Whatever Gets You Through the Night is OK With Me
Thursday, May 12, 2022
To be perfectly honest with you, I’m bored with drinking. I had it up to my chin with the drinking culture. I went to a couple of meetings that are held at various churches, community halls, and even at bars before opening time, and I am even bored with these people as well. I’m bored with the subject matter of drinking or not drinking or even thinking about drinking. What I need to do is go to a meeting to fight my inner boredom.
It’s funny how people can remember the date and even the weather when they had their last drink. As for myself, who barely even looked at a watch or a calendar, all I remember was having a bottle of red while reading Edward Lear and listening to Burt Bacharach’s “Make It Easy On Yourself” album. The funny thing is when I had my third glass of wine; I started to realize that I never really liked Burt’s music. His melodies brought me up due to the AM radio of my youth, but I never really took his work at heart. So me sitting there, drinking the mid-price bottle of wine, it struck me that I needed to give up listening to John Cage’s New York City pal, Burt, and focus more on The Small Faces, who, by its very nature, spoke to me as a man more than Burt. Nevertheless, as a work of literature, I always enjoyed reading “The Big Book. ”
The writing is so-so, but what it says is quite fascinating about the human condition. The theory of The Higher Power turns some people off, but I, on the other hand, don’t necessarily see it as a black-and-white issue. I think the need is to be part of a family. What, who, or where is not that important, but the need to be part of something bigger than you is a very humanistic need, and whether it is a religion, the AA, a cult, or even a fan club for an artist - it is the need to belong and be part of something. Most, if not all, humans need to be part of some version of a family. I, on the other hand, find those types of relationships boring.
Due to my internal boredom, I have always been attracted to Leslie Charteris’ “The Saint,” also known as Simon Templar. Both the TV series starring Roger Moore and the countless novels that I usually picked up used in various parts of the world. Mostly in garage sales and swap-meets for some odd reason. Nevertheless, I was attracted to Templar’s need for adventure. On one end, he is or was regarded as a Robin Hood figure, or in a very distant way, fighting for the good guys in the world. But what I sense in him is that he was bored, just like me, and was dissatisfied with the idea of being part of any grouping or family. Just hearing the main TV theme of the series gets my heart pumping. Also, strangely enough, watching “The Saint,” I never feel compelled to have a drink, whereas in most cases, while watching TV, I love to drink. Oddly I have no memory of the plots, either in the novels or show, but I recall the character, and I thought if somehow I could be such a person as Simon Templar, the world would be sane and proper by my standards. So, in a nutshell, the two most influential men in my life are probably Leslie Charteris and Edward Lear. Lear, because he had the talent to make up nonsense words, and if nothing else in this world, if I need to be part of a larger grouping or family, then I rather it be something that deals with the word nonsense.
I am also strongly attracted to the works of Joseph Beuys, but primarily due to that he was a pilot in World War ll and was shot down on the Crimson Front. He asserted that he was kept alive by the Tatar tribesmen who had his body wrapped in animal fat and felt, which eventually nursed him back to health. Animal fat and felt are the two main items in his artwork that were consistent till his death in 1986. Some say that he made up this story, but if he believed it, then I’m ok with it. I can’t bother with denying or being upset with someone’s vision of how they cope with this world. As Frank Sinatra once said, “whatever gets you through the night is OK with me. ”