Revelation Vs Revilement

A friend recently described my writing as "manic". Here's the ensuing discussion:

Me: I can understand why you'd say that. But it's an incomplete observation. If I seem manic, that means either 1. I'm manic, or 2. you're sluggish.

Friend: I think most people would lean toward #1.

Me: Most people consider Olive Garden delicious and Kenny G musically talented. Majority opinion isn't wise.

Friend: Your writing jumps around and it's overstuffed and dense.

Me: Sure. Guilty as charged (though for years I churned out some of the most buttery/zippy crack-like prose ever typed - and can still do so on command - which ought to buy me some credit). But where do you draw the line between exuberance and mania? Between fluency and effluvium? Between literature and logorrhea?

Friend: Where do YOU draw the line?

Me: Success. If it's good - interesting thoughts, skillfully and interestingly conveyed - then such criticism is unwarranted. By using negative terms to describe successful output, you're simply pointing out nonconformity. And that's juvenile:

One of these things is not like the others,
one of these things...doesn't belong.
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
by the time I finish this song?

We're in a strange era of hate-watching (enduring bad movies and TV just to snark about it on social media) and the Dunning Krugeresque assumption that everyone could do anything if they just put their mind to it (my mommy said the same to me a few times, but even as a three year old I knew not to take it literally). We disrespect experts, resent accomplishment, and compress quality extremes. So it's no wonder that we are able to recognize and admire the quality of a thing while still making harshly negative pronouncements about it. In fact, this move has become so normal that it sounds stuck-up to object. Take your medicine!

Everybody rules/sucks now. That's just how it is.

Of course Spielberg's films are saccharine-sweet, contrived, and repetitive, but he's a freaking legend; I couldn't live without him! Tom Waits? Ugly, sings like a frog, but, hey, he's Tom Waits! Gotta love him! I have all his records!

Quality is almost beside the point. It's just one factor of many. That's how stuff comes to rule/suck.

Living in this strange, reductive era, you're probably concluding that my message here is "Be nice!" No! My point is inarguable: Good is good. Good doesn't also suck. Goodness isn't unchained from quality. Goodness IS quality. If it's good, it's not messed up. It's not bullshit. It's not manic or dumb. Non-pejorative descriptors still apply ("dense", "self-centered", "fast-paced", "sarcastic", etc.), sure. But you can't hang a snark word on something without lowering its score. And vice versa: if you appreciate something, it's illogical to characterize it with harsh negativity (I can hear The Internet snarling with displeasure at this crazytalk. "Don't tell me when to snark!"). We used to know this. But we've forgotten.

Same with people. I know a car detailer who works magic (per Leff's Second Law, any sufficiently advanced feat of creativity is indistinguishable from magic). He doesn't just restore a car to showroom glitter, he actually makes cars look better than new. (I have a theory. He goes over the whole car with a small wad of putty, stroking like a painter. In so doing, I think he sets up a certain stasis of reflection via thousands of strokes with the putty which directs light in a certain way.)

I wrote about him a few years ago in a posting titled Miracles, Paste Wax, and Eccentricity:

John's an original thinker, and he says people often call him eccentric. I told him how much that word offends me. "Eccentric" means "odd and wrong". "Eccentric" people build perpetual motion machines, or believe they've found a way to communicate with the dead. They're absorbed in cranky, flaky quests which will never amount to much, but at least they're entertaining. It's a term of condescension; this is how we condescend to non-conformists. But is that an appropriate way to describe bona fide miracle workers?

We need a word for "odd and right", for those who march to different drummers with truly great results. I'm thinking "splendcentric". Or, come to think of it, how about "creative"?

Let me strip away any perceived brittle fussy elitism by briefly reverting to my musician roots and translating it into street terms:

If your shit's working, you ain't fucked up.

"Working" is highly underrated as a determining factor. Nonconformity just for its own sake is empty indulgence. Go ahead and call it "eccentricity". But if someone's found a better way, that's not eccentric, that's successful. Such people aren't weirdos; they're winners. And, no, you can't be both. Einstein was not a loopy deranged goofball, however unique his ideas and hairstyle. It's not eccentric if you're right!


In "Taking Notes", I made the observation that pejorative terms ought to be reserved for failed tactics. For example, you're not being "obsessive" if you're actually improving your life ("are we all obsessive breathers?"). Also see my lengthy (and, I'm told, entertaining) rant about the word "Unhinged".

---

In college, I was lucky enough to take an Eastern Philosophy class with a major authority, who'd spent months in obscure Zen monasteries in Japan. I stopped by his office to ask a question that had been bugging me:

A guy sits silent and motionless in some cave or drafty monastery, deprived of normal human stimulation and comfort. Years later, he's pronounced "enlightened", behaves oddly, and perhaps neglects basic hygiene. Who's to say the poor shmuck isn't just nuts? Crazy? Bananas?

The professor tap-danced a bit. He'd met some of those guys, and, well, one just knows. They have presence. To be with them produces the sort of awe and confidence very young children feel toward their parents. As with pornography, you know it when you see it.

I was unsatisfied with his reply, and spent decades thinking about it, finally experiencing an epiphany:

Crazy people are unhappy. They're not peaceful or joyful or calm. Such qualities are not characteristic of mental disturbance. Mental illness doesn't calm you or leave you happy. Calm happiness = sanity.

There's a short-lived euphoria to mania, but that's not real (and certainly not sustained) happiness. Depression induces a bittersweet poetry, but that doesn't even resemble happiness. Schizophrenics are tormented, obsessive compulsives are anxious, narcissists can't get enough attention, and psychopaths never fill their psychic hole. If there were some sort of cray-cray which brought genuine happiness and peace, therapists and pharmaceutical companies would clamor to induce the affliction.

That’s how you distinguish. So if you find yourself unassailably happy (satchidananda!), trust the state. And if you're inclined to pronounce someone "bonkers", consider their happiness. Because, again, pejorative terms should be reserved for failed tactics. If your shit's working, you ain't fucked up.