On the Creation of Art versus the Creation of Porn

what is art? as one who considers myself/aspires to be an artist, i've lately felt compelled to answer this question. i've always had a vague, "i know it when i see it" approach to determining artistic merit (a standard once famously applied to pornography; more on that below). i've come to believe that this approach is not sufficient, and after some reflection, i've hit upon the beginnings of my own understanding of the term as i use it. the breakthrough happened when i hit upon what i believe to be the opposite of what i mean by "art": namely, porn.

i should note here that i'm approaching this as a practicing artist, not an academic; i have read some aesthetic theory, but am by no means an expert on aesthetics, so i'm sure that some of what follows is not original to me. however, i'm eager to hear about any academic writing that has been done along these same lines, if only to sharpen my ideas, so please feel free to enlighten me if i'm treading on familiar ground.



PART ONE: DEFINITIONS.

a definition of "art". my broadest, most comprehensive definition is this: art is the conscious attempt by an individual, or coordinated group of individuals possessing a singularity of vision, to comment on some aspect of human existence through the use of non-literal representations.

breaking the definition down a bit:

"...the conscious attempt..." this is to say that art is not simply anything we observe which inspires a revelation; art must be created with deliberate intent. a sunset or a flower or even the bustle of commuters at grand central station observed from above may be beautiful, may arouse emotion, may even trigger a breakthrough in awareness, but the end result is not enough. if these phenomena are art, then the definition of "art" can be applied to any and all aspects of reality, according to the subjective experience of the observer. if art simply means anything that inspires someone, the word becomes meaningless. art must be created intentionally, as it must contain a "comment" (more on this below).

"...by an individual or coordinated group of individuals possessing a singularity of vision..." see above re: deliberate intent. it is obviously possible to create a work of art through the collaborative process, but the difficulty lies in the singularity of vision, since individuals are very likely to have different and conflicting goals, either with regard to the substance of the "comment", the best techniques for achieving the "comment", or the goal of creating art in the first place.

"...to comment on some aspect of human existence..." the crux of my definition is this word, "comment". to be art, it must "say something". the substance of whatever is being "said", along with the artist's success at "saying" it, is what makes some art better than other art, but the comment is required. i'm not talking about anything political or pedantic here; in fact, any "comment" that can be reduced to rhetoric falls into the category of art's opposite (see below), due to its predictability. the perfect symmetry of a bach fugue or a da vinci painting, the multiple perspectives of cubism or "the rite of spring", the dada of duchamp's "fountain" or the absurdism of a kafka story -- all these are departures from reality which create a comment on reality in the audience's mind. bach's music--or da vinci's painting--says, reality is more beautiful and symmetrical than you realize. "the rite of spring" or "les demoiselles d'avignon" says, there are more perspectives existing simultaneously than you realize (and they can crash into one another with great force). duchamp's urinal sculpture says, art itself is more than you have previously envisioned. kafka says, life can be as ridiculous and inexplicable as the experience of waking up as a cockroach one morning. (these are obviously simplistic reductions of the effects of these works of art, but you get the point.)

"...through the use of non-literal representations." art must depart from a literal depiction of reality, and by doing so, draw attention to that particular aspect of reality. non-literalism is how the comment is achieved. a reproduction of reality, in other words, is not art, even though it may be created using the same techniques. it contributes no new information, it contains no comment. like the spontaneous phenomena discussed above, reproduction of reality may coincidentally inspire some sort of breakthrough or awareness, but it does so only by accident. art must depart from reality, and this departure is where the "comment" happens, as it is this departure from reality, this non-literalism, that catches the attention of the audience. (even duchamp's "fountain" discussed above, while seemingly plucked from reality, is a deliberate departure from the reality of an art exhibit, forcing the audience to reckon with a new notion of art itself.)

the opposite of art is porn. porn is faux-art, often produced with the identical techniques as art, but which does not go beyond pure gratification (which includes intellectual gratification – i.e., flattery of the audience’s assumptions and prejudices). i believe that most of what humans create, even in the guise of creating art, is actually porn. its goal is to satisfy, to gratify.

