Opiates

I once tweeted a suspicion that feels, in its intuitive correct-soundingness, awfully grim: to the extent that something is a distraction, is it also popular? New or old; viewable, listenable, edible, touchable or snortable; "moral" or "immoral"; corporal or ephemeral — if it yanks our attention away from life itself, it's probably more widely and enthusiastically used than it otherwise would have been. I've come to cluster all these thing under the heading of "opiates," making periodic good-faith effort to steer clear of them.

What, specifically, counts as an opiate? Well, opiates, to start: your pills, your powders, your smokables, your drinkables. But also candy. Video games. Viral videos. Value meals. Taco Bell. Self-Googling. Random Wikipedia walks. Cat photos, LOL and otherwise. Rom-coms. CSI. Shiny gadgetry. Inbox reloads. Flash games. Chatroulette. Compulsive skimming. Social media. (Hell, more of the internet than I want to admit.) Shopping. Masturbation of either the intellectual or "classic" variety. Blockbusters. Ironic tees. Chocolate croissants. Trashy novels. Trashy magazines. Self-aware commercials. Opinion columns. Morning zoos. Celebrity gossip. Regular gossip. Office politics. Politics. Religion (re: "the masses"). Neurotic relationship engineering. Ironic arena rock. The "stupid, but fun!" in all its forms. Snacks. Spectacles. Fantasies. "Entertainment." Daydreams. Escapism. Cultural detritus. Bacon.

It sounds as if I'm calling moralism, but I'm really the last person to do that. Nor, I should add, do I claim not to partake of these opiates my own self. What grips me with increasing tightness is the simple fear that they do what they're meant to. Opiates dull pain. Lacking companionship, social, sexual or otherwise? Firing up 4chan ought to take your mind off it. Boring, onerous job to do? A nice chocolate-chip muffin ought to take your mind off it. Directionless life? Check e-mail; check Facebook; check Twitter; check Foursquare (can you "check" Foursquare?); that ought to take your mind off it. Caught a glimpse of the abyss? Buying that funny shirt ought to take your mind off it. But to the extent that I don't feel pain, I'm not going to address its underlying cause.

One of the main themes to emerge in my twenties so far is a crushing fear of deluding, entertaining, dreaming or otherwise distracting myself to the point where I wake up, 70 years old, having created nothing: "OH SHI-" I thus have an increasingly difficult time abiding opiates in my own life. This is especially true in the case of art. Much of the problem's surface area came to light when I interviewed Reality Hunger author David Shields (transcript):

Could we break artworks, irrespective of form — books, films, anything — into two categories: those that distract us from life, those that turn us away from life, and those that focus us on it, those that turn us toward life?

I think that's not bad. I quoted that Samuel Johnson earlier, which goes pretty close to what you're saying, Colin. The Samuel Johnson line was, "A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it." That's a pretty close approximation of what you said, unless I'm mishearing you or misreading the Samuel Johnson.

That sounds similar to me. I'm glad I have a forebear as illustrious as that.

Exactly. I think that's pretty good. You can see how people would push back against what I'm saying, or what you're saying, or what Samuel Johnson's saying, which is basically that I'm seeming to ask for something that's too naked, too raw, too unfiltered. Their whole point is, "Why couldn't a story, told well, explore something very deep about life through implication?" Of course, for many readers it can and does. I'm just trying to argue a minority opinion: for me, given how simulated and artificial and mediated our culture is, I find for myself and for many of my fellow travelers, that more mediation, more dream world, more bubble wrap — it just doesn't get me anywhere. Kafka said, "A book should be the axe to break the frozen sea within us."

But isn't this true not just for art, but for stuff in general? Are we not always in a position to choose between that which distracts us from from life, often in a painkilling fashion, and that which focuses us on it, with much more complex effects? The more time passes — and yes, I know how young I am, but we've none of us got much time on Earth — the less of it I feel I can afford to burn away under cultural anesthetic. (What kind of art, after all, is an-esthetic?) The problem, of course, is how shockingly available, and in how countlessly many forms, anesthetic turns out to be.

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I've come to cluster all these thing under the heading of "opiates," making periodic good-faith effort to steer clear of them.