Here I Is
By: Dr. Arno Launger
Starring: YOU … as you!
Co-starring: Everyone else … as them!
Produced by: YOU … and your friends, past, present and future!
Directed by: YOU … of course.
Music by: YOUR brain … and heart … and soul.
Art direction: Every source in the cosmos.
Here I Is
The potential of life can be expressed in an idiom stolen without remorse from the mouth of a character from the old television show, “The Little Rascals.” Americans in their 50s and 60s now argue about what character specifically gained minor fame for articulating that expression on the old programs, which many Americans spent an inordinate amount of time watching in their younger years.
This is what they tell me at least. I wasn’t there and therefore I cannot profess to understand what was on these shows. I grew up in Denmark. We didn’t have television. We had weaving. I can weave like a bad dog, to evoke another Americanism. For the record, I maintain a feverish “love-hate” relationship with The New World. I admire Yankee spunk, pizza and the 1966 Dodge Barracuda. I abhor me-first’ism, boorish behavior and the overall rudeness that non-Americans detect whenever in the presence of any alumni of the University of Southern California.
Alfafa and the other Rascals gained ownership of the full attention of a certain generation of now-aged Americans, formerly younger than springtime, now older than autumn. Their innocent follies preceded what came later, symbolizing all that was good about post-war America. Life in their supercilious dramas was reduced to silly pratfalls, unlikely storylines and memorable moments of contrived angst, with Darla as heroine and Spanky as provocateur.
Goofing around, one of them would frequently evoke the phrase, “Here I is,” summing up for me at least the essence of existence as I know it. With a doctorate in Distant Hieroglyphics and more than thirty years of teaching, publishing, lecturing and feeding never less than four or five cats I have a certain understanding of why we’re here, what we’re supposed to do with our lives while alive and how in the final analysis automobile windshield wipers work I feel giddily over-prepared to share my primary supposition with you, it being, “Here you is all right.”
You are here. Of that we are certain. I may no longer be here in the future for I am truly Dr. Arno Launger and Buddha has large plans for me once I finish this sentence. But you will still be here. You may not be reading this uniquely inane essay ten minutes and ten years from the moment in which you are reading it now. We can handle that. But we know someone will be infused in the theories expressed within.
Existence can be presupposed to the extent religion can maintain a grip on most living anthropoids, excluding the Estate of Madelyn Murray. The entire humanity proposition could be eviscerated in a Moslem moment or a Military Industrial Complex hiccup. Shoot, even athletes understand that. Until the end, though, there will remain the vast and auspicious present in which things will happen because anthropoids will insist upon it. Sheer inertia will ensure something-or-another.
Any living human being at any time of their choosing can rise from their fetal position in life and effect significant manifestations. The song “Born to Run” is proof of that. This inspirational anthem evolved from the imagination of a singular humanoid from the State of New Jersey and resonated in tens of millions of people’s brains for time immemorial casting a ferocious cascading of light, joy and pulchritude throughout the full void of endless time and intergalactic hyper-reality. A devout Jewish man named “Bruce” got up one morning, took a deep breath and said to himself, “Here I is,” before inventing and molding to perfection one of the most enduring pieces of music since Elvis Presley sang “Old Shep.”
Amazingly great things can evolve from the mere act of getting out of bed with a positive attitude and going down the hall to the towel room. Wanting to actualize the human imperative ensures its likelihood. The best way to be in the game is to get in the game. And the best way to literally be the game is to envision it as you, the player, the catalyst, evoker of truth, overall swell person with matching socks and a general absence of hay in your toupee.
In Denmark there is a popular expression that cuts to the heart of this stratagem. Roughly translated from the ancient Norse tongue it goes something like this: “Be now here.”
How many decades will the old man down the street live? No one knows the answer to this question. But we can ponder his odds of making it past the age of 105. Unless he has lived in an environmental bubble without access to Scotch whiskey or female companionship of other members of his species he is liable to make it to 71 in an area with quality health care providers, and even that presumes a lively breeze from the south.
A safe assumption would be all of us can only assume two or three good decades in our productive lives – that is to say between the fully emboldened years between when we become smart and confident enough to go out into the world making as much noise as we can and the predictable life-phase in which we become more inclined to acquiesce to Lawrence Welk re-runs, and a one and a two and a ….
Doing the math is easier than sweating in a marathon. Two or three good decades, times ten years each, times twelve times those ten times, multiplied by four weeks each, factoring in seven of each of those four, expanding it to the 24th power and then finally contemplating the significance of a single second from the perspective of the emperor of Ethiopia, Mutumbo I Mumble.
I would like to rest my case. I have laid out for you the basic facts of the matter. You can do anything you want while you are alive, since here you are and here you appear to be hanging around for the present time at least. I would like to wrap up my summary immediately and move on with my own agenda, including but not limited to some form of flossing.
I can’t do that though. You don’t believe me. Not yet that is.
Here You Are
So then, here you are. You in this case are “you,” the independently operated human entity that resides within your bodily embodiment. When some teacher or power source points out how entirely unique you are, they are not blowing smoke up your embodiment. They are merely stating a rather astounding fact – that no two people are alike. Being you in this analysis are reflections of a gesture that personifies the gift you represent from everyone who helped you come this far, starting with your parents, of course, and their parents and so on. As Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. would say, and sew on and sew on.