i will note there that these two distinctions -- art and porn -- are not hierarchal. one is not superior to another; both are necessary in their own way. gratification is a wonderful experience, and we long for it, as surely as we long for the revelation produced by art. that being said, the creation of art is a far more difficult task, as there are so many traps which the artist can fall into and in so doing, create porn instead. i would even venture to say all artists create porn sometimes, and some even do so most of the time (however, no one who is intending to create porn can create art, since the intent is not there, and therefore any comment is accidental). incidentally, i don't exclude myself from this category; most of what i have created in my lifetime would be categorized as porn. part of the reason for me writing this essay is to bring the distinction to light in my own mind, and apply it to my own process, so that i understand what it is that i am creating. there is nothing wrong with creating porn, i just don't want to create porn while deluding myself into believing i was creating art.



PART TWO: GUIDELINES FOR THE CREATION OF ART VERSUS THE CREATION OF PORN.

this is not a comprehensive list; it is a continuously updated work-in-progress.

first guideline: art is a form of communication, and therefore requires an audience. artwork with no audience is self-gratification, i.e. porn.

second guideline: art presents a point of view; it cannot be value-neutral. a work of art, by definition, takes a stand with regard to its subject. it presents a way of looking at the subject that says, in effect, it is this way, and not some other way. art that strives not to offend by not taking a stand on its subject defers to the gratification of the sensibilities of the audience; it is porn.

third guideline: the tension in art is between the fulfillment of the audience’s expectations and the subversion of those expectations; art ultimately must never err on the side of fulfillment. all art sustains its tension and momentum by maintaining a balance between the fulfillment of the audience's expectations and the subversion of those expectations, but if the ultimate effect errs on the side of fulfillment, what has been created is not art, but porn.

fourth guideline: art uses aspects of porn, but does not succumb to them. since it requires the engagement of the audience, much effective art uses the techniques of porn in service of the larger goal of the comment. "art" does not mean "boring" -- the artist must hold the audience's attention, often fooling the audience into thinking that they're watching porn by creating moments of gratification. incidentally, porn, too, may use the techniques of art (mostly to flatter the audience into believing they have had the experience of artistic revelation rather than a pornographic gratification).

fifth guideline: the subversion of expectations is how the comment is achieved.. this is related to the discussion of non-literal representation above. it is only by subverting the audience's expectations that art can call attention to itself and its intent. fulfilling the audience's expectations simply gives them information they already have.

sixth guideline: a work of art communicates that which is beyond the power of description and cannot be fully explained, only experienced. if the point of it is only to communicate an idea that can be explained rhetorically, it is pedantic, and ultimately predictable (ultimately fulfilling expectations), i.e. porn.

seventh guideline: a "good" work of art reveals something new to the audience. A "great" one forces the audience to acknowledge a reality which already exists, but which the audience has been concealing from themselves.This is what makes the creation of a "great" work of art so difficult; its intentions are almost indistinguishable from the intentions of porn (which is why attempts to be "great" are so often so bad). the task of revealing something already known to the audience is almost exactly the same as fulfilling their expectations; the difference here is that the artist is able to identify that which is being concealed, and know how to force an audience to admit it. this, for example, is the essence of tragedy in theater: with, say, death of a salesman, the title tells us the ending beforehand, but the audience has a hard time believing that either (a) willy loman will die or (b) if he does, that it will be not because he broke the rules and conventions that he is supposed to live by, but because he followed them. the greatness of the play is that the audience knows the truth -- that the conventions of the "american dream" can be a lie and a trap -- but hopes against hope that what they know to be true is not in fact true.

eighth guideline: with art, the artist is the ultimate dictator. In porn, the audience is the ultimate dictator.

ninth guideline: art exposes, and makes the audiences aware of, the gap between our personal or cultural illusions and the realities of our existence. as indicated above, the primary tool for exposing this gap, and creating the audiences awareness of it, is subversion of expectations. porn, on the other hand, works to conceal the gap between our cultural illusions and the realities of our existence. that is its goal -- to assure the audience that all is right with the world, and that the illusions they walked in with will not ultimately be shaken.

tenth guideline: the expectations of the audience are a constantly-shifting target; what was "art" yesterday is "porn" today. this is perhaps the most frustrating aspect of being an artist, to continually adapt his/her tools and techniques to stay one step ahead of the audience's expectations at all times, since today’s audience will be wise to yesterday’s subversions. a replica of yesterday’s "subversive" techniques produces today’s porn.

more thoughts as they arrive...

