Unfiltered From the Heart, From Me To You

The Human Condition. What the fuck does that even mean? I don't know. What I think it means goes something like, the experience of being human...and what makes up that experience.

I've been reading a lot of David Foster Wallace and aside from his phenomenal prowess as a writer - no one puts together a sentence quite like he does - he manages to relate anything he writes about to something that is deeply important about humanity; boiling everything down to the most essential question at the heart of the matter at hand and how it all relates to what it means to be a person living on planet Earth, commenting on...the Human Condition. Why am I here? What is my purpose? Etc.

Now, I don't really feel the need to try and answer any of those questions - that would be fucking stupid cuz, you know, nobody can answer them, really - I just wanted to say that any artist or person that can make one think about these kinds of things is doing something right. They're getting to the important stuff.

Lately, I've been in awe of Wallace for doing it so well. He turns a piece of reportage on John McCain's 2000 Presidential campaign into an essay about what it means to believe in something; what it means to be part of something; the implications of investing in heroes in the 20th and 21st centuries. He does this while writing informatively about his subject, but at the end of the day you can tell that he is interested more in probing the depths of the human soul and psyche and adressing questions of morality and spirituality.

In general, you have to give it up for artists who can do this. And, I think, you have to question "artists" who don't do this. What's it all for? Wallace writes about Dostoevsky, who, apparently, cared very much about the things that I have been mentioning in the paragraphs above. Wallace goes on to say that if "serious" writers today would write with as much straight forward passion and unwavering commitment and belief about morality and spirituality - i.e. the deep questions, et al. - they would be branded as sentimentalists and, what Wallace considers the insult of all insults in today's day and age, these writers would be "laughed out of town".

I thought about Wallace's claim and agreed, perhaps not entirely, but enough for me to crave...people who wear their hearts on their sleeves a bit more. People who are unafraid to be passionate and don't hide it within layers of meaning and all of the trends that are associated with literature since Ulysses, more or less. Modernism, postmodernism; anything that keeps true moral and spiritual assaults and commentary hidden between and below stylistic bru-ha-ha, cloaking the issues that matter most under a veil of hippness, technical hi-jinks, holier than thou parody and satire - basically all the bullshit that can get between what truly matters most and the reader/viewer/listener/etc.

But there's plenty out there that still hits directly! To be fair, I read a lot, but I don't have the grasp on the current contemporary literary canon to comment accurately and intelligently about it. To be fair, I like a lot of movies that come out and I feel like they're all doing their best to entertain while hitting viewers in the heart and head. As far as music goes, maybe it's because I am pretty much on top of a lot of the new music that's coming out and have a good grasp on the scene as a whole, but I think this tendency of being overly clever and not just coming out and saying it has been hurting music a little bit.

But I don't have any specific axe to grind here. I can't name too many specific books/movies/albums that are afraid of being direct and passionate about morality and spirituality, life and death, love and hate; afraid of addressing these issues openly because they'll be interpreted as sentimentality. But it's a fear of mine, because I do feel that I see it - maybe just in some crazy abstraction, but I feel, within me, that it's happening. People are too hip and jaded and afraid of coming off as any number of uncomplimentary things to be truly open, in many cases.

I hope that people always realize that it is valuable to write openly about what truly matters. To address The Human Condition. To understand that there is a difference between sentimentality and truly caring and wanting everyone to think about what matters to you or to humanity in general. This post itself makes me feel a tad embarrassed because I'm trying to address the issue directly, without being self-conscious about its openness.

What it comes down to for me is that I love artists that put everything on the line in order to get an emotion or an idea across. To take what one feels in their heart and turn it into a song without changing it, without messing with it. It's hard because then you're exposed and vulnerable. It's your heart and soul out there and people will know it. But that's what makes the best shit. Unfiltered from the heart, directly from me to you. Hopefully, not only will it say something about you, but it will resonate with everyone because it is the truth, it's how you feel, and if one communicates directly, from the heart, it will inform us all on the human condition in some way.