Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“That sounds like the goal of Burning Man — or a rave.”

“Well, I think we both know that rave culture is founded more on drugs that anything else — you'd have to have the intellect of a ten-year-old not to see that. Keens, on the other hand, wanted to pull away from the drug culture. He saw what it did to the summer of love. He had a lot of friends who ended up in jail or dead. And he was certainly familiar with people like the Burnouts, who had no real talent, no new ideas, and no vision of anything; they just thought that drugs, heroin in particular, would provide some kind of artistic catalyst — at least this is the excuse a lot of these people utilize in order to hide the deeper issues as to why they opt to pick up the needle as opposed to the fucking pen. The belief is obviously transparent. Some may say that it makes great players better, which I am more than reluctant to entertain, but heroin isn't more important to the cultivation of a sound than the hours each day that a true artist, someone like Coltrane and Evans or Burrows, must dedicate to practicing and writing. In other words, drug use and talent are not conditionally linked. It may be prevalent among the talented, but that has more to do with the Romantic idea of the artist as an outcast or a tortured soul in need of some means of escape, which, of course, breeds people who follow such an archetype. That's what I always found so funny about Camus' Meursault — he's not an artist, which, to me anyhow, indicates that the character is to be considered kind of an everyman. Everybody feels estranged. And what separates the artist from the common person is that the common person learns to deal with or ignore the feeling of estrangement. The artist, on the other hand, creates in order to vanquish his malaise. 'Why does an artist create?' so many have asked. Simple: He has to. If you don't understand this, then you're not an artist.

“You clearly get it. What do you do?”

“Well, I’m into journalism, obviously; but what I really love is music.”

“Bass, right?”

“Yup.”

“What kind?”

“You name it. I have an upright and two electrics: a vintage Rickenbacker, and this custom that my dad got for me on my eighteenth birthday. I can play the cello, too, but I've never owned one. Either way, I focus mostly on jazz — bop and fusion.”

“Who's your favorite bassist?”

“Well, Chris Wood is definitely up there, but I really love Eddie Gomez and Scott LaFaro. Ron Carter's a favorite, too.”

“Right on, man. You don't meet too many jazz cats anymore.” He pauses. “You don't use, I assume?”

“I used to smoke a lot of grass, but I've given that up. My only poison now is booze.”

“A pure soul. That's good to hear.”

“But about Keens. He wasn't one for drugs?”

“I don't know. It's not that he wanted to forbid drugs; he just didn't think they were necessary to induce the type of experience he wished to provide. If drugs helped some people get into the right state of mind, then he saw no reason to discourage users, but it’s not like he spiked everyone’s drink with acid to melt away the…well, whatever’s supposed to melt away when you take that shit.”

“I see. But I guess I'm still a little unclear as to what you mean by the right state of mind.”

“I don't mean to harp on LSD, but I’m sure you’re familiar with LSD, and that, back in the sixties, it was considered a wonder drug by both the CIA and the emerging counter-culture, especially Timothy O'Leary and his adherents. This is because it dissolves the social structure with which everyone has been indoctrinated, or at least allows the various symbols within the community to lose their meaning for a time. Furthermore, it very often introduced users to a spiritual dimension that had not previously been accessible.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Some people, however, are too stupid or immature to understand just how profound the experience really is. I mean, for every Pink Floyd you have ten thousand Monkees. This could be said of psilocybin, too. Regardless, these types cheapen it in a way — it ceases to be an experience and it becomes a high. Keens did not want people like this involved with the A-R-E. While it is certainly the case that some could have learned from the practices of the group, he thought it more likely that they would simply go through the motions without taking anything away from the experience. In other words, he didn't want dogmatists, and, perhaps more importantly, he didn't want the organization to be overrun with degenerates.

“Now I'm not saying that LSD was a big part of the experience. I'm just comparing the two: The A-R-E was not meant to be a frivolous organization, just as LSD should not be considered a frivolous drug.”

“Okay. But I still don't understand this experience he wanted to provide.”

“No one knows exactly. There's plenty of speculation, no doubt, but no one actually knows what his big goal was.”

“What about the JOKE?”

“Well, that's just what the goal was called. Some people within the A-R-E believe that the JOKE was his suicide — that there is no higher purpose; the JOKE is that people think there is.”

“So no one really knows why he did it?”

“Did what?”

“Why he committed suicide.”

“No. I mean, people claim to know, but there's no universal consensus on the matter. The more nihilistic sorts have their reasons, you know, they think it’s because there’s nothing else. But other fractions have their own conjectures. There are those who think that his death was made to look like a suicide. The supposed culprits behind the conspiracy range from the CIA to the KGB, the Mossad to the Vatican. Trying to even explain some of these theories is something of a cluster-fuck if you ask me. I don't really want to get into them.”

“That's fine.”

“Anyway, most people aren’t so quick to jump to such paranoid conclusions. Some think that it was caused by guilt. Others purport boredom. Still others claim that it is the ultimate expression of freedom, which, in a sense, is true, but it’s irrelevant. I’ve even heard that his death was made to look like a suicide because Keens was under the impression that he was the second coming of Christ. As you must surely know, suicide is a pretty serious sin. You can't resurrect yourself with that type of baggage — in fact, you can't even get out of the swamp around the walls of Dis, according to Dante. That's why some people portray Judas as a saint rather than one of the three doomed to spend eternity examining a Satanic palette — or, if you're Borges, as the real Son of God.”

“Okay, but I want to go back to the A-R-E. I still don't understand what it even is. I mean, Keens wanted to promote laughter and what sounds like some kind of venue out of one of Foucault’s wet dreams — I can understand that. But what does context have to do with anything?”

“Context is very important to people. They seek it because they need to wrap their heads around their place in the world. Think of Lacan's Big Other.”

“I’m not really familiar with Lacan.”

“Okay. Well, here’s a brief explanation. Think of the super-ego. Think of how it tells the ego, the self, what to do. Okay, now remove this individual superego, and place it in the social world as some ultimate authority figure. This is the Big Other. It issues objective imperatives, and it can be an institution, a person, or even a deity. The most important element, though, is its objective status. This means that people heed its ethical, spiritual, artistic, etcetera, commands without question. The heavy duty Marxists put their lives in the context of historical progress. They believe their actions will eventually bring about a future free of the injustices that are perpetuated by class antagonisms. Their Big Other is history; it, to them, is objective. Christians place this life in the context of trial that is meant to sort out the wicked and the virtuous, and that all people will be judged accordingly either in death or when Judgment Day comes. Their Big Other is the Holy Trinity; God is granted objectivity.