"I think it's really tragic when people get serious about stuff. It's such an absurdity to take anything really seriously ... I make an honest attempt not to take anything seriously, I worked that attitude out about the time I was eighteen.
I mean, what does it all mean when you get right down to it, what's the story here? Being alive is so weird."
~ from No Commercial Potential: The Saga of Frank Zappa, by David Walley
3 comments:
Hold it right there DB! Even FZ's laissez faire nonchalance had its limits.
Having the financial independence to remain above the pecksniffs, bullies and nutjobs who promulgate rules that don't seem to apply to themselves is a luxury FZ didn't seem to grasp. His logic is obvious; outside/above the fray. Down in the trenches things are different.
I heartily embraced that whole philosophy until it was pointed out to me that the serious people were SERIOUS about controlling EVERYTHING. At which point, I had to get equally serious about telling them to go fuck themselves.
What that has cost me, socially and financially, is more than made up for by my inner satisfaction.
Certainly, Rehctaw...Most don't have the freedom to reduce external pressures without the concomitant risk of social and financial ostracism - and we might also view FZ's purported insouciance through the frame of his upbringing in a particular zenith of conformity, the sunbelt defense establishment of the Eisenhower 50's and an attempt to reject the anti-artistic thought patterns generated therein.
Subsequently, Reagan's 80's came pretty damn close to regenerating that level of slavishly cowed obedience to authority in its own way, and may have 'succeeded' where the earlier era did not.
I differ with the quote's implied strategy in that taking the refinement of the technical approach to what I do seriously (as did Zappa in his formative years, belying his own words in this context) maximizes the seemingly effortless frivolity to come.
;>)
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." -Kristofferson
"64 percent of all the world's statistics are made up right there on the spot
82.4 percent of people believe 'em whether they're accurate statistics or not
I don't know what you believe but I do know there's no doubt
I need another double shot of something 90 proof
I got too much to think aboutToo much to think about
Too much to figure out
Stuck between hope and doubt
It's too much to think about
Too much to think about
Too much to figure out
Stuck between hope and doubt
It's too much to think about" - Todd Snider
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