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| Nothing was left of Building 6 but an intolerable
eyesore. |
Valuable Real Estate
If the debris left in the wake of the World Trade Center "collapses" had not been gathered up and shipped out of the country immediately, some of the country's most valuable real estate could not have been redeveloped so quickly.
People tend to forget how lucky we are that things worked out this way. The U.S. has always been a place where unscrupulous developers could get rich quick, and as President Bush so brilliantly remarked, we were not about to let the terrorists change our way of life.
An Intolerable Eyesore
Had the scene been left untouched, the eyesore would have been intolerable for ordinary working citizens in penthouse apartments with panoramic views of the city. Clearly, the fire inspectors and crime scene investigators who objected to the prompt removal of most of the evidence were so overwhelmed by grief and rage that they didn't realize how inappropriate it would have been to apply standard investigative tools to such a non-standard crime scene.
They posed another potentially serious problem which, through the judicious abuse of standard procedures, we were lucky to avoid.
A Minor Stroke
There was no such problem with the crash site in Shanksville because nobody could find any indication that a plane had crashed there, so there was very little to clean up and hardly any evidence that needed to be destroyed in a hurry.
And even if you think this is not a major issue, you can't deny that it was a stroke of good fortune. Perhaps it was only a minor stroke, but more important lucky breaks were still to come.
Fingerprints
Most of us found comfort in the facts (1) that Jerome Hauer knew the attack bore "the fingerprints of somebody like Osama bin Laden" and (2) that he spoke so freely and so confidently so early.
But a few people were threatened by his analysis, for the oddly irrelevant reason that their fingerprints and Osama bin Laden's fingerprints were very similar.
DNA
As you know, forensic science puts more stock in DNA than fingerprints nowadays, but these people found no comfort in that fact because their DNA was even more similar than their fingerprints. There's no surprise in any of this because the people in question were members of Osama bin Laden's family.
And if Jerome Hauer was right about the fingerprints, these people may have been in danger of detention, interrogation, retribution, or all three.
A Well-Meaning Philanthropist
Fortunately a well-meaning philanthropist noticed the potential problem developing, and arranged a flight which collected Osama bin Laden's relatives from all around the country and flew them to Saudi Arabia, where they would be much safer. And luckily whoever organized the flight was extremely well-connected. Otherwise that flight would have been prohibited.
All civilian air traffic was grounded at the time because of the enormous security risks that are created when airplanes are allowed to fly freely. But the legal obstacles were overcome, and the chief suspect's relatives were delivered safely. It's a shame that we never found out who organized the flight because we've never had an opportunity to express our gratitude.
Standard Practice
You can't please everyone, and a few bothersome individuals tried to make a big deal out of this, but looking back on it we can see that this flight represented a lucky break for all of us. For the bin Ladens it was a quick escape which must have relieved a great deal of stress. For the rest of us, it was one less thing to worry about as we rebuilt our national identity in the wake of the disaster.
And as it turned out, standard practice in a major criminal investigation is to lock down the scene and not let anybody out until they have been thoroughly questioned, except of course for the closest relatives of the chief suspect, who obviously need to leave early.
Gullible
But the slickest timely departures of all were the least visible to the American people, who could hardly believe what they were seeing and hearing and couldn't even begin to imagine what they weren't seeing and hearing.
Oops! I misspoke. Let's try again: There were a handful of American people who were smarter than a brick and they couldn't believe what they were seeing and hearing at all. It didn't take very long before those people were being called "crazy" and "unhinged" and "delusional" and so on.
The word "gullible" was thrown around and it didn't take an optical genius to see that everything was being turned upside down in real time. Even an ordinary non-optical non-genius could see that the people who could hardly believe what they were seeing and hearing were having that problem because what they were seeing and hearing didn't make any sense.
Information Warfare
Within a few hours of the first plane hitting the first tower, the news had spread so far so fast that everyone knew what had happened, or at least we would have known what had happened if we'd been getting credible news reports on the day.
Credible news reports were of historical interest only at that point, even though most of us still thought we were getting reliable information. But we should have known better.
We were getting nonsense masquerading as "news", and it was coming from the giant corporations which had bought up all the former "news providers" in the country. What we once saw as "journalism" had been turned into a tool for the use of the psychopaths who had taken over the government. And they were in the midst of a war of information against us.
