Keepin' it Hyperreal

I feel like a heroin addict. Scratch that, I feel like a neuroin addict, living life in psychoactivity and minimal hours of sleep (prepared to give birth to bald humans with precognitive abilities and a penchant for soaking in water and body suits). I am delirium epitomized.

When you’re on the brink of a certifiable insomnia, vivid life is threatening, street noise is accentuated to bullhorn levels and the days blend with the nights like a shoddily concocted Cinco de Mayorita. To say that I’m not exactly at the peak of health and mental capacity is hypereuphemistic. To say that I’m burning the stick of dynamite at both ends, isn’t. My life, the perpetual powder keg.

Waah, Waah. Don’t let my bitching excuse the illiterate ramblings that follow . . . NOW.

Whenever I go out in Seattle, LA, Spokane, or Manzanita, OR, I fell a slight reticence tugging on the hanging threads of my drinking garb. I’ve always associated the reticence with parsimony or indolence, but I’ve rationalized it as a more philosophical question in order to make my miserly/unmotivated ass appeal to a higher concept.

I worry that forced socialization will result in the oft-referred to separation of us as humans and our origins. If I leave the confines of my home to eat and drink at a locale where the social forces are more physically present (tangible) than the home front, am I acting a role or am I truly genuine? Public decorum demands a transaction of conversational goods (no dead air, no white space) that depend on my or some other bloke’s quick-witted or intelligent capacity. If we are ordered to do something by social constructs and we perform our roles accordingly, are our actions authentic?

The simple answer of “yes” doesn’t quite suffice. Sometime it does. Such as, is Dragan Stevic a Serbian icon? Yes? Did he drunkenly murder a blood-lusting, killer shark? Yes. Yes is an affirmation of his awesomeness and his actions, but yes does not affirm whether our actions in the public sphere are authentic.

At the heart of my dilemma is postmodern theory. Post-modernists use the term hyperreality, a theory made popular by po-mo advocates such as Jean Baudrillard, to describe the interrelationship of people and their surroundings. Hyperreality is a series of lectures unto itself, but a brief and crude summation of the theory is that we are separated from the origin of an object’s meaning, and that symbol’s denotation has branched into so many different permutations that is has become alienated from its origins. We interact with what we perceive to be an object’s essence, but instead we interact with an ephemeral simulacrum of the object. Think Neo speaking of the shop with the “really good noodles.” He reveled over noodles that were, unbeknownst to him, devoid of substance and meaning (Slide [sic] note: When Morpheus says welcome to the “desert of the real,” it’s a direct homage to Baudrillard and his theory of hyperreality . . .); that’s roughly the central tenet of the hyperreal.

In application, that is, when applying postmodern theory; Baudrillard; and the hypperreal to my dilemma of public decorum and interaction, I find it difficult to reconcile my actions as authentic. Especially when Baudrillard, a theorist who induces a bit of nerdy turgidity in this mope, spent his days speaking to the inauthenticity of the world we live in (Baudrillard speaking about himself: "What I am, I don't know. I am the simulacrum of myself."). Still, I cling to hope in my humanity, that my life serves something greater than the struggle to truly understand myself and ultimately failing (for a time I held this belief firmly, and medicated the ensuing and inevitable sorrow with copious amounts of drinking, sexing and reading — which is all types of unsatisfying). In my time as a postmodern wanderer, I came upon one solution to Baudrillard’s theorem, one he rejects outright, but I cling to stoically. It is my Obi-Wan Kenobi, my only hope.

We have the freedom to choose (good God, don’t even get me started on how awfully trite that sounds. I grew up having to go to church and go prayer-hands-deep into theology, so I know the freedom of choice argument is archaic. No estabas preoccupado, I’ll alter this old tune a bit). Not everyone takes this freedom. I have plenty of automatonic friends who are walking TV sets, blaring whatever nonsense NBC has spoon-fed them on their swass-soaked couches. The TV set tide is akin to the Facebook faceless who communicate solely through the fucked-up emoticons and textual linguistics. They’ve given up their choice and let the voided symbols speak for them. Conversely, some people do express the freedom of choice, and they are infinitely more interesting for it (your Alan Moores, your Conan O’briens, any person that honestly epitomizes eccentricity [an easy way to uncover an eccentric: diagnose them with insanity. If they receive this as a compliment, you found someone who understands the freedom of choice]). What matters is that your choice falls on the side of spontaneity.

Welcoming the unexpected circumvents the issue of the hyperreality and inauthentic action. It denies the gulf of the hypperreality; an original moment of self is as close as you can be to reality. It doesn’t bridge the gap — the gap isn’t there. As for authenticity, when you encounter the nouveau carte blanche, how can your actions not possess authenticity? In that split-second before your course of action is designated, there is no time to refer to The Office or dwell upon Baudrillad’s interpretation for the moment. It’s just unencumbered action. And that is the most authentic act one can wish for, one devoid of performance.

Postmodernists don’t keep it real, they keep it hyperreal.

-Mozart