The Smiling Robins
by Vic Neptune
As war looms between the United States and Iran, I feel a sense of inadequacy when writing about anything; yet, the need to express myself pressurizes in my mind, leaving me feeling like a construction worker who forgot his tools. Big events can rob us of a sense of the importance of continuing to concentrate on small things in our lives. The “stop and smell the flowers” routine still applies in the midst of chaos, personal and extra-personal. The world’s current state, with its wreckage and pain and explosions, could reflect the interiors of some minds, those nation sculptors and nation destroyers who always receive attention on news programs while the vast majority of ordinary people have to live with the results of the bigwigs’ ambitions.
I spend time thinking about these matters to my detriment, but also to my advantage, because I would rather know at least a portion of what’s going on than not know anything of value about why the world is the way it is. Do I gain peace of mind from such exercises? Not usually, but as I work through my thoughts on, for instance, the impact of America’s twenty-three year long ongoing war against various countries, as our government supposedly punishes the world for 9/11, I can’t help believing “we’re on the wrong path,” as the popular saying in polls has it.
John Cassavetes, actor and director of some great films like The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Faces, and A Woman Under the Influence, said of the majority of classic Hollywood films, “Who are these smiling idiots?” A reaction to the happy endings in Hollywood movies, this remark reflected Cassavetes’ viewpoint that American films tended to avoid the darker side of things; that a lot of people are deeply unhappy, stuck in jobs they hate, stuck in traffic,
lacking communication with their significant others and their children. These conditions, exacerbated by economic circumstances, existed in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s, when Cassavetes was acting in and later directing films. These conditions exist now, but more so. In spite of what the President claims, the economy actually sucks. For the rich, it’s fine--they exist in their own illusions. As I watch YouTube on my TV, the only audiovisual entertainment outlet I have apart from DVDs, I see a mass of advertisements, political ads, ads for pharmaceuticals with outlandish names. I see, too, smiling happy people and I ask, “Who are these happy idiots?”
In TV ads everything is fine, or it’s simplistic, as with political ads. A fellow student coworker in college a long time ago told me I thought about things way too much. She said, “You exhaust me.” She meant it without expressing rancor, but her perspective, I think, was more about focusing on the small things of life. My intellectual life has been the seeking of a balance between the Flower Sermon of the Buddha (wherein he didn’t speak, but held up a flower) and delving into the nitty gritty of a large variety of subjects. It just so happens that when things get dicey on the world stage, I think about that to my detriment, as I mentioned before, because I can only inform others about what I know. No world leader wants to hear what I have to say about anything, but that’s fine. I prefer to stay away from people who are drawn to power. I suppose I’d rather study them, devoting as much attention to that as to when I got up early this morning, went outside, and listened to the robins sing.
Vic Neptune writes, makes movies (YouTube Channel John Berner), collages, paintings. Moves made as Rhombus. Film criticism based on thousands of movies of all eras seen. Strong interest in literature: Shakespeare, Thomas Mann, Jack London, Robert . Howard, Joan Didion, Philip K. Dick, and many others. History and religion other interests also. Favorite filmmakers: Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasonlini, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Federico Fellini. Life without art is art without life.
