February 2000 smoking jacket by Gregory Alkaitis-Carafelli |
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Road Signs
It is so rare to see a punk with a serious orthodontic fetish,
specifically one so very into flossing and flossing well, that on the
train the other night I stared, fascinated, repulsed, yet unable to look
away. The lit train car combined with the suburban darkness outside
turned the windows into semi-transparent mirrors, and it was with this
aid Dental Punk was fighting vigorously plaque and messy buildup that
can lead to the gum disease gingivitis. Every so often this happens: a
traffic accident, neighborhood shooting, flossing train passenger --
suddenly the world is revealed very fast, very raw, in a way that
demands you stop watching, my god it is making you sick to watch; but
you can not turn away. In the extreme, Burgess' A Clockwork
Orange turned raw visuals into a form of torture slash conditioning;
strapped to a chair, eyes clamped open, our poor droog Alex was forced
to pay attention through a whole mixed-media menu of human misery.
Less sensationally, in the real world death, like flossing, demands and
commands attention -- and I am not trying to be funny or snide, because
the general inability I see to turn away from misery bothers me. Most
mornings the traffic report carries news of an accident, and also, every
single time, there is a companion delay on the other side of the road,
blithely dismissed by the traffic reporter as a "gaper delay." People
slow down to watch the spectacle -- this is fact -- and while I would
like to believe their lingering gaze is motivated by a sense of concern
for the potentially injured, I know that it is not so. Maybe in the
Regan Eighties this sort of compassion flowed; maybe it even flows now
(adjusted for inflation). I would like to think I am just looking in the
wrong place -- but all signs point otherwise.
Unfortunately, once you know what a sign looks like you begin to see it
everywhere, perhaps even in places it never was. Two recent examples
come immediately to mind: "Magnolia," a film as much about death as it
is about relationships; featuring the vulpine character Frank "T.J."
Mackey driven by the childhood trauma of having to watch, alone, his
mother die; the audience dragged forward through four or so suicide
attempts (some successful) and the production of a few corpses, all
paper to be wrapped around a delightfully heavy brick and hurled through
the glass fourth wall. Dying mothers surface again in a recently
published novel as much about the celebration of living as it is about
the base awfulness of death. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering
Genius by Dave Eggers elegantly chronicles the dirt and shower
curtain film no one wants to talk about when they talk about dying
people, making the reality of raising his younger brother after the
death of both parents funny, disgusting (I am thinking about the
housekeeping skills of the two here) and vividly real.
These media products are appropriately uncomfortable, yet engaging in a
way that attention must be paid. I saw "Magnolia" twice. And having been
forced to think recently about death, on balance, I have come to realize
that it is good people stop to stare at traffic accidents. There is
always room for doubt -- it is easy to say possibly people are motivated
by concern, that is their reason for taking interest. There is no room
for such good intentions when traffic flows crisply past accidents.
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