UPDATE:

eleventh guideline: all art is, by definition, experimental. if art requires comment, and comment is achieved through subverting expectations, it follows that every new work must be, in some sense, an experiment. if there is no part of the work that is an experiment, if it is using techniques in ways that have already been proven to "work", then the piece comes with a set of pre-existing expectations that will be fulfilled. this is porn.

twelfth guideline: most of the experiments required in the course of making art will fail. this does not push the experiments into the category of porn; however, it means that the artist is constantly running the risk of having his/her experiments fail to connect with audience in the way that the artist intends. repeated failure is often the price of attempting to create art. this is also what makes porn so seductive; any experiment risks failure, whereas sticking to a tested formula is more likely to create (temporary) "success".

this

TNC:

I don't have any gospel of my own. Postwar, and the early pages of Bloodlands, have revealed a truth to me: I am an atheist. (I have recently realized this.) I don't believe the arc of the universe bends towards justice. I don't even believe in an arc. I believe in chaos. I believe powerful people who think they can make Utopia out of chaos should be watched closely. I don't know that it all ends badly. But I think it probably does.

I'm also not a cynic. I think that those of us who reject divinity, who understand that there is no order, there is no arc, that we are night travelers on a great tundra, that stars can't guide us, will understand that the only work that will matter, will be the work done by us. Or perhaps not. Maybe the very myths I decry are necessary for that work. I don't know. But history is a brawny refutation for that religion brings morality. And I now feel myself more historian than journalist.

the sexless musical genre known as "musical theater"

it was never supposed to be its own genre, really. american musical theater grew out of the vaudeville tradition, where wildly different sensibilities were thrown together on the same stage for the sole purpose of entertainment; imagine something between the Ed Sullivan show and "America's Got Talent," but bawdier and more brazen with ethnic and racial stereotypes (blackface was a staple), and you have a fair idea of what an evening at a vaudeville theater was like. one thing it was not was cohesive, especially musically. a harlem dance number (the word "jazz" came later) could be followed by an aria from a popular operetta or a cohan-style patriotic tune.

it took several decades of gershwins and berlins and kerns and rodgerses to shape the various musical strains into what we now think of as the "golden age of american songwriting". it's hard to imagine now, but in its time, this music was dangerous and sexy and not a little bit transgressive. in the 20s and 30s, anything with jazzy rhythms conjured the same association among small town whites that hip hop currently does -- it was urban, decadent, promiscuous, and very "black". at the same time, the lyrics of the golden age carried a whiff of effete sophistication that further emphasized the cosmopolitan outlook of the tunes. these songs were on the cutting edge of american pop culture, snatched up by recording artists as soon as they appeared on the broadway stage. and from Cole Porter's "Let's Do It" to Gershwin lyrics like "s'exceptional", the songs pumped with sexual energy. and it wasn't just the lyrics; the rhythms were earthy and physical and encouraged all kinds of inappropriate dancing and drinking and rulebreaking. "jungle rhythms," is what they were called.

what happened? the 60s, for one. sex and trasngression were culturally appropriated by rock n' roll (and later, plain old "rock"). the loud, electrified sound was hard to reconcile with dramatic storytelling, and musical theater (with a few exceptions) mostly ignored it, paving the way for its own cultural obsolescence. this can't be the whole story, though; there were other pop music trends that could have worked in a dramatic format (the motown soul sound, for example). it's still not clear to me why the major musical theater composers of the 60s and 70s -- i'm thinking of Sondheim and John Kander especially -- were so reluctant to experiment with these new sounds. instead, Sondheim and Kander, both gifted at the art of pastiche, mined past musical paradigms for their shows of the 60s and 70s which, while off-the-charts innovative from a theatrical standpoint, featured music that was explicitly retro. in the 60s and 70s! just when a new "golden age" of pop songwriting was happening all around them. it seems to me to be the most spectacular missed opportunity in musical theater history.