But that's an understatement too, because the information warfare was just beginning, and it would be waged not only against the people of the United States, but against the people of the world.
A Sudden Break with Reality
By noon in the Eastern time zone, the most shocking crime ever committed on American soil had been been solved.
Our national heroes, who'd had no idea four hours earlier that there was any trouble on the horizon, and therefore could not have done anything to protect us, had suddenly figured out who had attacked us and why, what the faceless monsters behind the attack wanted and why, and what we must do about it in order to preserve our "credibility" as an ally to our friends and as an existential threat to everyone else.
None of This was True
None of this was true. None of it was even possible. The "event" we'd just "witnessed" was absolutely impossible to explain. And the story we were being fed to "explain" it was dripping with contradictions and smelled like fresh manure.
Fragrance in the Air
But only a few people noticed the dripping, and hardly anybody noticed the fragrance in the air. They were so stunned by the images they had seen, or just so stunned in general, that it never dawned on them that the whole world was being turned upside-down in real time.
Rather than dealing with the discomfort of having the rug pulled out from under their feet, so to speak, they kept their feet on the rug and somehow failed to notice that gravity was starting to pull them in the wrong direction.
This would have been very difficult to do on 9/10. But it was much easier once we'd seen the precedent that was set when the towers collapsed upwards.
Photo Essay:
Sudden Upside-Down Syndrome (SUDS)
Sudden Upside-Down Syndrome (SUDS)
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| Uncle Sam wants you ... |
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| ... to feel as though you're right-side up
... |
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| ... and to think that everything is fine ...
|
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| ... except of course we just got attacked
... |
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| ... so everything is not fine ... |
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| ... but everything will be fine ...
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| ... if you can just keep ... |
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| ... your feet on the rug ... |
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| ... while it's being pulled out ... |
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| ... from under you, without noticing ... |
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| ... that everything ... |
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| ... is being turned upside down ... |
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| ... but it's OK ... in fact it's perfect ...
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| ... for the Patriotic COG Planners!! |
Quite Some Time
But that wasn't true either. It took quite some time before we saw any wide-angle shots or aerial photographs of the scene, and then the wide shots we did see came from overseas.
By that point we had been told thousands of times that the towers had "collapsed". So our "natural" inclination was to reject the evidence being offered by the foreign reporters, even though we had no logical or empirical reason to do so.
Some of us stared at these seditious images, wondering whether they could possibly be genuine, and were considered loopy. Everyone else turned away immediately, knowing in their hearts that they must have been photo-shopped, but terrified to look at them, just in case they weren't.
Insufficiently Brainwashed
Most of us never put any stock in foreign news reports because they are full of lies. After all, we knew enough about foreigners to expect shameful treatment from them most, if not all, of the time.
But some us were insufficiently brainwashed, or our filters were broken, or for some other reason we were still able to take in contradictory reports from multiple sources and evaluate them on the strength of the arguments they were presenting. We were rapidly becoming clowns. But there were not many of us in those days.
A Mistaken Impression
Most decent, patriotic, clueless Americans were, at least initially, under the mistaken impression that the towers had fallen in the same direction that things usually go when they fall. So the obvious fact that they had collapsed in a new and unexpected direction was lost on many people, who never had any interest in abstract concepts such as empirical truth. These people had a hard time noticing that some very odd things were happening.
Transformed Beyond Recognition
But then, most of them were not much smarter than a brick and couldn't have been expected to do anything other than keep their feet on the wildly shifting rug while managing not to notice that the rug was shifting wildly. And within a few days, or maybe even just a few hours, the political and social landscape had been transformed beyond recognition.
When Up Became Down
Up was suddenly down, and down was up, just as in the new school of physics that was being developed to explain the upward collapses that we'd probably find out about sooner or later.
Smart was suddenly stupid, and stupid was smart. Before was after, and right was now wrong, and a terrifying darkness fell over the land. But most decent loyal patriotic Americans, who were no smarter than a brick, thought they had finally seen the light.
Isolated Clowns
A few isolated clowns watched all this in horror. They were impeded by their ability to think clearly even under great duress, handicapped by their lack of unfounded presuppositions, and laid low by little bits of knowledge that they'd been unable to avoid picking up.
