(Prelude)Tea Leaves of Neopostmodern America; Heroes and Celebrities
Long have I found it irrational to ask people of themselves or about society. What emerges even from the most sensible of beings is a unique American cognitive dissonance that can only be better diagnosed and toggled by German and Jewish philosophers rationalizing the world and culture after WWII. This weekend I unknowingly or perhaps even knowingly wandered into the cave of American meta-culture and descended into its zeitgeist to watch the rituals and shadows on the walls as they danced in and out of the light, like tea leaves of a neo-postmodern now/future. Perhaps I entered this place because over the last half a decade, I have found myself consistently considering dystopias with the constant drum roll of a reminder that every dystopia is (wo)man-made and is someone’s best life, with a spiritual nowhere.
In my younger years, I use to interview rappers. It meant nothing to me, but it meant a lot to others. I did it for the experience. I grew up in a household where poetry was something written and read, not spoken. What rappers did was poetry to me, written and performed. For many though, it (hip hop) existed as a truth. The founder of the philosophical school of American Pragmatism in the 1870s Charles Sanders Peirce and his better-known friend, fellow pragmatist, and father of American Psychology, Williams James stated: “truth is that in which you are willing to die for”. That’s a bit extreme and too postmodern for me, long before the word existed. In the 1990s though, this idea of thinking was simply known as, “keepin it real”.
On one of those wintry, mid-90s snowy nights, I found myself in the back of the Fox Theater waiting for the backdoor to open while future leaders, moralist, matrons, politicians and trust fund malcontents giggled off the residue of a Rocky mountain high. The backstage, tenebrosity, and rider of a hip hop show, composed of fast food, liquor and recreational provisions for medical purposes can reveal more about the character of the people you associate with than you will ever learn from speaking with them, reading a resume or a future biography of a said person. Words written and spoken by the self are only pictures, postures, and projections of light. Any photographer will tell you a picture is only a moment and rarely the truth.
That said, here, I sat backstage above the green room, in a dark corridor waiting to interview Slick Rick, hip hop’s 80s Mr. Debonair turned 90s immigration boogeyman. A young one-eye Billy Dee Williams, though only a Xer like myself, a man slightly past his prime in a field where youth, wealth and recklessness were celebrated over wisdom and consistency and that’s just what history and the general society said about poets, not what the culture of hip hop had expressed, but it wasn’t far off.
Rick hastily emerged from the darkness by himself as white suburban kids moved about and around him almost as if he wore a veil of invisibility. How quickly the lights go out. I stepped forward from the shadows and approached him, his black body abounded in gold dookie chains, rings, and fronts as he began the process of removing the imagery he was known for. I explained I was here to do an interview, approved by his publicist. All the time though, I was astonished by the amount of jewelry he wore, whereas my lips moved, and sounds came out, my eyes were transfixed and spoke another language. “Mr. Rick, I’m Ken, Julie (maybe) from Def Jam has said I can interview you”.
In his polite British accent, he apologized for this not being a good time and his rebuff had a weight of sincerity, as he began to quickly drop his rings and chains into a large empty white plastic pickle bucket. The hollowness and clanking of his wealth to the bottom of that bucket rang out and resonated for the moment and throughout time much louder than any words he could have spoken or cultural wisdom he could have expressed at that moment. He finished up, turned and walked out the backdoor, into the cold night air, to be submerged into the mist of autograph seekers, as I was left standing there alone. Oddly, I felt not at a lost for an interview I would not receive or that I had wasted a 45 minute drive through ice and snow.
I felt I had an “Open sesame!” moment. In the most unusual of places a childhood hero had taught me about fame and that the culture of hip hop (entertainment) wasn’t real; it was leased cars, street, and cultural hustlers and that postmodernism life, was living without the myths. From that moment, forward, I knew much of many people’s lives and celebrity culture was only truck jewelry.
