some imaginary return.
Each month I’ll be posting a new song with the reprisal.
Hopefully, you just might even like some of them. Or, alternately, you might
not. If you do, pass them on, and if you don’t, please feel free to tell me
what a horrible person I am.
I’m realizing what this is, for perhaps the first time.
I’m handing myself the microphone and saying, “So what is it you would like to
say?”
And to an audience of many, or to an audience of none, I
am realizing that my answer is the same…
I tried.
And I think, for fun, I still will.
And I think, for fun, maybe you should too.
For fun.
As promised, here's the song of the month...(right click and save target as)