Busy in the knitting mill, you beam or you brood. You smile or you frown. You smell well or you smell like hell. Self definition occurs 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day and all the days of every year you’re blessed with the opportunity of living and breathing on the floating rock in space called Earth, as in dirt, grime and show business. At least two-or-three-thousand times a day, you call the shots as regards your entire presentation as a human being, or a jelly bean. What you project is the real you. It’s either entirely legitimate or implicitly phony. Your brain makes those calls.
As a well-known iconoclast in my native Denmark I spent most of my career in academia and later, the worm farming industry, imbuing the essence of the mucus membrane inducing placebo-like effect typically associated with common table tennis injuries. Over the years I came to realize that banging one’s knee against a pointed table corner was really no different than advanced trigonometry to the extent both preclude previous experience and that promulgators of both dimensions can extrapolate no differentiation in terms of the advanced extermination of rodents, skeptics or their common ancestor, political spin doctors.
Armed with insight and not laden with any scintilla of guilt, I spent the majority of my primary working years spending the minority of my brain cells trying to enrich my quotient of red blood cells with the scientific equivalent of what some refer to as tiny white lies but others simply call blasphemy. Purposely yet playfully I went about my daily tasks with barely controlled mirth, knowing that in deceiving others in very subtle ways I was in fact instructing them on positive life behavior without most of them even knowing what was happening to their bond accounts.
Within Western Culture, this practice of cerebral enhancements became known as Mind Games. Needless to say, I saw it from a different perspective. Because there were only winners in this so-called “game” my sense of what I was accomplishing maintained closer association with what I have always regarded as The Age of Enlightenment. Yes, I often amused my self at the expense of others. But typically those “others” were none the worse for the remarkable transformation they experienced and were frequently much better off than they would have been if I had stayed in my hotel room all day instead of encountering them at various sporting events.
Goofy street theatre techniques eventually overtook the formerly standardized components of my alleged personality. I went from obstructive to absurdist over a four-or-five-decade period and eventually morphed into complete and abject circus clown after a life-altering séance conducted at the camp ground where I continue to live with a coterie of abandoned household pets and my lifetime partner, Eleanor Fudd. In this encounter with deceased souls I discovered the value of flossing and also came to terms with the potentially career damaging practice of calling women “guys.” The late-Bishop James Pike spoke to me personally from the other side, calling me an imposter, a charlatan and a Detroit Lions fan. To mute his criticisms I reminded the reverend I am no slacker when it comes to retrieving firewood and pointed out that at least two or three sources over my lifetime had inferred at one time or another that I could be a nice person if I really tried. I rarely did.
Adapting various wigs and clothing ensembles throughout what should have been my adulthood I kept people guessing, mostly me. Because I could be whoever and whatever I wanted to be by going from redhead one day to Dead Head the next, I truly upset a lot of truck drivers and cast considerable doubt on the quality of education at the many institutions where I was both a student and an instructor, a hobo and a no-show. Sex change surgery had no real appeal as I was completely uprooted in both identity and astrological sign. When women ignored me because I was emulating the American pioneer and Indian-killer, Davy Crockett, I had only to adjust from Leo to Pisces long enough to beguile them into thinking I had real potential in the insurance business even though I couldn’t identify an indemnity policy in a stack of old Playboy magazines.
Only in the final days of my career phase as linguist/hypochondriac did I and the rest of the uncivilized world finally wake up to the ultimate bottom-line truth of all existence, that is, we define ourselves every second of every minute of every hour and sew on and sew on. As the old Negro spiritual goes, that freedom did indeed set me free, did it ever! Alive at last, I thought as my libido raced ahead of my tattered sense of morality and delivered me to evil, relatively speaking that is. Then bewilderment set in, followed closely by deception, deliberation and deforestation. By the time I reached the Age of 60 so many counteracting mechanisms were in play within my cardio vascular system I became a stock market wizard, founded the next Google (called Gargle) and opened up a camp for retired airline stewardesses beneath The Bible Belt but above the Argyle Sock Line.
There in the reverie of a thousand sunsets I composed the song, “Hey Dude,” thereby liberating all of suburban Tuscaloosa, Alabama in a single A-minor chord.
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Composition/Expressionism
Hyper self actualization approaches its zenith when the creative juices start heating up in your cerebellum. Seriously, everyone, you get that Ghost Rider in the Sky vibe seeping off your arms and fingers telling you it’s time to get a notebook out and write the sequel to “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” Then what are you gonna’ do, start a race riot? No, you’re going to repeat “War and Peace.” Except this time it’s gonna’ be “Thor and Greece.”
Keep in mind the same brain that encourages you to lay it on the line in artistic posing also projects many counteracting signals designed to repress your need to express, or, as it weren’t, undress your psyche in public there for all the town bullies and corrupt public officials to cop superiority complexes around.
And the same hands that help you at least attempt to play your guitar with any skills resembling respectable also had to wash the dishes last night, so I wouldn’t expect any advanced callus advantage when it comes to trying to lay down a clever lick or any lick at all, even a semi-lick, partially accomplished.
