Switch It On

This blog don't carry no gamblers, this blog
This blog don't carry no gamblers, this blog
This blog don't carry no gamblers,
No green tacos, no egg scramblers,
This blog don't carry no gamblers, this blog

When I was a teenager, dreary and depressed and more pretentious than I am right now, I wrote a dreadful poem. It went something like:

The electric opium machine,
I turn it on, it turns me on.
Was sick but it got well.

I can't recall the fucker now. Who remembers their own adolescent poems almost 30+ years later?

When I wrote those blazing lines it was the 1970s. I was writing about the all-powerful, mind-controlling television set, with its overwhelming SEVEN channels, most of which showed old movies or sitcom reruns for half of their broadcast time.  Yes, they stole our minds with only that feeble artillery.

Recently that poem came back to me. Amazingly I've lived long enough to see the world change two or three times over, yet I still have more than a decade before I'm eligible for social security.

So now, why add to the ruin of America, the destruction of the world as we knew it? Who wants to read another blog (that's sooo 2000s), especially one with no great insight and no clear purpose (hey why should I buck a trend?)?

Well.

I also wrote, as a lad, a story which I never finished. It was going to be a science fiction story about a man, an astronaut, trapped on a spaceship that has gone so far out into the solar system he has no hope of ever getting back to Earth and no possibility of ever being found. The ship has enough food for him to live for years. There is nothing he can do except write - keep a diary, write stories, poems, memories, whatever. The idea was to ask the question - I was asking myself, really - if you knew no one would ever see the fruits of your labor, writing, painting, composing - would you still do it? Would you still want to create something knowing that this communication would never be communicated to anyone ever?

All these years later I know the answer is, obviously, yes. Aside from the obvious what'the'hell'else'would'you'do'with'your'time factor, the truth is that the great pleasure of creating is in the act itself. Don't get me wrong - completion only comes with someone receiving the creation. But process of creating the work, however exasperating it can be, is basically a compulsion. Artists may create for any number of reasons - to get girls is usually high on the list. But as an artist, or creator, matures they get twitchy when they go too long without doing their work. It's not even a matter of passion - though passion can never be overrated. But really, it's a habit, a ritual, a craving, an addiction. A need.

So today I am answering my original question. I've created enough unreleased work - words and music mostly - without much hope of getting it back to Mother Earth to complete the communication circuit. And I continue to create/write/compose. What's the point?

The point is doing it. Just doing it.

So we begin our newest endeavor. Another exercise in futility. I'll write about whatever  ideas or notions or musings come to me on a, possibly, regular basis. Or not. The Electric Opium Machine has many channels. If boredom comes there will be another channel to switch to - or another online alternative.

And if all else fails to take hold, there's always porn.