This Is Not Water
A Poem Inspired by David Foster Wallace’s Speech Sort Of
If you’re in a big hurry for that poem, you can scroll down towards the bottom. The context, at least mine, is in the next few paragraphs.
About Our Stories…
Sadly, or fortunately, the promise of the Leisure-and-Pleasure-Seeking Jetsons came through mostly as only vinyl siding and vinyl windows, as I’ve said other times. And that happened just as we were starting to recognize the real-life benefits of the very work they replaced. We also came to realize the amount of waste they created in energy consumption, materials, and use of resources especially when used as “updates” in existing buildings.
But this isn’t an environmental piece in that way. It’s an environmental piece in a much bigger way, having to do with what’s dissolved in the water in which we swim mentally, what puts it there, and eventually what to do about it individually. It’s more of a Could than a Should maybe.
Allie and Bug Stu Might Be New to You
Bug Stu and Allie Space-Owl are very tuned into our music and its effects, because we are, too — deeply so — even if we don’t recognize the depth. The same is true for our stories, so it’s especially fitting that this album cover is based on a book cover by Neil Gaiman. Even fiction like Neil’s becomes part of our cultural mythos, and our imminent A.I. overlords will explain that to more of us soon. This cover art is great because…more goldfish, more water, more unawareness of that water, or what’s dissolved in it.
I really love that album from 1999. This Desert Life — maybe that represents our desperation for water, and that desperation suggests our lack of attention to what’s dissolved in it, or what puts it in there. Stu and Allie would suggest that it’s the Stralfs, from planet Stralf, but that’s not important right now.
Funny, it wasn’t until a few years ago when I saw a retro concert of the Counting Crows with another iconic 90’s band that I thought of writing the This Is Not Water poem. The other band was Matchbox Twenty. (Getting Back to Good? Getting back to serious consideration of eudaimonia from Classical Greece in spite of postmodern posturing?)
Actually, my most recent poemification of serious matters was “Elephants Without Eloquence,” and that came partly from track two, “Mrs. Potters Lullaby,” since clearly, elephants don’t simply get out and forget to remember what you said, as Adam D. sings. They probably had something on their mind, they’re just not very eloquent, and that complicates things.
Could I spend the next several hours writing about how much all those songs mean to me and mean to Stu and Allie? I could, but I won’t. That would seem like a violation of some kind of trust between the two halves of my brain, about a secret and small door. Music is certainly a door though, of many kinds — cozy, corruptible, condescending, confounding, and a whole bunch of other words that start with other letters, so I won’t keep going. It’s complicated. Come to think of it though, trust is one of those doors. So powerful…and we all know this. I need to leave that there for today. Onward.
About Water
We also know that the water we’re in contains a mix that something or someone puts in there. You might remember the joke that DFW uses as the opening of his This Is Water address. Let’s get to that so I can make a point and get back to the poem I wrote a few years ago, because it’s seeming relevant again.
(Thanks for this, Farnam Street, https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/)
David starts out by saying…
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
The crowd laughs a little, then David says…
This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story thing turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.
Or, with the goldfish and other scenes in a video go here: This Is Water
(Warning: The excerpt in that link does not do justice to the whole address, which is best without video distractions anyway — and also easy to find.)
HOWEVER…
For our purposes, the thesis that it’s not so much the water as what’s dissolved in it, I’d have to reword the opening and include the solute, the fish might say, “What the Hell’s a solute?” Once he understands what it is, it’s actually easier to fathom than is the very abstract and disorienting concept of ubiquitous water that sustains him and defines his life but is taken for granted.
This component, the solute, is just in that water, for better or worse. And something has put it there, in whatever concentration, for whatever purpose, or by whatever accident. But it’s adjustable, and it gets adjusted all the time, usually for increasing profit or power in someone’s attempt to game us, unfortunately.
Bug Stu and Allie Space-Owl think it’s best if we come up with a less villainizing metaphor or narrative that what I’ve implied, since it’s all a bit too complicated to pin on one group or even one phenomenon. That’s how the Stralfs got here, so to speak, in The Stories of Stu. That is, Stu and Allie thought we needed a different story than the one’s we’ve been trying to tell about each other. After the poem, I’ll continue this all with regard to the title of today’s post. (I knew I could do it!)
(I put hyphens between some words so you’ll know when to jam them together)
This is Not Water
Our David saw water and three talking fish*,
though-it’s The Water that wins our attention, he’d wish.
But it’s not water, not two H’s and an O;
it’s what’s dissolved in it, that makes What’s So so.
For the boat, or the shell, or the stone that you see;
it’s through a solution they appear to you and me.
The water’s our language, our shared existence.
It carries collective thought; it marries experience.
It’s what’s in the water, the solute, you could say.
The water’s the solvent, surrounding-us with The Way
to See, and to think, to choose this and not that.
Information evolves then dissolves in this Vat.
We don’t know when it’s cloudy; this Vat is our World.
It’s Just How Things Are…until a big rock is hurled.
Then the water goes out, and with it The Way.
But our Vat fills back up…and it’s a much clearer day.
