Monday, November 17, 1997
Searching for meaning beneath novelty’s skin
COLUMN:
As everything changes, people come or go, amusement wears
off
I wear my KISS Army three quarter length T-shirt because it’s a
novelty. The way painting my nails hot pink and bright red is a
novelty. It’s not something I really enjoy but rather find amusing,
because there’s only so much meaning you can find in things. So
much of my life has become a novelty these days that I almost don’t
know what grabs me anymore and what serves as mere kitsch.
But tonight, seeing my roommate’s high school friend asleep on
the couch after we soothingly mothered her in a half-hour
pre-pass-out session on why she’s not a bad person for getting
drunk and puking, I realized that even my source of entertainment
has become novel. But I remember those high school days when I used
to feel bad for drinking. And just this afternoon, my best friend
attending school in Baltimore called and told me how Ecstasy
changes your brain forever and I just wondered if I might not be
melting my brain away and if it mattered, in a novel sort of way.
How amusing it would be, I thought, if I woke up tomorrow, my brain
spilling out of my ear holes. Would I notice or just pet the carpet
in bliss?
And the fact that we spoke at all, it having been months since
such a step was made, seemed novel. Does it really matter, to know
what events or feelings take shape in someone else’s life who at
one point, at many points, means everything to you? Or is that
novel, too? Is it all so novel and entertaining that you might as
well be 2000 miles away from them and only consult them in your
head when necessary as see them when they’re around and lose your
soul.
But if you tell everyone about the tatters in your soul is it
still a huge dilemma, I wonder? Because I’ve told my tales so many
times to anyone willing to listen that I have no more secrets. I
have turned myself into a novelty. I hold nothing back so need
nothing in return and find nothing to turn to. And as I watched a
guy I used to date talk with his friend in the corner, I wanted to
talk. To be that person speaking quietly of traumas when everyone
else was playing drinking games, but instead I found my witty self
saying oh-too-clever things concerning the astoundingly cheap price
of Keystone when after all, it advertises a special inner can
seal.
But he never turned to me when he wanted to talk, that guy I
used to date, and that’s why I’ve taken myself out of our mutual
misunderstanding. But maybe I never presented myself as someone he
could talk to. Maybe I was so concerned with being a novel,
fascinating object that he never had time to see anything in me but
one to be fascinated by.
And I think maybe it’s this need to find someone on my level, on
my plane of open-minded willingness, that leads me to be a part of
an on-campus film. One that involves a nude love-making scene with
someone I’ve never met, in front of a foreign director who accosted
me at a party last weekend. Maybe it’s that I want my life to stop
being so goddamned novel, so altogether amusing. So hopelessly easy
and complacent. A jest. Maybe I want to feel nervous, and
shaken.
Hell, I can’t even allow myself to fall in love because I put up
a wall to those emotions. I shut them out in the need to feel
comfortable, to feel safe and in control, doing the dishes again to
keep it clean, keep it intact, in order. My obsessive compulsive
tendencies of my youth never totally remedied.
Somehow, I need to be naked on screen, in the embrace of a
stranger. But kissing unpassionately someone whose needs are
entirely scripted wouldn’t be such a stretch. Yet, to fall in love
isn’t a planable event and I have no one to fall in love with. To
lose myself to. Whether it’s that I’m incapable or just generally
unintrigued is no matter. The deal’s not going down and yet nothing
else seems as able to thrill me, to throw me, to make life seem any
less frivolous.
Oh, to be a cold, hard, toughened ’90s woman, independent with
her innocence lost long ago! Isn’t it great. Maybe I can even
venture into the Hanson show later this month for the sheer novelty
of seeing three blonde pre-pubescent children sing "Mmmbop" to a
crowd of adoring female fans under the age of 15. No joke, I’ve
actually considered it.
Will my coma of ceaseless entertainment have no end? Must I
always be amused? Even my own suffering brings me pleasure, the
idea that I can experience that feeling. I cried at the pound last
week due to the impending death of stray cats and reaped a sick
pleasure from my compassion. That I had any left to give, that a
tear could be ripped from my dry eyes.
Even now, as I wallow in self-pity for my emotional estrangement
I feel a certain sense of self-satisfaction, that I am able to be
so cruel. Ugh! There is no end. The more I analyze myself in a
search for meaning, the more I find no meaning in my life and
hence, further proof that life is all sheer novelty with which I
should find only a jaded sense of amusement. I am only a
superficial student attempting to be Bohemian, unable to be
anything because even passion has lost its serious appeal.
Or maybe, as is undoubtedly the case, I just need to get
laid.
VanderZanden is a third-year English student.