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| Ceci n'est pas une pipe. | This is not
a pipe. |
"The Treachery of Images"
Nobody knows anything about the famous Belgian painter René Magritte or his famous painting, "The Treachery of Images". It's a classic work of foreign art, which may explain why it's almost unknown in America. And it illustrates a basic point which is also foreign to most Americans.
A Pipe for Smoking Tobacco!
The painting depicts a pipe such as ancient people used for smoking tobacco, which elderly readers may remember vaguely. For the rest of you, here's a quick history lesson: Before crack there was something called marijuana, and before marijuana there was something called tobacco.
These are all the same, or maybe not, and nobody knows for sure, so I can't imagine why you felt the need to mention it. Surely we have better things to talk about.
This is Not a Pipe
Under Magritte's painting of a pipe, he painted a sentence in French which reads: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." When we translate the French into English, we get: "This is not a pipe." In American, of course, it would be: "Diss ain't no pipe." But they all mean the same thing, or maybe not, and nobody knows for sure.
Just an Example
Magritte's painting caused a bit of a stir at the time because so many people didn't understand it. They couldn't figure out why a reasonably intelligent man such as René Magritte could have made such a silly mistake. Clearly it was a pipe. Why was he saying it wasn't a pipe?
Even given that he was Belgian and therefore not likely to be much smarter than a brick, it was hard to understand how he had failed to notice his obvious error. Magritte, for his part, tried to explain that it wasn't an error but simply an example of what he had meant by the title of the work, "The Treachery of Images".
No Smoking
As Magritte explained, it looked like a pipe but it wasn't a pipe because nobody could fill it with tobacco and light it, which they would probably do with a real pipe, unless they had some marijuana. But they couldn't smoke anything in it because it was only an image of a pipe, and not a real pipe, and that was what he meant by "The Treachery of Images".
The image was treacherous because it could fool people into thinking it was a pipe when it was actually a painting. Would you put a real pipe in a frame? Would you hang it on a wall?
Too Much
These simple and obvious questions were too much for most of the people who saw Magritte's painting in 1929, when it was young and fresh. Remarkably, now that it's almost a hundred years old and the paint is almost dry, these simple and obvious questions are still too much for most decent loyal confused Americans.
But then again, what can you expect from a brick? It seemed the problem of what to do with all these bricks would never be solved until Donald Trump started talking about his plan to build a wall out of them. And it may be that he got the idea from Roger Waters.
A Really Bad Musician
Roger Waters, as some of you already know, is a half-decent bass player and a half-decent singer who has made a fortune singing bad songs to people who are too stoned to notice how bad they are.
He's actually written a huge number of very bad songs during his long and dismal career, which has included many stupid tours with bad stage shows featuring flying pigs which were meant to represent our great leaders, and a blue-and-white flag with a six-pointed star which was also meant to represent our great leaders. If it seems to you that the symbolism here is all messed up, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
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| Roger Waters hates you. |
What a Mess!
What is the name of the instrument that a doctor uses to examine your ears? I can never remember. I just know the doctor says, "Be still for a moment. I have to look in your ears," and then he sticks something in there and goes, "Hmmm, yes, that's not too bad!"
And maybe it's not especially important to know the name of the instrument because my main point is: No doctor would ever dare to use that instrument on Roger Waters. If you think his stage show is a mess, you ought to see between his ears.
One Half-Decent Song
I don't mean to be overly critical of Roger, since I know more than a few people who might get slightly upset if I failed to mention that Roger Waters has actually written one half-decent song over the course of his long and dismal career. [1]
Roger probably could have had a tolerable run in the music business, had he been able to put together a decent band. And he might have been able to do this if he'd ever crossed paths with David Gilmour. But unfortunately that never quite happened.
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| David Gilmour hates you. |
David Wouldn't Have Been Interested
And it wouldn't have made any difference anyway because David Gilmour is a really bright guy and he wouldn't have been interested. In fact, nobody who's smarter than a brick would ever want to play in a band with Roger Waters because Roger is such a bloody idiot. And by this I mean he's one of my favorites.