i suspect it has something to do with the audiences, also. in the late 60s and 70s, the audience for musical theater didn't look like the Bobby Kennedy or George McGovern set; it looked like the Nixon set. and i respect the idea that in order for innovators like Sondheim and Kander to tell the stories they wanted to tell to the audiences that were keeping broadway alive, more traditional music was probably the best vehicle.

however it happened, the consequence has been that several generations of musical theater composers have mostly reacted to pop culture in the same way that contemporary jazz and "classical" composers have; that is, by defining themselves in opposition to it. this is suicide. musical theater thrives when it synthesizes contemporary pop music sounds into something greater than the sum of the parts, but comtemporary musical theater composers, by and large, have been stuck for a while, recycling a a sound resembling sort of a watered-down sondheim or steven schwartz (whose music is like a watered-down version of the singer/songwriter pop balladeers of the 70s). rhythmic invention, forever a staple of american pop music, took a backseat to post-impressionistic harmonic noodling in theater music (that is, when songwriters didn't revert to a Amy Grant-style christan contemporary-ish uplift). almost every musical theater composer since then has been a piano composer, a "chord composer". the sound became more localized, kept alive by countless cabaret singers and shows (Songs for a New World, for example) written to be performed in such venues, abandoning the goal of communicating with a larger audience that continued to be interested in music that sounded modern and danceable and sexy. it's true that every so often, a show will come out that has "modern" music (which usually means music that would have sounded modern two decades prior) and everyone will herald it as The One, the savior which will finally bridge the gulf between theater music and pop music. Rent, say. or In The Heights. or Once, the savior-du-jour. but institutional pressures will revert everything back to form soon enough, and whether because of timid producers or songwriting talent that doesn't come to the new york musical theater scene if it has an ear for what's modern, new musicals will continue to be written by the current crop of very gifted keepers-of-the-flame who are good at using music to describe the vulnerable inner monologues of white twentysomethings (themselves!), but not much else.

sex is really the key concept, i think. of all the theater folk i have met, i don't know anyone who finds modern musical theater music sexy. as in, i would put this Wicked OCR on to get me and my baby in the mood. (or, if you're more highbrow, Light in the Piazza. nobody is getting busy to Adam Guettel.) modern musical theater songs can certainly describe sex (usually in a gee-whiz-my-first-time-was-so-awkward-but-tender sort of way), but that's a function of lyrics. the music sounds absolutely nothing like our popular cultural musical description of sex. (here's a test: picture a sex scene in literally any hollywood film, and then imagine the music that would be used: does it bear any resemblance to anything written for the modern broadway or off-broadway stage?) again, what is lacking is a rhythmic sense. this is amazing to me; rhythm is the heart and soul of 20th and 21st century pop music, including all the great musical theater music of the 20s and 30s. in a great pop song, every part of the song is driving and contributing to the rhythm. every single element. the melody, the lyrical rhyme scheme, the bass line, whatever harmonic instruments are being used (guitar, piano, strings, whatever), they're all contributing to the rhythm, and each in a different way. (even if they're not contributing to the harmony or the melody!) my friend sonny paladino, who conducts on broadway and gets this concept more than anyone else i know in the theater business (admittedly, not a huge universe of people), says that in a pop song, every single instrument is playing a hook, by which he means a rhythmic hook. pick apart the arrangement of any classic pop song, and you'll see what i mean -- every part is filling in the rhythmic space in a slightly different way, and every part is signable as its own little "hook", a good drum groove included. i blame a lot of this on the piano-bound songwriting technique most of my colleagues employ, but gershwin obviously had no problem writing intricate, swinging rhythms on the piano (then again, he was one of the most brilliant stride piano players of his day, so that's a pretty high bar, but i guess that proves my point; gershwin was thinking in terms of multiple competing rhythmic lines, trying to make his piano sound like an entire swing band).

