Make Another Day

This week, we went to see My Name is Albert Ayler, a documentary about the titular avant-garde jazz saxophonist. The thing I was most stuck by was Ayler’s insistence that he was a figure who was not to be appreciated in his time. In his mind, his was a visionary sound, a sound that may be misunderstood, derided, but at its core represented a pure and complete vision, a true and authentic voice. Are there people who walk among us now whose vision and voice are obscured by convention?

That is a truly depressing thought. Living each day, knowing that the things you do will never, could never be appreciated. What would be the motivation for continuing to do the work you feel like you’re meant to do?  Especially when you’re convinced it’s all for a future that you won’t belong to.

In my own life (though I make no claims that the things I’m doing will ever make a difference, now, or long after I’m gone), there’s work I want to do, and it all feels hopeless. How then, do the truly gifted, how do they keep going? How has this world not swallowed them, engulfed them in all the “can’t”s, “won’t”s, “impossible”s. Carried them away to wherever it is that dreamers are forced to go when everything around them tells them that dreamers aren’t welcome here.  I want them to teach me how to survive.

I have a book called “The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born”, and I used to believe that the title was a truism;  that somewhere there was a future waiting, and the ones who were going to figure it all out just hadn’t arrived yet.  But lately, I just don’t think it’s true. The beautiful ones are here, among us, and somehow they have figured out how to navigate this hostile world. They have figured out how to keep doing work that enriches, complicates, challenges, all of us.  Sometimes the world just doesn’t know what to do with all that beauty.

“And our fellow citizens have got to understand that by loving a neighbor like you’d like to be loved yourself, by reaching out to someone who hurts, by just simply living a life of kindness and compassion, you can make America a better place and fulfill the dream of Martin Luther King.”

-George W Bush

“It’s nice to be nice, to the nice.”

-Major Frank Burns

I can’t believe that it took me so long, or that this was the stimulus needed, but I finally figured it out. We elected Frank Burns president.

Someone found our little corner of the internet by searching “how to make everyone like me”. I will now offer a bit of advice:

You can’t. Please, for your sake, and the sake of every person you’ll ever meet ever, don’t even try. Everyone won’t like you, and if you attempt to be the type of person who wants to make everyone like him/her, you’ll just end up being the kind of person that no one likes.

You’ll be the person with no definable personality. The person whose ideas and beliefs change on a whim. You’ll be the person without a opinion (unless, of course, someone else shares an opinion you can co-sign first). You’ll be the person without a voice, and why in the hell would you want to be that person?

Now, there’s a chance that this person is looking for advice on how to make everyone like him/her in the “how can I make every person the same as me” vein. If that’s the case, well, what can I say, you probably won’t be liked much then either, only this time it will be because you’re an insufferable ass.