In class tonight, I had this thought right in the middle but didn't want to give voice to it because I hadn't refined it enough yet. What if the way forward and back, up and down, is the same because there is no way? What if we are stationary bits of cipher in the midst of an infinite and incomprehensible Reality that whirls around us, adding to and taking away from our little nothings? Then there's only one direction to go--nowhere, because everywhere and everything and everytime are coming at us all at once.
In an apparently unrelated turn of events, I had my iPod on shuffle on my way home tonight. The second song that came on was this song by Foo Fighters. I actually hadn't thought about this song as being particularly deeply philosophical before, since I always thought it was about either rioting or some backstabbing/fickle friend/lover. Now I can't figure out if it's that or solipsist or inspired by Finnegans Wake. "I'm finished making sense / Done pleading ignorance." WHAT. I thought about it for a while and then I realized I was still driving so I should probably think about that.
And then, about three songs later--possibly more because I skipped some stuff in between--this other song by Seether came on (warning: PG-13 content, just saying). I feel like it's significant but I don't totally know why yet. Maybe it has to do with reality spinning all around and nobody feels like they belong so we're all faking. That's really cynical. "Who's to know if your soul will fade at all / The one you sold to fool the world / You lost your self esteem along the way, yeah / Good God, you're coming up with reasons / Good God, you're dragging it out / Good God, it's the changing of the seasons..." If anyone has other ideas about why that's of great import, please tell me. Or perhaps it's merely referential mania kicking in; thus in part the title of this post.
AND THEN. This song came on immediately after (another warning: semi-chauvinistic innuendo in two languages). There are two things about it that struck me. First is one of the lyrics: "...back like a crawfish in the name of progress." Bit of a stretch, but I almost backed my car into my garage door when I heard it, mostly because I'm now fairly certain I'm getting a Nabokov-worthy case of referential mania. Second was the fact that it's in English and Hebrew. I speak Arabic, which is a cousin of Hebrew, so every time I hear this song, I hear all these cognate Arabic/Hebrew words amid an ocean of kshhkkki kvisi faelsdlguasdgj that makes zero sense to me. It's again a little like Finnegans Wake--the same sense of "I should know what's going on" coupled with "hey that sounds really cool and I don't necessarily care that I don't know what's going on."
(Yes, I do have very weird taste in music. Fun factoid: via those songs, you just went to at least three different countries. You're welcome for the cultural experience.)
Last thing, I promise. This is more of an epistle than I thought it would be, though hopefully I haven't pulled too many comma-ridden Saint Paul sentences on you all yet. Anyway, as I was settling myself in for a nice, relaxing, popcorn-for-the-brain read in the form of a Clive Cussler novel (don't judge), I came to the last part of the novel. Part V: Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down. Again, WHAT. I nearly threw the book. Incidentally, that part of the book is about flushing Hitler's ashes down the White House toilet, but as far as I'm concerned, such niggling details are immaterial. We had just finished discussing Ring Around the Rosy and then I find a reference to it in a completely unrelated, semi-lowbrow book. I don't even know.
It's at this point that I realize I will go certifiably insane if I keep thinking about this because Reality is trying to knock a hole in my brain and I can't handle it. So I guess I'll just leave this here and you all can kick it around if you like.
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