It's coming upon us again, a new year. A day in which, like a birthday, we put our hopes and wishes toward a better time, a better day, a happier moment. Something to remove us out of the day to day insipidity of life, if only for a moment, a countdown, a toast. I feel like it's a bit silly at times, to celebrate, to try to fool ourselves into building a construct out of life that does not really exist within us, a facade that carries us through that day as many other facades do for many others.
So this is the new year /And I don't feel any different /The clanking of crystal /Explosions off in the distance.
So this is the new year /And I have no resolutions /For self assigned penance /For problems with easy solutions.
So everybody put your best suit or dress on /Let's make believe that we
are wealthy for just this once /Lighting firecrackers off on the front
lawn /As thirty dialogs bleed into one.
I wish the world was flat like the old days /Then I could travel just by
folding a map /No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways /There'd
be no distance that could hold us back.
So this is the New Year...
(DCFC)
The message of the artist is clear. The song depicts a disdain of life, of these celebrations. He wants to break free and go away from it all, perhaps forever. But to me, a celebration can be just the opposite of what he describes. Let is think for a moment what it is that drives us to celebrate. Is it the desire to be around people? The desire to break free for a moment? What pushes us to live for the day, to live for the future, while all other days we live drowning in monotony as the wave pushes us along?
It may be the same reason we search for love. We look for someone to complete us, someone to come along and tell us that it'll all be alright, that there is nothing to fear, that life is pure, and good, and sweet, even when the world can be so cruel and bitter, when every day we encounter hundreds or thousands of people and ignore them, people with their own problems and questions, people who, like you, are looking for a friend or a shoulder to lean on, bound by society to block any expression of that fear and longing within, or perhaps blocked of even that desire entirely.
Even as we get older, those that we have loved in years past become distant, like brothers who talk once a month when they once used to stick up for one another in school years ago, or friends who only talk occasionally when they once spent every afternoon together in the time of their youth. We build up walls between ourselves and others, out of fear. A five-year-old is not afraid to run around naked in front of everyone. A seven-year-old already realizes that society deems this uncouth, and becomes bashful. Even from our youth we feel the straightjacket beginning to push us away from ourselves. And we soon forget that that jacket was even placed upon us at all.
And then, as death and sickness approach, as time all of a sudden becomes of the essence, only then do those relationships manifest themselves once more in all of their glory. Why is that? Why did it take for the grand tragedy of 9/11 in America and 3/11 in Japan for the people to come together, to help, to feel a little closer? And why have we since grown apart? Why is it that, when a country is attacked, do the people then turn inward and focus on their own safety and security instead of that of others? The reason is not terribly complicated. It is those moments, like a birthday or a new year, that mark our living in the present, stamping us in the passage of time. In those moments, precious and few and costly as though they may be, do we truly find ourselves as bearing intrinsic value. We become in touch with our corporeality and our instincts, things that are eschewed by society. And all of a sudden, the depression lifts, the barriers break, and we celebrate, or cry, or emote to levels so rarely expressed in life, akin to the highest passions of a religious experience. And then, we recede as quickly as we expressed.
For some reason, and this I do not know, we have chosen being shelled in as the status quo. You can certainly bet that the driving force of someone jumping off of the Brooklyn Bridge is not coming from the happiest or most passionate moments in life. It is not even coming during a moment of loss. It comes from the emptiness, from a lack of true communication between that person and others around, between that person and the world. The rational mind has taken over the individual; that is the scariest part of all of it, the part that society cannot cope with. Despite the fact that we frown upon the notion of suicide, calling it utterly "irrational," the philosophers often hailed it as man's greatest achievement over nature, since no other being we know of would do such a thing, to comprehend the meaninglessness of life in our society and to cut it short. It seems to me to be irrational to think otherwise. The emotional expressions that so many seek to give and receive is forbidden at most times. It is actually within our externally emotional state that we can find commonality with others. In this case, a celebration, when apropos, is not something to be frowned upon for its wanton and fleeting nature. It is the moment when we are most in touch with the world, the moment when we realize there is actually a bigger picture than just the monotony of the self and the hidden face of the world.
So is the life of a party animal the most valuable of them all? It would seem to be the case. But I would also argue that if that person is partying not to live it up, but to instead drink and smoke and forget it all, then that person is neglecting an essential duty in bettering the world, in creating a greater community, in working to break down barriers among people instead of simply continuously breaking down one's own. To celebrate and live for the moment is one important part of life. To make it so that others can celebrate that much more, instead of living in the dust and sadness of poverty and abuse, is far greater a cause.
To be at the jumping point, to desire more than anything else in the world the cool neck of a pistol in your throat or the noose around your neck, means that society has utterly failed you. To take the lives of others is an abomination that comes from some deep-seated wrong in one's inner being (I discuss the cases in which mental instability issues are not the primary cause). I would honestly hope that a vast majority of people in this world would rather work for a collective betterment, for communal harmony, and not for more barriers. For the barriers only lead to isolation, while expressions of love and support, of grief and harmony, are lasting gifts to the human race and preventions of neglecting others by the sidelines.
May the New Year and the festivities therein be toward those better days ahead.