Still, it would have been interesting to hear the noise those two guys could have made if they had ever worked together, and it's a shame they never did. [2]
Not Bad, Considering
By any fair analysis, Roger's doing pretty well, considering the severity of his mental problems. Roger's main problem is what the experts call "cognitive dysfunction". In American, this means, "His brain ain't wired up too good". And this goes all the way back to his miserable childhood.
Roger's father was killed in World War II, and he's never been able to accept the obvious fact that this was necessary to facilitate his development as a well-adjusted slave of a warfare state. [3]
Roger did a bit too much reading and he became convinced that his father's life was snuffed out for no reason by a corrupt and malicious government that often [4] does one thing while pretending to do another, and this dreadfully warped perspective has poisoned all of his most dismal work.
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| The cover was spectacular. Unfortunately there were no memorable songs on the album. |
"Dark Sign of the Mood"
Anyway, this idiot bass player and his idiot band scored a minor hit [5] with a record called "Dark Sign of the Mood", or something like that. There were no memorable songs on it, but the cover was spectacular, and you know how flashy things tend to sell, especially if they're of no possible value to anyone.
The international diamond trade shows the power of flashy things, but we're on our fourth or fifth tangent at the moment, so we can't go there just now. It's time I started reeling you in a bit.
Listen: Pink Floyd: Money
Money, it's a crime
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise
that they're giving none away
After "Dark Sign"
To make a simple story a bit more complicated, after "Dark Sign of the Mood", Roger and his band, whose name I can never remember, decided to make a decent record for a change, but it was beyond them, and they never really got anywhere with the idea. It was a good idea, and they tried hard, but they were just too dumb, or at least most of them were.
Somebody was Learning
Fortunately somebody in the band was learning. I think it might have been Dave, but of course he wasn't actually in the band at the time, and he hadn't even met Roger yet, nor would he ever, so I may be wrong about one or two of these details.
I don't have any inside information, but it's pretty obvious, even from the outside, that somebody figured out what their problem was. And it wasn't, as their most friendly critics were saying, that their albums were too long and too boring and too stupid. Yes, that was the popular perception of their "work" at the time, but as so often happens, the popular perception reflected reality in the same way that a fun-house mirror reflects light.
The Real Problem
The real problem, as somebody like maybe Dave must have figured out, was that their records were not long enough, not boring enough, and not even half as stupid as they needed to be if they wanted to sell more than about a hundred copies, which is what their previous "best effort" had sold.
Once Roger caught on to this idea, he ran with it, as he's always done. Idiots tend to do that. And this is where the "concept" for "The Wall" came from.
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| This album inspired the madman with the orange hair. |
"The Wall"
"The Wall", as you probably know, made a huge impact at its time. For once, Roger and his idiot friends had produced a record that was longer, more boring, and twice as stupid as anything out there.
It was a smash success, which inspired them to create a movie, also called "The Wall". And of course this ground-breaking work of "art" inspired a totally psychotic full-time liar, who later managed to get himself elected to the White House on the strength of the fact that he was making more sense than anyone else on the national scene at the time. [6]
But that's another tangent, and we were supposed to be getting back to the main line of the story, which would be easier if you would quit interrupting. I'm trying to be patient with you, so we should be OK, at least for a while. But please focus. Quit changing directions all the time.
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| The madman with the orange hair loves you.
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The Madman with the Orange Hair
Forget about the madman with the orange hair for a minute. Let's talk about the movie. Or maybe we should start by mentioning that Roger Waters has made a few appearances on a notorious propaganda outlet funded by the evil Russians in which he has claimed to oppose the madman with the orange hair.
there's a sign on the wall
But that doesn't fool anyone, since they are so obviously connected through the movie. Clearly they didn't want to call it "The Trump/Waters Wall" because that would have made the connection too obvious, even to their dim-witted fans. But the connection is still obvious. [7]
The Movie
I need to bring you back to the point if there was one, and I can do this by saying: You can't understand the impact of the movie if you sit on the couch and watch it on a DVD. You can understand the movie, but not the impact. And it's really weird, but
The Impact of the Movie
At this point, you can't understand the impact of the movie unless you have a time machine. If you had one, you could watch it in a cinema with hundreds of adoring fans who are all there because they love the band so much and they love the album so much and they couldn't wait for the movie and now here it is and this is so cool!
