The Parable of the Seawall – Essaysis a collection of writings by Matt. Some essays were written very recently, others many years ago.Inthe course of organizing the themes within the book, questions came to my mind. The interview is a clarification of his thoughts and ideas. This is the second installment in a three part series. – Jane
JF:What is your definition of success? Who do you consider successful? Do you consider yourself a success?
What comes quickly to mind is that it is all in the eyes of the beholder. The entire series of questions rest on the values I own. If the values are those of society, which I recognize, for I swim daily in its broth, then even the word “success” is loaded with all kinds of valences.According to society, which is mercantile and capitalistic, I am not a success. If, however, I define myself according to my own personal and idiosyncratic values, I have a measure of self-worth, for I choose not to use the word “success,” as it smacks of Americana. If I say to myself how are you as an artist, I can say that I have achieved some measure of artistic intention and that pleases me very much.
An anecdote by Herbert Gold, novelist, comes to mind. Many years ago I read an interview in which he was stupidly asked how he compares himself to other contemporary writers (the interviewer trapped in his own morass).He tells of a time when much younger he had a small shabby city apartment which had flimsy walls so that one could hear into the other apartment. Gold tells the interviewer he would have sex with his girl at the time and often he might hear the other guy having sex with his girl as well. The story’s point, for Gold, that while he was enjoying himself he had no need to compare himself to the other man for he was too busy having a great moment with his lover.
To compare, like the Oscars, is to lose personal meaning.
I work hard, rationalize as we all do, to fend off conditioning and mind-polluting aspects of this culture which knead us into rating ourselves, that part of this culture which is atrocious. I work continually on fighting off that plague. I fall prey at times to comparison but not for long. I will go to my grave unrewarded for my writing. I will never be interviewed by Oprah. I am free of all that dross.
All of the above might be labeled a terrific psychological defense against not having been “successful.” I say fuck that. I know who I am.
The second part asks me who I think is successful. I can give names of artists, I imagine, but allow me to approach it differently.Again I bridle at “successful” as it connotes and denotes capitalism. In a non capitalistic way those of us who have deconditionedourselves, who see the malignant aspects of any culture, who share Krishnamurti’s observation that all societies are essentially corrupt,who live his or her life in freedom, who raise children to be free of their parents as well, who live within the curve of a question mark and refuse to live with answers are individuals who I admire.
The free human being asks exacting free questions. A free person is a threat to his society and will always be. As you look over the ages of history, often the individual is in conflict with his society. In the 20th century the state won out. In feudal Europe state and church won out. The individual soared during the Renaissance.Consider what the Renaissance gave us. Jefferson said it best, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal enmity against all tyranny over the mind of man.” Ah, the Enlightenment.
The third part of your question is hard to get at. I am not the writer I would like to be. And I don’t think I will become that. However, I dwell in the personal fat of my own ego and sense of self in that as a person, regardless of labels I have had –therapist, teacher, writer, parent and spouse – I have not been unnecessarily cruel or mean-spirited to my fellow man, although many do deserve that. I have been unfeeling, heartless to those around me, my family, in ways I deeply regret and in one case I cannot make recompense for my child is dead. I have been not been admirable or sensitive at moments in my parade to the cemetery, but I see most of all that, and rather than feel depressed about it, I truly roll it over in mind, almost on a daily basis, in the desire that I do no further damage and that I reconcile myself – if one ever can – to the insensitive man that I was. If you feel this is in some way “successful,” so be it. For me it is apparently the task of each one of us to consider who we are, what we have done in life as a human being and what we are about to do in the present and future.
Finally, a grace note – to be free of the illusions of religion, in my eyes, makes you a free individual, one who has accomplished much in life by divesting him or herself of this rigid societal plaque and therefore is a mature member of the human species.
JF:What is the purpose of writing The Parable of the Sea Wall, Essays? At the risk of sounding like a marketer, to who is it targeted? What do you hope readers will gain from reading it?
This present book of essays which includes and encompasses my thinking, feelings, cultural and psychological observations throughout the decades of my writing life is my summing up, the Hansel and Gretel trail of crumbs I have strewn about. When you and David Herrle suggested that I consider collecting my short essays and articles from my blog and other writings over the years, I thought the suggestion delightful for several reasons. I had to have my final say, for I see this book to be as a statement of who I am. I would like to fantasize that kith and kin in the years ahead might skim its pages and determine or decipher what I was saying or what I was croaking about at this and that age. I recall writing essays about my children and dating the time, day and year, for apparently I was then, I am now, concerned with keeping a record or establishing a tradition, it is the Jew in me, to foment memories. (see my essays on cameras; I record).
In about a year or less I may have in my hand a book that says as much as I can say about me. I am very eager to arrive at that, for it is consistent with who I am as an individual. Although we are all passing, ephemera, human lint on this planet in transit, it is a powerful and nourishing feeling for me to have paused long enough to have observed the passages of time and my place in it. Having shared this feeling with you, this now no longer private feeling, any question of pushing the book, marketing the book has no appeal to me, much like seltzer gone flat. I write not for you but for me, I write for dear ones and not the world out there. I don’t delude myself. Recognition is sweet but is only the gravy of “success.”
