What struck me immediately was how socially disconnected he was. He did not know what was funny. He broke social conventions because he simply did not recognize them by feeling them. So of course I speculated he had Asberger’s. And looking this up, it is quite astonishing how many famous people are claimed by some to have been somewhere on the autism spectrum: https://awetismhalloffame.wordpress.com/tag/andy-kaufman/
Bill Gates. Albert Einstein. Bela Bartok. Arthur Conan Doyle. Tim Burton. Samuel Becket. Look at it. It is quite an interesting list.
And I wondered about the value of his performance art. His fights with Jerry Lawler. His continual hoaxes, to the point where it was impossible to say for certain he even died, even though his death certificate was issued. The logic of his friends in stating publicly he DID fake his death, fed by the continued appearances of Tony Clifton.
And then I got to thinking about the nature of creativity. Life itself is confusing. We are born, we know we are going to die, and we don’t know a whole lot more than that, or at least most of us. Human kind builds behavioral patterns which promote peace, which minimize our existential anxiety, and get most of us from one side of life to the other.
All acts of genuine newness are inherently potentially unbalancing. Their effects are hard to predict, and for this reason much of human history has consisted in punishing innovation. Our modern world has evolved from the idea that creativity is an inherent and beneficial need for human beings, that in some respect the “quest for the self” is part of our nature, and that social institutions needed to evolve to meet this need.
But I think many of us, now, are confused and perplexed by the very speed with which creativity is happening all around us, all the time. Nothing seems to be given any more. We are even now trying to grapple with the long term social effects of smart phones. I have been wondering recently what will happen as Virtual Reality continues to distance our awareness from the given universe. It allows us to create universes to our liking. Is this good? As with most things, the answer is likely that the effects are mixed. Some good things become possible, but many bad things do too.
The Hindus and others believe that the universe as we perceive it is a giant illusion, and that recognizing this, progressively, is the path to Enlightenment, and lasting joy and innate fulfillment.
So I suppose it was logical for Kaufman, as a dedicated member of the TM movement, to CREATE illusions, to show people that much of what we take to be true isn’t.
And I think of Michaelangelo, dissecting dead bodies, in an act that would have seen him hung in public had he been caught, doing so to perfect his art, to create something better than what had hitherto been created, and in any event, something different, something unique, something uniquely his.
What I feel is that there is a pendulum, or a balance is a better metaphor, in which we are born to create, but within bounds. We need a relatively stable platform within which to evolve, but that if we do so too quickly, we lose all connection with our sense of self, and this is a terrible loss, which is spiritually detrimental. Every day becomes an act of recreation, and this is not a good use of time, I don’t think.
This, I feel, is the root attraction to “socialism”: it promises an end to relentless change. I can feel this mythic attraction, one seen in, among other films, Dr. Strange. Dormamu is, on my reading, a symbol for stasis, and Socialism its political expression. This is perhaps the Yin to the Yang of highly creative people. It is why so many creative sorts have always been drawn to Communism and the many words used as synonyms.
And I feel, too, the wisdom, of a sort, of the medieval Church burning heretics. They may have been personally sympathetic in some ways to what these people had to say, but felt that the society as a whole was at risk.
We stopped burning heretics some time ago, although the process is still continual, seen metaphorically. The need for social stability, the need to be able to predict, looking to the people on your left and to your right, what they believe, and how they will behave. Only in conditions of relative stability can people truly relax, and relate authentically.
Or is this true? Does INstability breed truer sentiments? These are deep, highly abstract questions, likely left for concrete contexts and times.
What I feel, though, that we need now is a reliable context for human connection. We have lost this ability, in far too many cases. Traditionalists retain the benefits of their particular delusions, but the avante garde among us are not better for having substituted new delusions.
Happiness is rooted in misery.Misery lurks beneath happiness.Who knows what the future holds?There is no honesty.Honesty becomes dishonest.Goodness becomes witchcraft.Man’s bewitchment lasts for a long time (Tao Te Ching, 58)
What I feel is that all too often, we seek to control the world, to order it, but this ordering is always a lie of sorts. Kaufman screamed “The world is not real”, but of course dedicated himself to a very long term and very diligent spiritual practice.
What I feel is that when we stop imposing order on the world, stop building sheltering caves in the vast darkness we see, then and only then does the true order of the universe reveal itself. This is the essence, as I understand it, of the Buddhist teaching of the unconditioned nature of reality.
I have been trying to anchor myself and my own work–which I cannot honestly say yet that I have even begun–in some sort of context. It is a huge advantage, in seeking to see formlessness, to have a form of sorts to come back to, until you have learned to live there, learned to breathe that air. Emotionally, I need some sort of context, some sort of tradition.
I am not a born Buddhist. I am not a Tibetan. I am an American, who was raised watching Gilligan’s Island, eating Hamburger Helper, spending my time talking with friends about new movies, new music (new to me or us, since many like to go back now), and feeling a relative stranger to everyone I meet. What binds us? I am not the first to ask this. We have no religion. And we are Godless, if we reference God as a metaphor for what binds us. This is the root reason for the obsessiveness of the Left in the world today: there is nothing else. How else to explain all the Question Authority hippies now DEMANDING an omnipotent government, which we already KNOW is abusing its unfathomable powers, and which we KNOW is quite capable of an eternal dictatorship.
Perhaps they would even want the world run by Artificial Intelligence, by a God of our own making, which cannot know more than what we tell it, which is simply an infinite Games Master, which perfects all the moves on a board it cannot expand, since it is lacking spirit. Which condenses the universe as it IS, to what can be portrayed and represented symbolically. Which casts a net over life on this Earth, because we have demanded to be confined as a form of protection from all that we cannot know.
Where I am feeling presently some kinship is the mid-century artists who tried, and failed, to build something new. When I look back, in my rudimentary and very, very incomplete understanding, I feel that the Beats, and people like John Cage and Martha Graham, were the last generation that were still culturally American. They were looking everywhere else, but they still had their feet planted in a culture they were wanting to change from within, which reacted when they protested, because it still believed something. There were still rules they were self consciously breaking. Now, there are no rules, none that are sacred in any meaningful sense.
Here is a comment by John Cage that struck me:
In a 1957 lecture, Experimental Music, he described music as “a purposeless play” which is “an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living”.
Another:
When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic—here on Sixth Avenue, for instance—I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound […] I don’t need sound to talk to me.
It does seem obvious to me that there is a homology here–and indeed with his infamous 4’33”–and Kaufman’s work.
Within all this is a sense many of us have that the world is being slowly built in the image of a machine. Design is the essence of the machine. It is what we make it. It is likely accurate to say that Cage saw music, itself, as a sort of machine from which he wanted to escape, though randomness– which is to say, the universe as it is, and not as we make it. His was in some respects an act of humility, even if seen socially it was audacious. So many of us, I suspect, resented that reminder, both of where we come from, and where we seem to be going.
There are, I think, some interesting musings here. My brain is tired, though. I need to shower and go for a walk.