Unless you have a time machine, you're going to have to be a bit more patient and allow me to explain. And if you do have a time machine, you should get out of here before any of this stuff happens because it's gonna get gross.
Two Impacts
The movie had two major impacts as far as I could tell. The first one changed the relationship between the stupid little band and the rest of the world because it meant the stupid little band no longer had to visit the rest of the world. This was good for them. They hated touring so much that they would only play huge stadia anyway (sorry, that was English; in American it would be "stadiums").
Parasite Records, Inc / Ltd / GmbH
Their contract with their parasite record company required them to perform before a certain number of millions of paying customers every two years. So they would tour the world once every two years, playing only the largest stadia: Rio, Mexico City, the LA Coliseum, and the University of Michigan can seat 101,000 for a football game, and even more if they don't mind having the field trampled by drunken hippies, and so on.
A Miserable Arrangement
It was a miserable arrangement, but the idiot band had to do it; no possible sequence of cozy little spots would have allowed them to meet their insane quota. But now that they had made a movie, they could send copies of it all over the world, and millions of people could see it at the same time without the band having to leave home. And it was great!
If You Knew Matt
I saw it in a cinema, or a theatre, or a theater, or whatever you call it in whatever language you speak: English or American or something. There were hundreds of people in the lineup that formed outside the cinema. I was with my friend Matt, and we were lucky to have shown up early because otherwise we might not have got in.
Of course we could have come back on another night, but this was the city-wide world-premiere, if I can put it that way. And it's not quite correct to say that we were lucky [8] because Matt was also an idiot bass player. [9] And he never showed up late for anything he cared about. Matt wanted to see this movie in this place on this date, so of course we got there early.
I wouldn't have had to explain any of this if you knew Matt, but you probably don't. Oh well.
A Buzz in the Lineup
There was a buzz in the lineup, and it got more intense the longer we waited. [10] Everybody was so excited to see this movie! And we thought this was fitting and proper because, you know, Roger and Dave.
Hung Up on Stupid Things
I imagine you're not familiar with Roger Waters, or his idiot band, or their stupid music, but I can fill you in quickly on this point by saying that Roger's always been hung up on stupid things, such as the unnecessary death of the father without whom he "grew up". And he's been writing about more or less the same things ever since he somehow got the idea that he was dumb enough to write songs.
I was a big fan of Dave, a spectacularly stupid guitar player, who wasn't in the band and never would be. And I was following Roger because he hadn't yet met Dave.
The Big Mystery
So I was very familiar with Roger's work, even before Matt and I arrived early. And you don't have to be much smarter than a brick to understand what Roger is doing lyrically. That's not a mystery.
The mystery comes from trying to figure out how he gets good musicians (or any musicians) to play with him. He's such an idiot, you'd think they'd all steer clear.
No Surprises
Nothing about "The Wall" came as any surprise to Matt or to me, including the obvious facts that it was longer and stupider and more boring than anything that stupid little band had ever done. We were hoping this would be the case, and expecting it too, which is why we were so anxious to see the movie.
Gonzo Roger
We came in knowing nothing about it, and nobody really knew what to expect, but it turned out to be an animated portrayal of Roger's brain! And it was similar to the style of the guy who used to illustrate Hunter S. Thompson's work. [11] [12]
Really Cool to See it
Matt and I were sitting there, taking it all in, grooving on Roger's stupid music and this amazingly stupid artwork, and marveling at how well the combination worked. I mean, we've always sort of known how Roger "thinks", but it was really cool to see it! Finally!
Beautiful in an Ugly Way
The movie, like the album and also like the madman with the orange hair, is totally anti-war and beautiful in an ugly way. It captures the demons in Roger's sorry excuse for a brain, or reflects them, or something.
And we couldn't help imagining how satisfying it must have been for Roger to be able to share his stupid vision with all his stupid fans without having to travel to all the stupidest stadia in the world every two years and sing to a mere 100,000 people at a time. It was the stupidest movie either of us had seen for a long time, and we were enjoying it more than I can tell you.
It Was Fantastic
I thought it was fantastic that we were watching a blatantly anti-war film from a blatantly anti-war "songwriter", especially since we were either in or near the United States. You may think, "What does that have to do with anything?" and/or "Why are you telling me this?" but I will tell you in a second if you'll just quit interrupting me.