Gain? What is to be gained?When I read a book I don’t necessarily “gain” anything from it? I remember reading The Red and the Black by Stendahl. I was sixteen and didn’t understand much of it. However, I remember memorizing the definition of “parvenu,” as applied to the main character, Julien Sorel, and that word has stayed with me up to this paragraph.I learned a new word. I think books leave deposits, small and large, and very few transform our lives – other scribblers might strongly disagree. I believe that daily experience, living life is what make the difference (think Krishnamurti). Books are dead matter. If they produce ideas often these ideas become calcified and petrified into stone, such as religious works. If you like the book I am working on read it and put it away; if it serves as one worthy of discussion, so be it. I did not write the book for you to gain anything. I wrote the book for my own secondary gain, which is none of your business.
By the way, after a book is published the owner gives up all rights to his readership. I no longer own it, for it suffers from the virus of interpretation.
JF:You read the daily newspaper, keeping up with politics and world events.You have a degree and teaching experience in American history and yet I detect you are not terribly fond of the United States. Is that true?
In world history haven’t we suffered enough from that phenomenon we call Nationalism?I view myself born into a place and time by random happenstance; that I live in an organized and structured enclave called the United States of America in the Western Hemisphere. What ordains this place and this form of government as superior to all else?To argue, as Churchill did, that of all the systems of government this one is imperfect but is the best of the lot does not satisfy me at all. In the Sixties often car owners put decals on their windows showing a donkey rearing its hind legs with the injunction that if you don’t love America, get the hell out of it, a precursor to the Palinesque Rex. I also recall that a gas jockey got upset with my bumper sticker because it read “Question Authority.”
All societies are essentially corrupt (Krishnamurti) and I wholeheartedly subscribe to that. It gives me freedom, it allows me the capacity to scan with my inner crap detec tor all the illusions and delusions that this country experiences; it helps me to fend off the indoctrination and pollution that TV gives us. I identify with three things and in this order: I am a human being first; I am a Jew next; I am an American fourth or fifth. I have no third. I have more in common with men and women everywhere than I have with the countries they live in; I share the same biology and instinctual make-up. I am a man above all else. As a Jew I am a secular atheist but own an atavistic regard to the heritage I come from. I have gotten much more from that tradition than I have gotten from 300 years of Americana. It has a powerful “hold” on me which I wrestle with but do revel in. Fifty six centuries leave an impact! And the memories, particularly for the Jewish people, are important gifts to those who follow.
I will be critical of America, especially its culture, until I end my travail, for in many ways we are hypocrites, preaching nation-building and all the artifacts of Orwellian psycho-speak – “Mission Accomplished.” Whose mission? What mission? Why the connotation to the word “mission”? And so on. We are a country in decline, just look about yourself, with a remarkable tradition of know-nothingness throughout our political history. We are anti-intellectual, cannot abide creativity, abhor the learned in many aspects, an ambitious nation whose major contribution to the whole world, alas, has been marketing.To argue with this is to deny my very first statement about being a human being first, for this is my loyalty above all, the rest is politics and self-serving interests. Francis Bacon referred to the”idols” of the mind; America is one of them.
JF:You refused to pledge allegiance to the flag as a teacher. Why?
My mistake as a teacher, my naivete was to believe that teachers and administrators were serious about education. They were serious about indoctrination. Given that, in homeroom I’d ask students to rise and I did not allow speaking during the pledge, for there were those who took it seriously. I was subversive about my questioning authority (see “The Americanization of Emily”).Often the flag was above the blackboard in a device that held its stick and off to the left. Students, I noticed, would turn left and pledge. I recall at times that if there was no flag in the room they still assumed the position and pledged to the inanimate flag holder!
Once I asked a class to explore their response. I went to the flag and purposely examined it and found a label that said it was made in New Jersey, imagine Hecho en Mejico.I touched the flag in front of them as if examining a jacket in a men’s store, feeling it and so on. I asked them if they knew that there must be tens of thousands of these flags all over the state and nearby states. I asked them what made this flag so special that they rose and pledged to what clearly was an inanimate and dead thing.
To the point, I stressed that men die for other men, and if they died for symbols, how sad and how potent is conditioning. I choose not to die for a symbol. I’ll die for kith and kin. A flag is an idol of the mind, and to give it magical powers is as much as to see the picture of Jesus on a water tower in Iowa.
We are grossly conditioned as we grow up; society uses schools for that indoctrination; all religions do that, superbly well – Hannity, O’Reilly, Ingraham, Beck are really conditioned slaves.Although an old or traditional definition of psychotherapy is to make the unconscious conscious, consequently to deal with it, to observe its hold, as atherapist I found the greater part of my task was to help the client decondition him or herself. Jesus, they say, was a deprogrammer; good and fine and Paul reprogrammed right after that, the real founder of Christianity. Celibacy is conditioning and the consequence for women, to wit, is immense and ongoing.
In short, my stay on this planet is to be in insurrection, that is why I am an artist. The conditioned slobs rule. Am I conditioned”? You betcha. But I can pose the question…and you? …Are you even awake or just lint in your own pocket?
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