The Reason Why I Drink: A Confession In Seven Parts by Xavier Wayson, One For Every Day Of The Week (Spring 2015 edition)
Wednesday . . .
‘Performing today’s circus act is serious business.’
My name is Xavier Wayson and I drink all the time. I drink because the charade we call This Day and Age is too watered down to enjoy. Today’s way of life, so boring, lustreless, bland, grey, sometimes colorful in an ephemeral way. No gravel in the mix. No gumption. Gone is the grace of the fifties, the roar of the twenties, the excess of the eighties, the love and idealism of the sixties, the determination of the forties, the grit of the seventies. No more spunk and spine. Just offence. Oh my God, how dare you?! Don’t say that, it’s offensive, I am offended, shocked, don’t say such things. Don’t do this, don’t do that, health and safety über alles because lawsuits. Liabilities. Rules and regulations high enough to bury Mount Everest, and fancy disclaimers, small print and recording cameras keeping tabs till the end of time. Big brother meets little snitch, gathering data, shaping public opinion. Beware of the thought police, its wagging fingers are out to shame you. Don’t slip up, don’t blink, stay tuned 24/7, four seasons a year, and watch how you comport yourself when expressing your views. The cultural omnitolerance of everything to the point of making everything malfunction is real, surrounding you, five trillion toes you’re not supposed to step on and a sea of eggshells on which you must dance, wearing that made-up smile on your mask-of-a-face, pretending to be civil and care-ful. ‘Be well, everyone.’
Fuck you, you clown bastards! This circus act you call ‘civilized and proper life’ is the worst thing the world has known since the rise of religious fundamentalism. A never-ending vaudeville act. Everyone dancing to the tunes of today’s civility, pretending to be on the straight and narrow, heading for the promised land. They wish! All a lie, a scam. A ball of deceit, conceit, and righteousness, fake smiles all around, fake beauty marks, makeup and frills, scripts, lines. A culture of performers putting on a show for the easily impressed. A culture of appearances turning into apparitions; shadows of men and women, once of flesh and blood, fiery aspiration gradually reduced to echoes and flashes, flashbacks, throwbacks, rehearsed routines, succulent groupthink. A consensus manufactory, for everyone’s eyes only. Advance of the high-handed sourpuss in disguise. Take a look in the mirror and spot the fakery. Spot the infectious absurdity. Charades all around, behind closed doors, behind the glass of HD screens, the never-ending showmanship pretending to hold the future by the scruff of the neck when all it holds is animate life by the windpipe, crushing it.
So I drink. I imbibe to replace the lost breath and zest lost with spirit, some kind of inspiration and vision on what constitutes a full life, reminding myself that there’s more to the world than the circus act of propriety and entertainment.
For a less tart world.
For a balanced and tolerable case of heartburn.
Watch this space for Thursday . . .