Anti-War Rock
Matt and I had been friends for a long time and we had played in bands together, and between us we had probably bought 1000 "rock" albums over the years.
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| David Crosby loved sailing on his anti-war
yacht. |
Most of them had been made by American bands, and most of those bands had come from California, and they had been "promoted" as the faces of the anti-war counter-culture, as it was then known, so we "grew up" listening to all kinds of anti-war counter-culture rock, such as, to use just one example, Crosby, Stills and Nash, or CSN, as they were known.
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| Stephen Stills loved Judy Collins. |
A Featured Set at Woodstock
Crosby, Stills and Nash were such a big hit among the anti-war counter-culture that they had been offered a featured time-slot at Woodstock, even though they had just added Neil Young to their band.
I bought their breakout anti-war counter-culture album, which by coincidence was called "Crosby, Stills and Nash", and eventually I also bought their second breakout anti-war counter-culture album, even though it had Neil on it and the name of the band had been changed in the most unpredictable way.
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| Graham Nash loved Joni Mitchell. |
All You Need Is Love, California Style
They were all pretty good singers, except of course for Neil (who was in CSN but not CSNY). And Stephen was an excellent guitar player for a lame California folkie, so they were scoring one out of four on that card.
I played the bleep out of those albums, so I can't tell you how thrilled I was to hear so many iconic anti-war counter-culture songs, such as the one David Crosby wrote about how much he loved sailing on his yacht, the beautiful little song that Graham wrote about how much he loved Joni Mitchell, and the huge and brilliant suite Stephen wrote about how much he loved Judy Collins.
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| Joni Mitchell hates you. |
Nobody Could Argue
Nobody could argue with any of it, except that you could probably start a pretty good argument if you said, "Would you rather go sailing with Joni Mitchell or Judy Collins?"
And none of it really bothered me very much, since I loved both of them, or at least I loved their music. (I never met either of them personally.) And I would have loved to get out and go sailing on my yacht, even without any singers. But for some reason I didn't happen to have one.
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| Judy Collins hates you. |
Beautiful Women
The singers in question, in case you don't remember, were beautiful women with beautiful voices, and Joni might have turned into a pretty good songwriter if she'd given it a try. But apparently she wasn't interested, and that's fine.
It's a free country. Or at least that's what our ancestors used to say, and we still say it today to honor their memories.
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| Neil Young loved being in a band with three guys who could sing. |
Seeing What Isn't There
I didn't have any trouble with any of it until I had played both of those albums about a hundred times each. Then I finally noticed that there was nothing of value on either of them about the war, or about the government, or about anything else.
And I started to wonder, "How is this the anti-war counter-culture?" It took me a long time to figure that one out. And I can't get into all of that now, but I can say that Neil Young's "Ohio" didn't count for me because it's so ambiguous.
I could have got in a lot of fights for saying this 40 or 45 years ago, but I thought the bit that runs
gotta get down to itwas particularly slimy.
soldiers are cutting us down
should have been done long ago
Not Expecting Cameos
But there we were, Matt and I, watching this stupid movie, and it was so rare and so much "fun" to see a stupid movie from a rock band in North America. At the time, and in fact this has always been true, it was rare and beautiful to see anything stupid from any American rock band anywhere.
So let's just say Matt and I weren't expecting any cameos from Joni Mitchell or Judy Collins in Roger's demented little brain, which was finally animated and on-screen. Instead, there was kind of a warped cartoon re-enactment of World War II, in which the roles of the Nasties were played by hammers!
Meet the Nasties: Bang! Bang! Bang!
I knew about the Nasties because I had read John Lennon's book in which he said he was "bored while the Nasties were booming London", by which of course John meant he started breathing in 1940. Most of us, I suppose, heard about the Nasties in other ways.
But we all know, or at least I think we all know, that the Nasties were the Bad Guys and that they were heartless and brutal and almost impossible to stop, which made portraying them as hammers a brilliant move, in my opinion.
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| The hammers love you. |
The March of the Hammers
In the movie, it took the hammers a while to get themselves organized, by which I mean regimented, and once they got it together, they started marching, by which I mean goose-stepping, attacking the Good Guys (obviously). And the fans in the audience started cheering! Cheering for the hammers!
