In defense of savagery (or, the year in review)

Herzog. I realize I haven't talked about the novel yet, not having formed words or opinions into full thought, and I won't do that here. What I will say is that all the revile, pissery, joy, exhaustion related to Bellow's masterwork is justly earned. It's also a grand example of a constructed from the solitary perch of anger and partial savagery vacillating to sweet. In other words, art.



Why do I bring this up? I've been revisiting, for good and otherwise, the year, full on, in line with the tradition for the calendar-replacement season. The highlight quotes: "You're hot and cold, my friend," "You, sir, are good people," "You seem to have a nose for these [bars, restaurants, places]." All very, very happily co-existing. It's been another year of transition, of odd displacement and fragility and exhaustion.

What I think, though, it really lends to: I'm remembering the best moments, the conversations, the highlights. Only one involved pre-determined plans, and it was the spontaneous moments afterward that highlighted it. I've met poets, writers, drinkers, musicians, actors, translators, some of whom I've even managed to keep in touch with. And the highlights for each -- the odd conversations about language, film, entertainments, borne from mutual compulsion and obsession.

Which brings me to my resolution: For 2011, I'm resolve to be more savage. More obsessive. In my San Francisco days, my best ones were spent as best I know being the malcontent free-flower in the room, but also the explorer, the person who knew best for everything. In the intervening years, I lost that sense of focus-filled cocksuredness (a sad reflection on essentially the need to belong), and quite frankly it is this blogger's unmitigated assessment that living off a Zagat manual is not the path most suited. Mine, it's minutiae and detail and the subsequent daffy-ness. The constant tourist versus the Mad Professor.

I'm now here in the midst of my second year. New York has less of a savage underpinning than that chilled out city by the bay, but at the same time it doesn't hide it under the veneer of false-friendship. That's the way it lulls you in, thinking there is some sort of connectedness that, for all intents and purposes and with some very obvious exceptions, is as fake as the snow in Florida.

Wish me luck. Siren songs are a bitch to elude, but it can be done with savage, focused rage whipped to a maelstrom.