Blog Magog


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9.8.05

Live Fish 

There has never been a Subterraneans AGM. We've never kept books, filed receipts or taken minutes. I have never understood the point of bank statements. A monthly reminder of the one thing no one needs any reminding of, namely their total lack of funds. Life is far too short for the very concept of such things. If we actually did have enough munny for it not to be a problem, why the hell would we care? I don't need a piece of paper to tell me when I'm broke, there are plenty of other tell-tale signs, such as my inability to buy stuff. Staring at half a dozen pages of recent transactions ain't going to alter the maths, is it?

When I began my musical "career", in the late nineteenth century or whenever it was, I was surrounded by a peer group, people craving the same, an escape, a different kind of life. Most of them just gave up, some of them died, a lot of them went insane, others turned to drink and drugs and never turned back, one or two joined strange religious cults, and a few just plain disappeared. I myself have done all of these things to a greater or lesser degree, apart from the strange religious cult thing, which I haven't, yet. But I never found any of them particularly satisfying. Superficially, they may seem like an easy option compared to the artist's life, but in fact they are mind numbingly difficult for a truly creative person. When there's a song or a poem to write, or whatever, there is simply no way not to write it without gambling with one's eternal soul (or agnostic equivalent), or so it feels to me. The search for the words that just might make sense of one's emotional machinations is more than merely important, it is a matter of life and death for those inside the creative whirlpool. Life without art and/or love (they are practically the same thing after all) is, to me, a black hole, an escalator to nowhere. If nowhere is where you want to go, stand still and you will surely arrive. But remember that the attainable is a dangerous thing. What does one do when one completes the journey? Perhaps one sits down and reads one's bank statements, the story of a life told in absolute chronological tedium, one's very own Doomsday Book, ghost-written by an electronic abacus, each closing balance a cliff-hanger that anticipates the next month's financial adventures.

Live fish always swim against the current. That is how they feed. Only dead ones go with the flow. There is a beast at the core of our nature. The need to create is primal. Love, art, procreation, the dynamic is one and the same. Obey your inner beast or he'll eat you.





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