I’ve saved this post as “Nihilism,” which is a smart thing to do. I could leave the rest of the page (which is a screen) blank, and fulfill my purpose: I’ve told you all there is to know about nihilism.
Not really, though. I think of nihilism as an essentially negative space, which is where I’m at right now. I got here through a succession of negative events; to list them is only to be tiresome and burdensome. But in fact, I am living through my earliest and worst nightmare.
I no longer believe in or trust my government.
That’s bad, of course, but it gets worse.
I no longer believe in my countrymen.
You could argue that I never did, and that that’s the problem. I was born in 1956, eleven years after the holocaust had ended. But from an early age, I feared that at the end of my life, I would end up on a cattle car being transported to a death camp. There was a team—the Green Bay Packers—and a coach—Bart Starr—and even though we lived in Madison (100 miles or so away from Green Bay), all of my classmates were into it.
I thought it was stupid, and still do.
I was on a different wavelength, and still am. There’s a guy named Bad Bunny, whom I’ve heard about vaguely for years. And just now, I clicked on one of his songs on YouTube. It’s called Otra Noche en Miami, and yes, I’ve heard it before.
Or rather, I’ve endured it, usually at about 10 at night when a car drives down the street, blaring it. Depending on traffic, I will experience either a minute and a half or something like seven minutes of it. The song may not be Otra Noche, and very likely won’t be. But since absolutely all rap / reggae / reggaeton sounds the same to me…well, it’s all another night in Miami.
Whatever night Bunny (don’t know him well enough to call him Bad) was having in Miami, he’s not having it now. He just got named to do a Superbowl halftime show, and apparently that’s a big deal. The conservatives are furious, because Bunny speaks Spanish, and is fairly in-your-face about it. He told us on Saturday Night Live that we have four months to learn Spanish, which prompted some conservatives to argue that English should be the official language of the United States. Given that we are now in a government shutdown, that’s unlikely.
I know enough Spanish, in fact, to get the gist of Bunny’s message—which is one of an alienation and of mourning a love apparently gone. Here’s what he sings:
Ahora que soy rico, no tengo lo que tenía
Pues mi Rolex no brilla igual que tu sonrisa
Y con estas putas no me gusta compartir la frisa
Si piensas volver, me avisa'
Mientras yo sigo solo
Now that he’s rich, he doesn’t have what he had; his Rolex doesn’t shine like her smile; with those whores he doesn’t want to share his blanket. If you’re thinking of coming back, lemme know, he says. Meantime, he’s going it alone.
He’s got the toys: the Bentley is in the garage, the views from the penthouse don’t disappoint. But he’s the one who’s bringing home the bacon, or in this case the champaña (Moet champagne, if you have to know). And he’s the one empty inside: he has been given (or more likely clawed his way to) everything and discovers it is meaningless.
It's an old story, and how much popular music would there be, if we took away that old story away? Bunny sings that “soy Cristiano después de meter un gol,” and we think he’s joking, that he became a Christian after kicking a goal. But the Bible can sing that song very well, and even better. Here’s Ecclesiastes:
OK—I get it from Ecclesiastes, but I’m not so sure about Bunny. The alienation is there in both the song and the verse, but they come from a different place, somehow. Bunny bought in to the system, and found it meaningless and rotten in the end. Whoever wrote Ecclesiastes—and he was a hell of a writer—seems to be coming from a deeper place. Simply put, Bunny is coming from Miami, and Ecclesiastes is coming from…
…here I falter.
I want to say “nowhere,” but it could also be anywhere. The cynic in me will say that Bunny will become disenchanted with the Maserati in the garage, but he’ll just go out and buy a Bentley. Ecclesiastes will always be taking the bus, even if Bunny stops the Bentley and offers him a ride. Bunny will be focused on the car, Ecclesiastes on the journey.
“All things are full of weariness,” says Ecclesiastes, and who can deny it? Even outrage, for which there is an increasing supply, leads eventually to weariness. The United States went down like a preacher’s daughter, as we used to say, and the news that the US army used helicopters to rappel into an apartment building on the south side of Chicago, broke down doors, put US citizens in a U-Haul for three hours until they could prove their nationality, and zip-tied kids and left them on the street doesn’t surprise me now. Nor does it surprise me to see this:
Ho-hum, another Trump-appointed judge makes a ruling that pisses off the dear leader, and her home goes up in flames. Authorities are investigating, and we will know the answer to the question of who did what and why. Or we won’t know why. Or we’ll know why and still not give a shit.
Perhaps we have all come to nihilism—Ecclesiastes, Bunny and I. Bunny, I think, is desperate to get the hell out of it, and he has my total sympathy. It’s a lousy place to be, and it doesn’t help that most of us get here through our own damn fault.
Who knows about Ecclesiastes?
I won’t put words into the guy’s mouth.
Maybe it’s that I like English coming from King James better than Spanish coming from the ‘hood. But I think Ecclesiastes is in a deeper place than Bunny. Bunny dipped his toe in; Ecclesiastes is swimming in deep waters indeed.
I hope he doesn’t drown, and that may be the problem.
From a nihilistic point of view, it doesn’t matter if he drowns. Nor does it matter if I care if he drowns or not.
I tell myself that I am in the void, and that I’ve always been in the void, whether I thought so or not. I tell myself that space is just space, and an ocean just an ocean. I experience nothing and am terrified.
I tell myself that my void is just negative space—necessary to illuminate whatever surrounds it.
I tell myself that it doesn’t matter that nothing matters.
There is freedom in the void, I say to myself. There’s certainly plenty of space, and nothing to put into it.
Nothing except…
…dare I say it?
Nothing but hope.