When David observed, and pondered our plight,
for some it brought darkness, for some some sunlight.
He meant think, about the Water, ten odd years ago.
And I’ve thought about thoughts and what makes What’s So so.
So-I-like this way better, and it’s David I’d thank.
His humor and insight and passion we’d rank
at the top of his time, a time much too short.
(And here I am rhyming? Come Ire. Come Retort.)
When I think of my students, a strange thing appears.
As I listen to David and look back on those years…
(I hesitate to share, since my foes I keep fearing,
but it rhymes with that word, and hearing, but not tearing.)
This is Not Water, no it’s more like a sea.
What we dissolve in it is what-makes What Is be.
We must be more careful, we must clearly See.
You’re not alone if you sense this; you’re in good company.
T. J. Storey 7/6/18 ©2018 Tim Storey
*I know, only two fish talked, but I’m assuming the third was also the talking type.
American Pie, Fix It, Or Die
Whoa. Relax. According to Stu, the Stralfs don’t intend to kill us, so that’s a little extreme. It’s just that “Die” rhymes with “Pie” and figuratively speaking it works. But yeah, Stu tells me there will be some people who’ll choose to take one of the Stralf’s Scuba Pills and die rather than board a flying saucer headed to planet Stralf. But that’s all way down the line, so let’s just stick to my original title way up at the top: Facing the Music On This Day — 1969: And Also Other Days and Other Years
To “face the music” means to own up to, honestly, the consequences of a decision or collection of them, even if the fault is rather dispersed. Some say the origin of the expression had to do with the pre-funeral dirge and drumroll that came before a military execution at one time. Others say it’s unclear.
Okay well, the mid and late 1960’s were all about violence in the name of peace, emancipation, and righteousness, whether it was in war, against war, against oppression, or to maintain oppression. Don’t be squeamish about all that, and we probably should stop romanticizing it. It’s a bit ouchy for many different factions even today, not that they won’t defend the actions eloquently. You probably don’t need a list here. That’s all very much related to the rest below here, painful as it might be.
As Don McLean saw it, in “American Pie,” and as Stu sees it, the day the music died was the 1959 plane crash which killed three stars of early and more innocent Rock ’n’ Roll: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson. The other big turning point in the song refers to deaths on December 6th, 1969 at Altamont Pass, CA, during the Altamont Speedway Free Concert. Several iconic bands were on schedule. Interestingly, the Grateful Dead dropped out due to the erupting mayhem. (They will reappear in our story later through their magical “Terrapin Station Medley.”)
In “American Pie,” Don McLean doesn’t assign a specific significance to the deaths at the concert there, but it’s seen along with other events as the confirmation of The End in the song.
When Stu and I discuss all this, it seems like that 1969 concert was at the beginning of the Religion of Rock ’n’ Roll, in which appropriate sacrifices are made, like ya’ do, in all forms of death, violence, and pain to ensure a good crop the next year. It would seem that many were, and often still are, enslaved in that de facto religion. That Great and Powerful Oz is of our own making though, so the real question is about who or what makes us make Oz…or similar monikers.
I’m a big (big) fan of a lot of Rock ’n’ Roll music, but I don’t really believe in Rock ’n’ Roll, to use Don McLean’s words, because of the too-common sacrificial nature. It’s not difficult to enslave us humies, as Stu puts it. A mix is sprinkled in our water, we swim in it, get used to it, then just call it water, because it’s what we know.
It Get’s Better — But Worse First
There are at least two more big events from a December 6th in our past, similarly related to self-inflicted mental enslavement. A big portion of the South (not everyone) was mentally enslaved to enslavement up until the death and destruction of our Civil War. The “If you can, you do” (enslave) attitude had been passed down for centuries and thousands of years, even defended along what would later be seen as Darwinian logic (but that logic came way before Darwin) and Malthusian population prophecies.
A further, usually less abusive, self-inflicted mental enslavement comes in many aspects of industrialization, whether it’s communist, socialist, or capitalist. The sort of mental enslavement that can result from the abundance brought by industrialization results in personal and semi-private enslavements — within and around affluence culture. We defend them based on some book or meme we heard about somewhere — or postmodern meaninglessness, all enabled, ironically, by affluence in various forms and degrees.
A Potentially Weird Ending, Depending on Your Point of View
Affluence is a relative term, and I’m not against affluence — nor am I against Rock ’n’ Roll. Nuance — and subtlety? Are those still words?
Here’s the weird ending of all this that might change by morning, but I’m rushed for time, because the galaxy waits for no man, nor coleoptera, and it’s late.
I just now left the house here in the Land of Kent which was given by George Ade to his parents after he’d made it big, back around 1900 — when Indiana was second only to New York in literary accolades — and George Ade was the best thing since Mark Twain and a few others combined. Almost no one knows of him now, at least compared to Mark Twain, one of his big fans. Fine.
One of George’s tongue-in-cheek “moral of the story” quotes from Fables In Slang is “Give the people what they think they want.” That’s perfect for this. Stu and Allie agree.
The end.