among other things, sexless music does a huge disservice to the hard work that the bookwriter does. a character who sings songs set to music entirely drained of sex is no kind of character at all; it's a puritanical fantasy of a character. and the lyrics really can't compensate for this; an audience member will trust what the music is saying first, and sometimes only. (case in point: the least convincing moment in Wicked is the sex scene, even though there's no song being sung; based on the music we've heard, these characters have no sex drives, and the scene therefore feels totally false.)

there is some fantastic, thrilling, sexy pop music to be heard on broadway, though, and audiences flock to hear it. it lives in the confines of the dreaded "juke box" musicals. every theater professional i know disparages these shows, but audiences are not fools. they want to go to broadway to hear great singers sing and dance to great music that will wow them, turn them on, make them want to sing and dance themselves. if contemporary composers aren't giving it to them, they'll take The Four Seasons. this is depressing, but i can hardly blame them. is there any musical theater song written in the last 30 years that's as tuneful, singable, danceable, romantic as any song in Motown? we should all be ashamed of ourselves for this reality. once the place where pop songs were born, the broadway stage has lately become their graveyard. as for contemporary musical theater music, to paraphrase gershwin, it's got no rhythm, and audiences are asking for literally anything more.

health care is the great moral cause of our time

the invective coming from the uglier corners of the right wing aimed at the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, has always been colored by a particular cruelty. here's senator ted cruz saying that those who lack health care should just get a job. here's mitt romney blaming his 2012 loss on the affection minorities have for obamacare, which he also described as something like a bribe in exchange for votes. the video above depicts a republican crowd cheering for the death of a hypothetical uninsured man.

recently, though, the rhetoric has escalated from garden-variety poor-bashing all the way to DEFCON 1. opponents are reaching for the grandest, most spectacular historical crimes in describing the dangers of the law: the holocaust, slavery, eugenics -- no atrocity is too great to warrant a comparison to the health care bill.

there's a particular--and in my opinion, fascinating--focus on american slavery; elected officals, respected pundits, gubernatorial candidates have each mentioned slavery in discussing the law.

there is, i believe, a good analogy to be made here, though it's not the one the opponents are attempting to make. like slavery, or civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, health care is the great moral cause of our era. it shares with those struggles a debate over who is to be considered worthy of protection by our society.

we are currently in the midst of an extremely bumpy rollout of what may or may not be a successful piece of legislation, but the details of website functionality or even the individual mandate should not obscure the fact that the question itself -- whom should we let live, and whom should we let die -- is the most consequential political question we've tackled in several generations. i believe that there are many ways to get to full coverage, but the principle should be beyond question: no american should be denied the right to live. the rancor inspired by the health care bill shows that many americans believe otherwise.

i further believe that history will judge opponents of this principle in the way that history has always judged those who seek to deny equal protection to certain groups of people: that is, damnably. it will be difficult for future generations to explain why radicals shut down the government to prevent access to health care, just as it is difficult today to explain how anyone could have taken up arms to defend slavery, but take up arms they did, and if nothing else, the ugliness of the current debate will serve as yet another perennial reminder that equal protection requires constant struggle, and the brotherhood of humankind is not a given.

i am a government addict.

hi.

my name is joe drymala, and i am a government addict. in fact, i've used government probably hundreds of times today already. i can't stop. i don't know if i'll ever stop.

it's just so much easier not to stop.

i guess you could say i was born addicted. it happened in a state hospital, funded and sustained by government, delivered by doctors and nurses each licensed and certified by the government without my knowledge or consent. government regulated and approved the medical equipment used to assist my birth and monitor my health and development even before i left my mother's womb.

