burnout mentality
some torn notes at 12:46am July 16, 2017 Paul Woods died rocketing off a motorcycle on the highway, and then the next morning, the sun rose. I called half a dozen or more old friends, and dedicated a morning to lighting these candles. The next hour I was burning up the interstate, where millions of cows die, whatever, daily.
I kept trying to hear the sound of Brian Jonestown Massacre and Dopesmoker–sounds Paul loved–as a call into an “Outsideness”, to no avail. And the sun rose the next morning over burnt out husks of Oakland. A mattress fire. A sun rose. Paul Woods bottle rocketed out into a future, bodies heaving over bodies, water in water, washing, foaming, sudsing, cleansing blood of the High Seas of Pirate Plunder aka History. The “f’eh” with which one breaks a plate at a wedding and gets another. Some horrible disrespect we feel for the charismatic, beneficent, radiant, august, respected, hailed history of all of our ancestors bringing us to this point, Some horrible, sad lot the generations who lived for thousands of years as we mastered pottery, then ceramic, then iron working, then machine production, then global trade and labor exploitation, and finally, the plate arrives in your hand.
You’re at a wedding. The point is to break the plate. “f’eh” and you break it.
To accept burnout mentality means that, for you, this plate-breaking is a good and noble and honorable endorsement of all that has come before, and all of the consequences of our moment in it. The burnout mentality is a hope that even if all of it has been in vain, there is a fire. Somewhere on the bleeding, quivering seas of Pirate History–Some stench of corpserot like sea salt–Somewhere under that, you smell sulfur.
Burning out means you burn. You play your part in the whole affair, you’re blood, or you’re a pirate, or you’re Odyseus, tied to the mast, trying to hear the siren song without consequence, or you’re a motherfucking siren, luring Great Pirate Men to their deaths, or you’re a sail, or you’re on the bottom of the trireme, you hear nothing but the crack of the whip as you row. It’s not the siren’s call. The fire is the fact that somewhere in this damp, florid, overburdened, overwrought, certainly over-written, and over-written again metaphor for A Totality–somewhere there is a fire. The show will go on, and repeat, in swirls and doldrums. A sun will rise in some sky. Even in the noble ashes of our barbaric civilization, it will go on. Even after the end of the world, the Great Works of people climbing over themselves begin again, and it’s blood and shit and crawling and thriving and pride and joy and wonder and awe. The lights in the marquee will be replaced, the cigarette butts will be swept up, the sun will set and the marquee will light up again, with some new bulb. All the metaphor is nice and a fun exercise and I’m glad I did it. But what I mean is that the lightbulb in the marquee is not the point, but neither is the point external to that bulb–the point is the light.
Having a burnout mentality means you’re okay with the limitations of your life–you see the infinity of life itself.
Most people go their whole lives never knowing they’re on fire. Paul Woods lit the fact that I am on fire on fire, and made me want to light up others.