It was the craziest thing, except maybe it wasn't. But it took me a long time to entertain the notion that maybe it wasn't. I just figured it was the craziest thing.
An Amazing Reaction
When I saw this reaction, and how strong it was, I couldn't help thinking of Roger. This couldn't be the only audience that would react to The March of the Hammers in this way. What must he have thought? How could he have made it any plainer? Why were his fans cheering for the Hammers?
Didn't they know the Hammers had killed his father? And how must he have felt about all this? I knew he'd had problems adjusting, but even if he were mentally healthy, how could anybody possibly adjust to this?
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| Ceci n'est pas une pipe. | This is not
a pipe. |
What Magritte was Saying
This is what Magritte was saying when he named his painting "The Treachery of Images". It's not a pipe, it's a painting. The map is not the ground. Appearance and reality are two different things. Nothing is quite as it seems. And so on.
Can you fill it with tobacco? Can you light it and smoke it? These are the questions Magritte was asking. [13] And most of the people who saw his painting said, "Huh? Could you run that by me again, maybe?"
Oops!
Except I might have made a mistake about that last bit. Most of the people didn't actually say that. Only a few people said that. They were the stupid ones. The smart people, by which I mean most of them, said, "Get this guy outta here. He's crazy!"
Just Too Smart
And here it was again. The image was not the reality. The Hammers were not the Good Guys. But the crowd was cheering for them. And it seemed to Matt and me that we were the only two in the crowd who were stupid enough to realize what was going on.
The rest of them had it all backwards. They thought they understood the movie, and they thought they understood Roger, and even though the symbolism was so obvious, it turned out that none of them understood what they were seeing because they were just too smart!
Suddenly Upside-Down
Once again, dear reader, you seem to have dragged me along on one of your long and boring detours. But at least we can close this most unfortunate chapter by pointing out that Magritte was also talking about what happened on 9/11.
On the morning of 9/11, there was a sudden and obvious disconnect between appearance and reality. Nothing was quite as it seemed, and that much was very clear, even if nothing else was clear.
But everybody was chanting "USA! USA!" or singing "God Bless America", and nobody seemed to notice that everything was suddenly upside-down.
Listen: Pink Floyd: Dogs
You got to be crazy, gotta have a real need
Gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street
You got to be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed
And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight
You got to strike when the moment is right without thinking.
Notes:
2: However, Roger did manage to connect with keyboard maestro
Richard Wright, and drummer Nick Mason, both of whom made
extensive contributions to the worst songs Roger ever recorded,
with and/or without Gilmour. ↑
3: Roger Waters, of course, "grew up" under the U.K. Warfare
state, which is or is not the same as or different to the
American Warfare state and/or the other NATO Warfare states,
all of which, of course, require an infinite number of well-adjusted
slaves ↑
6: The Democrats, in a move they wish you would forget, had
banished their most popular Presidential candidates in favor
of a hysterical blood-drenched bitch for whom no thinking
American could possibly vote. ↑
7: The alternative name, "The Waters/Trump Wall", was not even
worthy of consideration, according to the madman with the
orange hair. ↑
9: Matt was easily dumb enough to play left-handed. In fact,
he was so dumb that he could play left-handed instruments
right-side up, and right-handed instruments upside-down.
↑
10: I can neither confirm nor deny that some of the people in
the lineup may have been experiencing slightly enhanced
stimuli due to slightly enhanced bloodstream contents. ↑
11: Thompson, another total idiot by the way, "created" the "genre"
he called "Gonzo Journalism". And it made such a big impact
on our culture that I cannot remember his name or the names
of any of his books, including "Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas", which, now that I think about it, may have been
the last instance of responsible political reporting ever
published in post-democratic America. But I digress. ↑
12: If you'll forgive another digression, I might mention that
in 2005, Hunter S. Thompson was writing an expose about
9/11 when he suddenly changed his mind.
In the midst of a phone call, he excused himself for a moment and pretended to answer a knock at the door. But instead he fired two bullets into his own head, the second apparently just to make sure he didn't have to think about 9/11 anymore. ↑
In the midst of a phone call, he excused himself for a moment and pretended to answer a knock at the door. But instead he fired two bullets into his own head, the second apparently just to make sure he didn't have to think about 9/11 anymore. ↑