i was driven home, strapped into a car seat mandated and approved by government, in an automobile built according to government specifications, in an auto factory that not only relied on government subsidies but benefitted from the destruction of foreign competitors by the U.S. army in world war two. i drove home on a government road. A. GOVERNMENT. ROAD. paid for by government, monitored by government traffic lights and stop signs and all manner of other governmental regulatory constraining my father's ability to operate his vehicle like a respectable member of a free society.

government taught me to read and write and add and subtract and reason and speak in front of a crowd and understand musical notation. i quite literally don't know who i am without it. every building i inhabit has been built according to government specification, every job i do pays me according to minimum amounts set by government and is monitored by government for safety, and if i have a grievance, government judges are there for me to complain to, in courthouses built by government. without government, i am powerless.

every bite of food i eat and drop of liquid i drink in this country, indeed, even the air i breathe, is monitored and regulated by government. the thought of it makes me sick to my government-insured stomach.

i dream of kicking the habit once and for all. it's just a dream. but i dream it anyway.

i long for a world in which i can eat food free of government inspection and regulation, a world where i can build and drive my own vehicle at whatever speed i wish fueled by whatever energy source i can burn. a world where i can conduct business without government interference, relying not on the justice system to insure fair dealings, but instead on whatever weapon i have handy.

i long for a world in which minorities of all kinds, be they racial, sexual, religious, political, or otherwise, will finally be at the mercy of the brute force of whatever majority they find themselves on the wrong end of.

i long to raise my children in a world where they never see the inside of a government school, where if they go to school at all, it will be with children not from all walks of life, but children of those who have the means to pay for it. i long to fight my own fires, police my own neighborhood, construct my own roads, conduct my own scientific research, build my own hospital, make my own medicine, deliver my own baby and purify my own air.

some would call this crazy. i call it freedom.

i am an addict. but i long to be free.

self-interest for me and not for thee

it's old hat to point out the prisoner's dilemma of capitalism: that cooperation yields much better outcomes for everyone than a hobbesian war of pure self interest, "all against all".

i've been thinking recently, though, about another paradox that dogmatic capitalists do not address: namely, that the only way to maintain a "pure" capitalist society is for the majority of people to deny their self-interest.

in theory this paradox should never take place; econ 101 says that everyone, maximizing his or her rational self-interest, will lead to the best possible economic outcome for the whole. in practice, lenin and marx were correct in their assumption that unfettered capitalism leads to monopoly and imperialism; i.e., concentration of wealth and power in the hands of just a few actors. (and i suppose this is where i'm obligated to say that they weren't correct about everything, so consider this my offical disclaimer of marxism-leninism.)

in other words, history makes it quite clear that without a strong regulatory regime, powerful entities will dominate the marketplace and squeeze out competitors through means legal and extra-legal.

however, in order to maintain this "pure" capitalist state, free of regulation, everyone else in the marketplace ("the 99%", if you will) must be persuaded not to join together to form labor unions or political parties (or wage full-scale revolutions) to redistribute wealth or enforce regulations on the 1%, even if they'd be much better off doing so.

and here we have the paradox: the 1% justify their obscene wealth and power with a philosophy of self-interest, but ask the 99% to deny their self-interest out of fealty to the Great God Capitalism.

you don't need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows, and you don't need a mathemetician to tell you that this equation is unsustainable.

it seems, though, that in the philosophy of free-market capitalism, some kinds of self-interest are acceptable and some are not. the self-interest of the Koch Brothers is capitalism, but the self-interest of the janitor who votes for a higher minimum wage is socialism.

this applies to groups also, it seems; a coalition of businesses like the Chamber of Commerce promotes capitalism, but a coalition of garbage collectors promotes socialism.

i wonder what the distinction could be.

the Church of Gun

i grew up in the suburbs of san antonio, a military town in the south-central portion of the gun-loving-est state in the gun-loving-est country in the western world. this was the 1980s, when president reagan was building a nuclear arsenal capable of eliminating all life on the planet and the conservative backlash against all things brown, female, and homo was in full bloom; popular culture was saturated with Rambos and Commandos and Robocops and all-around jingoism that was audacious even by riefenstahlian standards.

