"You Will Be Like God..." The Richard Hell Story

In my all-too-obvious attempt to understand my childhood, I have undertaken a study of exactly what happened in the ‘80s, musically. In order to do that, one must understand the prerequisites. In this particular case, the prerequisites involve what happened at a club called CBGB which is located in the Bowery in Manhattan. It was the locus of the American underground rock ‘n roll scene in the mid-to-late 1970s. Cutting their teeth at CBGB at that time were such icons as The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, Blondie, and Patti Smith.

There are many parts of that era that would interest a Mockingbird-oriented person and one of them is the career of a guy named Richard Hell. Hell was a fairly well-read fellow (and from an upper-middle class family as, ironically, many “punks” were). He was a forceful and uncompromising visionary who floated, unsatisfied, from Television to The Heartbreakers (no, not THOSE Heartbreakers) and, finally, to his band Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

One of his earliest songs is his most misunderstood. It is also his most interesting. It is called “Blank Generation” and it is mistakenly taken as an anthem for an uncaring and apathetic group of rock ‘n roll punks like “Pretty Vacant” by The Sex Pistols. Hell describes it differently, however:

“ That is the ultimate message of the New Wave: if you just amass the courage that is necessary, you can completely invent yourself. You can be your own hero, and once everybody is their own hero, then everybody is gonna be able to communicate with each other on a real basis rather than a hand-me-down set of societal standards."

Ugh. (Good tune, though) Blank Generation = Blank Slate or Blank Canvass. Here again, we have an advocacy of self-creation. Just another example in another place. By virtue of the right choices and considerable inner strength, the objective reason of the mind can create the self in any form it wishes. Ah, the glories of free agency. Always ever-present.

It does raise a couple of questions: Why was Hell consistently unable to get his vision across to the other free agents of his revolving door of bands? (To be fair, the Voidoids did for a time.) More importantly, why did Hell feel the need to obscenely self-medicate with some of the heaviest drugs around? (Listen to “Chinese Rocks”!) There seems to always be massive disconnect between the philosophy of free will/agency/identity-creation and a nagging, vociferous reality. We must sound like a broken record about this, but history dictates that it bears a fairly regular hearing.

Perhaps the best assault of reality into this mode of thinking came in Manchester, England during the same time period. Ian Curtis of Joy Division was at the pinnacle of what would soon prove to be the steep cliff of suicide. Nihilistic self-creation was the order of the day, ironically, in a declining United Kingdom with very little opportunity to advance oneself. It was in this atmosphere that Curtis wrote “Isolation”, the other side of the coin to free agency. It was shortly after this song was released that he hanged himself. Rather than liberation, self-creation and free agency lead to an impossible burden and deep defeat.



With this burden of free agency, it isn’t very satisfying to cast your faith on something else (we would argue for the Resurrected Lord) that isn’t true. But that is a different scope for a different piece. For now, we can stand with one half of Richard Hell (his unconscious, perhaps), Ian Curtis, and a host of others who find themselves crushed by the false idea of free agency.

The Who: Live in Houston, Texas 1975, Song Twenty-Two

"Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!! Meet the new boss!  Same as the old boss!"

The Velvet Underground Goes to California

From 1966 to 1969, a non sequitor invaded California which was, at that point, ground zero for the hippie movement. Being the locus of this particular subculture, the vibe of peace, love, and the one-ness of human existence was in the air as if it were a new idea. Since it was believed to be a new idea; other, more ancient insights into human capacity for love were not taken into account. This made the round hole especially apoplectic that such a square peg would force itself on it.

This non sequitor that invaded this place and state of mind was none other than the New York avant garde rock group The Velvet Underground. Already, the group had recorded an unheard-of song about matter-of-fact addiction called "Heroin" in which the protagonist both rationalizes his addiction and admits that death awaits him.  This was more than ten years before J.J. Cale would write his famous song "Cocaine".  "Venus in Furs" further assaulted the senses with its unflinching depiction of masochism. The Velvet Underground did not receive a happy hearing in California.



From From the Velvets to the Voidoids: A Pre-Punk History for a Post-Punk World:

Rather than indulging in the contemporary fascination with hallucinogenics, the Velvets were an amphetamine band – in every sense – loud, cynical, brutal and frenetic.  They were not interested in mellowing out an audience. (p. 22)

[Velvet guitarist] Sterling Morrison: When we finally made it to San Francisco we were attacked directly. They convinced themselves that we were there to destroy the innocence and purity of their music.  Ralph Gleason said that we were the urban evil of New York, and we were there to corrupt the simple beauty of the California music. (p. 23)

It is easy to say that hippie optimism about the human condition, just like contemporary Evangelical and secular optimism, is related to the optimism of the Enlightenment and Great Awakenings. That would be true. But it has always been so. It has been the default human position from the very beginning. No one wants to hear an accurate diagnosis. Even if it is true. Especially if it is true.

