I have been listening to this song, “Hate and Heartache” by Mouth of the Architect, on repeat for a little while, and the band most of the day. Today, I felt a closer affinity with the intro sample from the movie Network:
The song takes only part of this much longer speech, but the whole thing is worth posting. I suggest watching the video, but here is the part used for the song:
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter.
Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.
We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.
We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy.
It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad!
Because of the song, I watched Network a long time ago. Whenever this song comes on, I hear the intro and I’m hit again with that same old shock of sincerity and pertinence, sometimes more than others. But it’s always struck me as a starting point for the only hope we now have left: getting mad about the way things are; accepting things are so far from most of our ideals and letting that fact live with us while it changes us.
The song itself echoes the reality that we don’t allow that to happen:
We all lie
To ourselves
It never changes a thing
We all lie to ourselves
Never changing
Never changing
A thing
Galvanized by such a plain and scalding assessment, I’ve decided to quit tumblr. I won’t delete it, I’ve got a lot here that I’d like to look through from my past. It has been a journal of sorts and I’ve learned and grown a lot from what I’ve seen and read here. But as I noted recently, I’ve been poisoned by so much; I can’t go a day without certain thoughts or recollections of things I’ve done that I’ve absolutely hated. I’ve spent plenty of days lying to myself, never changing anything about myself; angry with other sfor never changing either, which then makes me think none of us are really capable of change.
Some of my sins continue right on up to this day. I log on to Tumblr and get plenty of unexpected doses of one of the poisons I’ve swallowed. I remember a posting in a Catholic group on Facebook where yoga pants at Mass were being criticized, and some women said that women were being blamed for problems men have. I’ve heard that argument before but then, coming from Catholic women, it hurt in a new way. It’s been part of an awakening I’ve had that really, Catholics, especially Catholic women, are not in reality all that different; they’re not perfectly humble and kind; they’re just as capable of obstinately refusing to hear out a man as many feminists.
I’ve always been more sensitive to whatever shit a woman is saying than a man; women mean much more to me. That’s also something I need to work on, but in this case specifically, the idea that a woman doesn’t have any responsibility to help a man focus on her soul, mind, and heart instead of her body -- that’s the equivalent to saying “figure it out yourself” which is as good a way of saying “you’re on your own” as “fuck you.”
I’ve seen some of that here as well. It’s painful to know that’s what women are thinking. The war between the sexes has never been like this. Sure, it’s always been, but I can’t see it ever being so convoluted and mixed up with false ideas about union and fairness. Through the fog of the current admixture of praises of freedom and cries of it’s very abandonment, any man who genuinely wants to be good to a woman and respect her is sure to have a hard time finding a woman to receive and return that respect. And any man who has made as many mistakes as I have probably feels it isn’t worth the effort. Or perhaps that is just me.
If it is, then I need to reduce the likelihood I’ll see anything provoking me to certain thoughts. And just about everything these days leads to that. All the happy posts about women expectantly awaiting their perfect man remind me just of how much of one I’m not; all the cheerful posts about whatever is going on in the world or whatever new meme is going around is funny some of the time, but to see so much of it just reminds me that I can’t really enjoy that kind of thing the way I used to, when I really thought laughter and joy were worthy exits. All the nice pictures of couples or talk about relationships reminds me of high school and watching others enjoy themselves since then. Surely this is what kept men and women sane, as well as what keeps them sane now: to limit how much they witness what ails hope, what suffocates their character. I need not buy Satan’s lie that I have no character left, that he’s successfully drowned it in so many years of temptation.
If any of us have something to preserve, I think some version of this is necessary. Many of the Catholics I know do such a thing, but in the wrong way in my opinion. They embrace their faith and also choose to focus on beauty, goodness, and truth. True indeed we can be converted by such things, but seeing nothing beside, one misses the path to those things. Consequently, they think converting non-Catholics is just about being a certain way, rather than understanding certain things. Certain things, that is, besides the Faith itself.
I need to reduce the likelihood that I’ll see as much of the bullshit going on in the world that I have to see on a daily basis going through Tumblr or Facebook. I’ve quit both on my phone for Lent and that has also motivated me towards this decision. I have argued before that anger can be virtuous. But if it’s dulled by an incessant gaze at the evil in the world, it’s no good. It cripples. A man whose soul has been crippled by cynicism and pessimism can’t carry his cross. I won’t close myself off to the things I’ve found the darkest shade of Light in, I won’t ignore all the evil in the world that there is. But I will manage my own reception of it.
I want to have a willing, dutiful anger on reserve, but also better my expression of it. That means I will have to work towards other projects I’ve had floating in my head lately -- projects that will force me to put more effort into the way I think about myself and the world. Right now, with my current gaze forward, that will mean posting more on my wordpress, trying my hand at writing a script, and writing an album. (Not to mention becoming a man of humility and authenticity; not one mimicking others all the time.) I can’t say which of these I’ll finish but I’ve always thought that the best way to become a better person is to work through failures at doing so. I’ve had to spend so much of my life reminding myself that. In Springsteen’s words, “I didn’t think there’d be so many steps I’d have to learn on my own.” A lot of the time, it’s felt like I was teaching myself. That’s also a reason the aforementioned defenses for lewd pictures and clothing wounded me the way they did. But that’s where I’m at right now. Self-control has never been a strength. I hope this can a step in the right direction, even if I’m learning and taking it on my won, propelled solely by prayer, wanting to be a good husband some day, and the hope that hope really isn’t a waste.
If anyone wants to add me on Facebook, message me or reply to this post and I’ll add you. If you prefer email, know that I don’t check it often enough, but am still willing to share it. And if you just want my wordpress, here it is: https://truazzconservative.wordpress.com/
I’ll end with the lyrics from the Mouth of Architect song that have always moved me most, more than any of their other lyrics:
The trials of hate and heartache
A reminder of my mistakes
Here’s to all of our mistakes and the hope that we may learn from them.
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