which is to say, the equation of White Guys + Guns = USA seemed self-evident. equally self-evident was the danger of Nonwhite Guys + Guns; 1992 was the year that crime peaked in America, and in the bucolic suburban community where i was raised, crime meant "inner cities", which meant young black and hispanic men.

san antonio itself was (and still is) segregated to a shocking degree; there is actually a demarcation where several railroad lines run parallel to one another, side by side, which indicated a division of richer and poorer parts of town; we literally had a "right" and "wrong" side of the tracks. the wrong side meant mexicans, which meant gangs, which meant certain death for an undersized white kid like myself, or so i fervently believed.

my home life had always been treacherous; the specters of divorce, substance abuse and mental illness were constant companions. it was therefore no surprise that my best friend at the time came from a loving, two-parent family that seemed (and apparently was) functional and healthy in every way that mine wasn't. what was a surprise, though, was the passion and pastime of the friend in question.

andrew (as i'll call him here) was obsessed with weaponry. even in junior high, when we began to grow close, there was scarcely a square inch of his bedroom wall left uncovered by weapons and weapons-related propaganda: toy guns, real swords, throwing stars, arrows, shooting range targets, and pro-gun and anti-government bumper stickers and posters, including a large sign referencing the second amendment to the constitution that andrew himself had handwritten, which said simply "...shall not be infringed?" he was also a self-described martial arts expert, having taken years of training in several disciplines, and seemed to be itching for a confrontation.

i should emphasize that andrew was hardly a troubled kid; practically the opposite. he was gregarious, popular, disarming (no pun intended), loyal, and blessed with the kind of social skills that not only made him a natural leader among his friends but helped him attract just about any girl he took an interest in. he loved his parents and sister, was close to his extended family, had been placed in accelerated and gifted classes from elementary school onward; in short, he had, to my eyes at least, an absolutely perfect and care-free life.

and yet he was not only fanatical about weapons of all kinds; he had a streak of paranoia which had convinced him that threats lurked everywhere, a strange fearfulness borne not of experience but fantasy, fueled by movies and television and pulp stories and selectively-read history books. coupled with this paranoia was a religious devotion to weapons, and firearms in particular. andrew was a fundamentalist disciple of the Church of Gun.

i think of the paradox of andrew's worldview as almost a microcosm of american culture at that time: overflowing with abundance bequeathed by prior generations, yet armed to the teeth in order to ward off the barbarians that were always just beyond our gates, ready to destroy our very way of life if we let down our guard for even a moment.

in my seventh grade year, andrew and i were walking home from school, possibly dreaming of imaginary battles and vanquished enemies but more probably discussing the new roundness of our female classmates' upper bodies, when we were approached by two latino boys our own age, one of whom i knew from school. the one i recognized greeted me, shook my hand, then without provocation put the blade of a large knife up to my neck and backed me up against a telephone pole. i was terrified. andrew stood by and watched helplessly, his years of martial arts training apparently melting away at the possibility of actual danger. the knife-wielder whispered a threat i don't recall, then backed off, laughing with his companion. andrew and i walked to his house and he told me i was "ready". he said that he'd been assembling a group of like-minded friends to create a sort of neighborhood crime watch to prevent happenings like the one i'd just experienced. he had been giving his friends "combat training", focused on both hand-to-hand fighting and shooting skills (practiced with pellet guns in his backyard). i was thrilled.

as it turns out, the training was more theoretical than practical; we did a little bit of shooting and there were a few hours spent learning how to block punches and the like, but nothing substantial or regular enough to retain. what was not insubstantial, though, was andrew's fantasy life: he dreamed of one day taking his crew out in the dead of night, dressed like ninjas in all-black, and "taking back the neighborhood". in the future, he believed, society would collapse due to nuclear war or scarcity or some other mad max-style scenario (andrew's favorite film character), and when that happened, he promised, we would be kings (and he would be the king of kings, naturally).

