Yesterday, a friend asked me about our cable/phone/TV services. He’s in the process of moving and making all these “choices.” My answer ran to four paragraphs and described the complex array of factors that forces us to choose three different purveyors of such services—our cell service was determined by a requirement for iPhones; that same provider was unable to guarantee us high-speed internet at home, which we feel we have to have to make our work (which we often do at home) more efficient; we chose yet another provider for TV because of supposed more variety and higher quality signal, though the damn thing goes off every time it rains. And it rains a lot in Central Florida.
I told my friend that I consider these overwhelmingly complicated “choices” a symptom of a right-wing, ultra-capitalist conspiracy to keep us all from doing things like writing poetry and thinking about the deeper meaning of life. We are so trapped in all these material goods and services that there’s really little time for anything else.
Today, I participated in yet another part of this—the phenomenon of the big box store. We recently had our guest bathroom repainted, and so we are decorating. We went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, as well as Macy’s and Dillard’s. Such outings exhaust me and make me wonder what my priorities are. Most of these stores seem to me filled with so much garbage, ready to be consumed in its trendy moment and then discarded.
Yet, I do want to make my world beautiful. I need to start making more things beyond words again, or at least thinking about more ways to incorporate beauty than just by buying stuff. I think frequently about societies in which people work less and spend more time on their families and friends and the day-to-day arts that bring beauty into our lives—gardening, cooking, singing, playing music, drawing, arranging our homes, grooming ourselves, even the art of lovely kisses.
At any rate, in the car driving to the mall, we also heard the Talking Heads, performing their wonderful classic 1980 song, “Once in a Lifetime.” Since the song speaks to our tendency to go through life without paying full attention to where we are and the choices we are making, I thought I would share it today. It helps, David Byrne seems to know all too well, to have a sense of humor and an understanding that all humans struggle with the swift passage of time and occasional confusion about our lives. David Byrne is certainly an individualist, someone not packaged beyond recognition of his individuality, and I wish that more of us managed to remain unpackaged that way. So many forces in the work world tend to turn us into conformists. So, on Labor Day, it’s good to remember that our money, our house, our car, our trophy wife, our career—none of these things define who we are. It’s much more ineffable than all that.
Lisa Roney
Joyous Crybaby 