So, ministers of the Reformation continue diagnosing to plugged ears. People continue pretending like they didn’t hear the question and reacting angrily. At least until the wheels come off. Charles Manson and Altamont ’69 notwithstanding.

It is said that a minister can empty out a cocktail party with talk of original sin, total depravity, the bondage of the will and other pessimistic insights into human potential.  So, when it happens, just know that it has happened before; when the Velvet Underground emptied out Haight-Ashbury.

The Who: Live in Houston, Texas 1975, Song Twenty-One

Roadrunner!

The Whole Duty of Man, Part III

"And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:8-12)

I was at a Christmas party this past weekend and found myself in a conversation with a delightful Christian fellow who is working towards a PhD in Philosophy. His chosen subject is the philosophy of beauty and aesthetics. Now, I don't pretend to know anything about that, but the idea certainly sent my mind racing.

For me, beauty conjures up majestic images of mountain ranges, great oceans, forests, and natural wonders. Theologians sometimes use these as proofs for a loving God. Maybe that works for some but, to me, they are monuments to natural indifference (at best) or places hostile to life (at worst). I should know since I've been lost on a mountain in Montana and caught in a riptide in the Gulf of Mexico.

Upon further reflection, I affirm the insight that beauty lies in the thwarting of man's compulsion to assert and define himself (original sin and bondage). Or, more specifically, the cessation of man’s striving. That, and the creation of faith. And, more often than not, this thwarting and creation is ugly to human eyes. When eyes are taken off technically correct dogmas and formulae and set upon the ugliness of the creation of faith, there is nothing

left to do but mourn.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Matthew 5:4

This is the difference between a wild-eyed and desperate acquiescence or liberation that comes from death and the interruption in human history that we believed happened two thousand years ago. And we actually believe (as mentioned in Luke 2 above) that This Child arrived in a place and manner that was below human achievement and glory. The glory of God was manifested in a troublesome backwater that had no value in the progressive march to Man’s triumph.

And if this recession, an addiction, or anything else has destroyed what you and everyone else perceives as value; and you find yourself faced with either the Albert Camus/desperate freedom of death or the Luke 2 version, hear these words from Martin Luther:

"If Christ had arrived with trumpets and lain in a cradle of gold, his birth would have been a splendid affair. But it would not be a comfort to me. He was rather to lie in the lap of a poor maiden and be thought of little significance in the eyes of the world. Now I can come to him."

The Who: Live in Houston, Texas 1975, Song Twenty

Also one of my favorites...

The Whole Duty of Man, Part II

“…his only reasonable transaction in that commodity would have been to buy it for as little as he could possibly give, and sell it for as much as he could possibly get; it having been clearly ascertained by philosophers that in this is comprised the whole duty of man — not a part of man's duty, but the whole.”
- Charles Dickens from Hard Times

My last post and this one were inspired by the powerful words of Dickens above. Just a lonely portion of a paragraph in a book that no one thinks is his best. And it is a sledgehammer of a thought. Pure death. And death is exactly what I want to talk about in light of this Christmas season.

We left off discussing our uncontrollable need to present ourselves as valuable. When our output is either deemed as worthless or trumped by another's output, so goes our identity. The very definition of who we are dies. It is the inner drive of "justification by works" that most theologians tend to gloss over as they pant after ethics.

Death, it must be said, is quite the liberator. "What would you do if you were to die tomorrow?", is the common question. The implication is that the doer would be free of all constraints. All of a sudden, things get complex. After being condemned for murder and coming to terms with it, the protagonist of The Stranger thinks:

"With death so near, Mother must have felt like someone on the brink of freedom, ready to start life all over again. No one, no one in the world had any right to weep for her. And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe."
- Albert Camus from The Stranger

Tragic words. Death (either the physical, final sense or society's pronouncement of obsolescence) can liberate in many ways. It can be anywhere from going to see Mother for the last time to entering into the narrative of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. It's the great void or the "vanity of vanities". "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose," says Kris Kristofferson.

And this brings us to Christmas. Despite what you see outside and on the television, this holiday brings a profoundly grown-up message. But, since I don't want to short-circuit the insight of Dickens and Camus, it will have to wait for another post.