needless to say, neither scenario took place, and yet as we grew into our high school and college years, andrew's paranoia did not subside; pellet guns were replaced with real ones, and the worldview of Threats Are Everywhere + Guns Are Fucking Badass intruded on our every interaction. he attended gun shows almost every weekend, and the few times i came along, a witnessed vendors selling not only formidable arsenals but a disturbing amount of nazi artifacts and various paraphernalia that could only be described as white supremacist; this was the point at which i first began to draw the connection between gun culture and racial paranoia. meanwhile, racist comments from andrew became more frequent, from his warnings that NAFTA would mean a mexican taco vendor on every corner of our neighborhood, to the near-certainty of a coming race war, to suspicion of the jewishness of his college roommate, to a deeply weird phone conversation after i'd moved to new york city in which he told me, in great detail, how he drove by a cotton field and stopped for a few minutes to, in his description, actually pick cotton with his own hands, so that no black person could ever lecture him about slavery. even our junior high neighborhood watch seemed in retrospect to be less a valiant defense of our community (the safest place i've ever lived, incidentially) than a racially obsessed wannabe lynch mob. andrew was clearly angry, but the focus of his anger kept changing; one minute it was directed at "the rich", then at any girl who rejected his advances, then at "minorities" who were getting "handouts" while "we" got nothing, then at a clinton-led government that he saw as tyrannical (this in spite of the fact that andrew himself had been extraordinarily well-served by government, attending elementary, junior high and high schools all recognized as "national exemplary schools" and a low-cost education at one of the finest public universities in america).

meanwhile, i had been growing more politically active and leftward leaning, and felt myself getting further and further from not only andrew's worldview but texas culture in general (and texas gun culture in particular). we drifted apart, and when a romantic betrayal finally sealed the fate of our friendship, it felt not like a bolt from the blue, but the straw that broke the camel's back. we still kept in occasionaly touch, "liking" family photos on Facebook and having coffee on those occasions when i came back to texas, but our infrequent interactions only left me feeling that we were living in entirely different universes -- mine a multicultural cosmopolitan reality, and his an isolated, rural one fueled by conspiracy theories and armed to the teeth for the coming apocalypse.

my alienation from the Church of Gun has been a gradual one, but the final schism came with the Newtown massacre; in the aftermath i finally had to "block" andrew on facebook, along with several other self-appointed high priests of the second amendment, lest my anger get the best of me and i lose a workday furiously arguing with those whose opinions are almost certainly unchangeable. admittedly, mine is just as hardened: i now believe american gun culture to be a cancer on our social and political life, impossible to unwind from racial animosity and white backlash to the civil rights movement, a proudly bloodthirsty dogma that not only defends the right to bear arms as a necessary evil, but celebrates and worships as gods the cold steel instruments designed for the sole purpose of shredding the bones and organs of as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. my suspicion is that i'm not alone; rational conversation on this and other politically-charged topics has all but ceased in the aftermath of the 2012 election, and a cold war of attrition has commenced, with each side grinding out the victories it can until one is finally defeated through either societal collapse or inexorable demographic change in the body politic. andrew has become a symbol in my mind of the Church of Gun, and though he is many things besides (a father to three beautiful children, a loving husband, a loyal friend to those in his circle), i don't think he would shy away from identifying first and foremost as a soldier of the Church. i would not be surprised if he views me similarly as a symbol -- the city-dwelling bleeding heart liberal whose good intentions have the effect of robbing the rest of us of our constitutional freedoms and leaving us in perpetual danger from a government itching to fire up the gas chambers. there is no middle ground between these two views. once a cancer has been diagnosed, the only option is to cut it out.

lately i've found myself having imaginary arguments with an imaginary andrew, raging against phantoms just as i once privately criticized him for doing. i say this to my shame; no one deserves to be reduced to a strawman, and i usually stop myself once i realize what i'm doing, but the imaginary andrew keeps appearing in my mind, bristling with weapons, daring me to take them from his cold, dead hands. it was a surprise, then, when the real andrew called me several weeks ago, leaving a message as friendly as ever: "hey bud; you popped into my head yesterday and i was just wondering how you were." i didn't return the phone call. maybe someday, after the war is over and all our dead are buried, i will.