If That’s All Paris Were

2016
Photograph modified with Microsoft Paint.

A hippy would ask: “Can you dig it?,” however moronic that might sound—today, around town, layered in concrete, where there’s no ground—and no grounds for such optimism. The Undisputed Truth was the name of some folk-pop group, and ridiculously so. Music festivals. Sanitation snafus. What happens on stage when the unquestionable arises—before the debate to be had? Stare-downs and responses falling on deaf ears, manifestations of youthful unrest, insults, nut groups taken to their logical conclusion. I go into these punk rockers’ home and what do I see? Red paint, a baby doll hanging over the coffee table with a knife through its head, sick like their lyrics, uninspired but plenty of juice, hear’em out, the righteous indignation of youth. Off your rocker—on account of your gut feeling where you get off like that. Results?—none of that Weezer. The poor bastards are more delirious than serious.

“Intersectionality”, another great concept from the world of ideas, that is to say, academia. Definition: a combination of byways to encourage human trafficking, designed for accusations without a presumption of innocence, for human accidents, and to pile on.

A sign-of-the-cross, Hail Mary street crossing for a gathering place—or for a hecatomb?, the intersection of discontent buttressed off for the “occasion”—at whose behest? Like we have a choice in the matter, of nobody’s doing, like a vacant lot with a porta potty would ever do. But not like a roundabout where everyone would come around as it were rather than fly off the handle if not for…some newly acquired counter-revolutionary, centrifugal force; while, unlike something round, a square would connote boredom rather than stability, as in a bore, with whom you’re stuck in a car for the long haul, as opposed to the community square where there’s more than one of you in your head—so hopped up you are in your search for control. What a circus. Whatever for, and wherever these buttresses are that you see, it’s not a ‘convivial affair’, though this is just a detail. Or rather, this is a vital landmark—anything to help get your bearings straight. What’s more is that it’s not a place for that, for our personal comfort, because of what I mean by that.

One can—someone with a conservative temperament, someone sedated in social situations of such explosive proportions, a republican (there, I said it)—only do so much for drug traffickers, after which, they should get run over—as with the Long March as part of larger, necessary, population-management measures. Consider the reasons of those concerned—for this all out, all night, music fest turned drug bust: well there are none. And why here?, urban, overdone, paved as it is, with choking exhaust but nothing to smoke—rather than tucked away in a field, with plenty of grass that the authorities disregard. So drug-induced high or so chemically-imbalanced low—just say no! If you don’t take a stand, you’re only kicking the can down the road. So which is it? Being a rich, white, urban, hippy, to which you’re obliged to take a knee? Or a BLM master beater? Indeed, for such very poor life choices, it would be a shame to party. It would even be irresponsible!

As in a song…reminds me of R. L. Burnside’s brutal blues song “It’s Bad You Know.” Understand that no one’s ever gonna know—except perhaps the futurist showman Ray Kurzweil, who, upon seeing the singularity, will certainly sing: “It’s better now you know.” All the best to all those at work on the next new thing, but under the circumstances of the fitfull “occasion” at hand, this is as much understanding as I can muster up.