“My generation is too focused on easy stories: vituperative takedowns, lists of .gifs, and flippant blog posts,” writes seminarian N.C. Harrison.
I re-read The Colorado Kid by Stephen King a couple of nights ago. I found it, as I usually do with his work, generally thoughtful (well, maybe not Christine) and utterly immersive. I could feel the rough, old chairs in the Weekly Islander’s little office, taste the Coke that Stephanie drank while she listened to her friends tell her about the death of James Cogan, see and hear the steel grey waves crash against a rocky, ragged shore.
My peers, I have noticed, do not like things which cannot be dismissed with a meme, “taken down” by a vituperative blog post, elucidated by an “inspiring” video or reduced to a list of gifs and the flippant descriptions thereof.
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The old storyteller (the character Vincent Teague and not Mr. King, in this case) winds the tale with such skill that Steffi is drawn along with the force of a black hole’s gravitational pull and, along the way, comes up with a few answers that tell us more about her own mind and soul than the titular Colorado Kid himself. It’s because this is, you see, a story about story. Or, more properly, it’s about the difference between stories and things that are not stories.
A story, according to Mr. King–ar at least a story that sells newspapers, magazine and books–is one in which there is only one element of the unknown, one variable which keeps people asking, “What if?” even if they can come up with a perfectly good and satisfying answer to it on their own. “What if,” they might ask, “those lights really were visitors from another world or a secret government experiment and not just the reflections of a searchlight against a bank of clouds?” These stories make people feel comfortable because they are, on one level or another, in control of them. They allow a flirtation with the unknown but then, after suitable shivers have been granted, for the flirt to dance coyly back into the safely encircling arms of “reality.”
The only problem with this is that “reality” and what is real are two very different things in this case. The death of James Cogan, the Colorado Kid[1], is not one of those comfortable stories because there are too many variables to allow for comfortable categorization of the events. How did he get from Colorado the Moose-Look, Maine in such a short time? Why did he, a non-smoker, have a pack of cigarettes with one smoke taken? Where did the green jacket a waitress saw him in, when he was eating the fish and chips that made up his last meal, disappear to before his body was found by joggers? A satisfactory answer must be provided, or at least suggested, for each of these before the happening of two kids finding a dead man’s body on the beach can be upgraded from “damned if I know” to an actual, bona fide mystery. In the space of the story, it never happens—although maybe it will in your mind, as it has in mine, other readers’ and most definitively in Sam Ernst’s.
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The main point of all this folderol is just my way of getting ready to say that I believe that my generation is a little too focused on the former type of stories, those easily categorized things which can fit onto the pages of a magazine, newspaper or website, and have a tendency to ignore the latter complications. Is this, in itself, an overgeneralization? Sure! Of course it is. I’m not saying that I’m any different or better than the rest of us, but at least according to Socrates, the first step towards wisdom was realizing that you were stump dumb and donkey loud.
Some of our first lucid memories are of the World Trade Center towers imploding into gravel. These are the sorts of experiences which can warp a group of kids and make them grasp at anything which provides the illusion of control.
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My peers, I have noticed, do not like things which cannot be dismissed with a meme (a wee cartoon of Neil Degrasse Tyson fluttering his fingers will probably do ya fine but a cat doing anything will serve, too), “taken down” by a vituperative blog post, elucidated by an “inspiring” video or reduced to a list of gifs and the flippant descriptions thereof. I think it’s because we came of age, most of us, in the midst of the Great Depression 2 (sort of like The Prophecy 2, starring Christopher Walken, only a bit scarier) and a variety of post-modern societal convulsions. Some of our first lucid memories, as the bags of hormones which would later become adults, are of the World Trade Center towers imploding into gravel. These are the sorts of experiences which can warp a group of kids and make them grasp at anything which provides the illusion of control.
But those are just my “what-ifs” and logical explanations. You don’t have to pay them any mind.
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So anyway, if all that’s true—and it’s entirely possible that it isn’t—then how do we get away from it? It’s tempting to just holler that John killed Mary (or to make a meme where a cat proclaims it) because he hated women, was insane, voted Republican or she cheated on him, depending on your particular tribe. There’s comfort there, the notion that because we know why John killed Mary, then we might stop Randy from killing Sally, or vice versa. We don’t want to admit that it might be a combination of many factors, including all of the above and more, and even an indelible moral flaw, undetectable, which had been festering unbeknownst to those around him on John’s soul ever since he was a little, tiny kid. So how do we avoid it, or can we?
I try, in my own little way, by looking at Ken Wilber’s notion of co-arising quadrants. Nothing ever happens in a vacuum, Mr. Wilber tells us, and each spiritual event is simultaneously physical, cultural and societal (and vice versa versa versa, it’s just turtles all the way down). I don’t know how much this actually helps, though, or if I’m just creating another comforting fiction to maintain control over the world, like a tribal shaman working root magic. Frankly, neighbors, I don’t know what we’re going to do about it, individually or collectively. But, like Red Green, I will just say that we’re all in it together and I’m pulling for ya.
[1]I’m not going to feel too guilty about revealing minor spoilers from a nine year old minor novelette by one of America’s most treasured, at this point. I mean, it has a SyFy show loosely based on it, for God’s sake.
Illustration courtesy of L. Whitaker.
The current generation is no different in focusing on the simplistic than in all the generations that came before it. I remember reading articles in the 70’s that talked about how television had reduced the attention span of America’s youth. Same likes the same old story to me.
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Correction:: Sounds like…
I like what I got about your article, but I really didnt understand it fully.
That’s a shame… I was kind of hoping someone could explain it to me! But in all seriousness, the gist is in the last little bit, I’m pretty sure.