Everyone you ever meet will knock down your airy nature and seek to permanently rub it into the ground with admonitions such as, “Sure, be an artist, but not as your primary vocation,” they will insist, dropping the bomb on every promising instinct that ever crossed your mind. “Just do it by yourself in a closet when you get home from your day job.”
The sad facts are, too many people listen. Fewer than one-percent of all people who know they should be artists ever demonstrate the tenacity required to overcome all the negativity imposed by society on the aspirations of those wispy enough to hear the voices within and live the creative life.
An adult artist is a person who overcame all the incendiary devices, flew beneath the flak and made it through the minefield of dissent with enough persistence and irrational self belief to arrive at a life worth living.
The distance between creator of art and consumer of art can often be measured by instruments of pleasure such as the shoe horn but, generally speaking, these two camps are as different as light purple and mauve. Seen from within the perspective of a classic continuum the people who are loose enough to make the stuff are off on one end of a circular design and the folks rich enough to consume it are so far to the other end their rear-ends actually touch near the apex of the vortex known as Judy’s List.
You can join the legions of cut-their-own-ears-off masochists-called-artists from over the ages as easily as you can wash your feet this year. The bus to frustration runs through all hamlets in nearby Wales offering seats to anyone strange enough to aspire to the aesthetic life. Qualifications include: wispiness; flatulence; contempt for hygiene; and triglycerides.
One in one-thousand might earn a few shillings during their performing years igniting perhaps four or five audiences to the point anyone involved could remember any of what occurred after a period of less than a full decade.
Knowing the premise is to make as much of the oxygen you’re given as you glide from youth to uncouth as you can without embarrassing your next-door neighbors, it’s difficult to ignore the prerogatives of leaving your mark upon the great artistic swath of whatever that undulates through all cultures, generations and Children of Adult Swingers recovery groups.
Although there can only be one Elvis as all the sequins are used up now, there is really no logical limit to how many Elvis impersonators society can accommodate while the electricity systems still function and beer consumption remains illegal in rural Virginia. As an archetypical anomaly, Elvis embodied artifact assemblage. His coterie of men named Ray surrounded him at all times including bedtime. But that shouldn’t stop you from singing in the stream as long as you still devalue personal hygiene.
Blame Rays. Even though their mandate was to protect him from the masses, their inability to finesse the missus contributed to his demise, complicated eventual analysis and served primarily to stifle the normal urgings of Mormon missionaries in the impoverished suburbs of Steamboat Springs.
Knowing that having not enough icons is as cosmically offensive as having an excess buildup of belly mass, my studies lead me to conclude what I call “The Elvis Syndrome” has been replicated by all societies for all of recorded time and as far as I can tell, even beyond that although everything is subject to reconsideration, including the original purpose of this now-runway essay. Elvis-like entities appear in Hindu mythology, Pakistani propaganda and even instructional booklets accompanying the cooking process for making acidic candy bars in primitive Beverly Hills. Even Eskimos have an equivalent concept – frosted funny glue.
In my lectures in the sociology labs of rural Yugoslavia I challenge students to visualize a world in which Elvis-like apparitions one day are completely taken for granted and the new cultural nobility become transparently reflective of the average lout, the common garden snake and everyday yuppies all the way down to the cell phone rigged on the beltline and omnipresent carry-out coffee cup, frosted hair akimbo in the mall.
Elvis, I tell them in a multiple of languages, was an attractive man, generous in the redistribution of his scarf collection and always salubrious to the larger pharmaceutical industry specifically in the realm of research and development. Legions of fans weren’t delusional; he was the real deal. The only problem was, in elevating him to larger than life status they in the process also unknowingly sold themselves short in terms of their own distinct place in the universe.
Diminished in his presence, they left 78 percent of their life potential in the juke boxes and movie houses of America, from the time The King emerged on the national stage in the mid-1950s until he succumbed to sleeping pills later that century, opening the way for the eventual succession of M&M, Puff Daddy, Maureen O’Sullivan and Saco and Vanzetti.
Ironically, nee perversely, none of this was the idea of Elvis, no more than any of you are descended from the ancestral cesspool of the extended family of the actor who played the original Lone Ranger, BEFORE there was television not to mention the ear-plug. Elvis did not set out to purposefully disrupt the logical hierarchy of man and beast, woman and jewelry or constable and corruption. All he wanted to do was sing, man, shake your booty, and help establish rock-‘n-roll before he took his place beside the real King in the sky, the ultimate rock star, our prince and savior, Jesus the Lord, son of God and holy role model personified.
There, in Hippie Heaven, blissful in a circle of dear friends and trusted twisted zealots, Elvis spoke to himself these cherished words: “Bo Did Lee did it.” Further schisms ensued, delirium reigned and acute echoing overcame the silence making a sound not dissimilar from the ruffling of an infant ocelot’s shawl. There, at the end of his conscious existence, this Man of Memphis finally connected his anonymous past with his subsequent notoriety and gained the awareness needed to evolve into post mutation, defying technology and redefining bio-diversity.
Ahem.
