Are we having fun yet?

When it comes to furnishing my misanthropy with its eleventh (and bitterest) herb and/or spice there really is nothing quite like New Year's Eve.

Of course, the entire period between Christmas -- which in the land of my nativity is usually marked by heat so literally blistering that it is traditionally reserved only for those of Dante's old school-chums whom he thought had betrayed both their terrestial and celestial sovereigns) -- is enough to make the most Pollyannaish of People People reach for the genetically modified elephant tranquilisers. And since you ask, no, irrevocable cataonia is a small price to pay to avoid even one DJ. (Let this be my epitaph!)

I, of course, being rather more saturnine than the average melancholic Scandinavian suciide (especially in comparison to the girl for whom every day is a reason to be glad) spend much of this period in a mood that would suit Jon Swift on a day during which the Stuarts had been restored, the French had invaded, the Puritans had over-run the Church and the good Dean had just lost yet another extremely fierce round of epigram-soccer to (that short, smart-arsed git!) Alexander Pope.

But New Year's Eve really takes the cake: in fact, it not only takes it, it eats three pounds of creamy goodness in one Falstaffian swallow before taking the other half out for a drunken revel. From this point on, the other (now congealed) half is repeatedly referred to as "brioche". Thus Christened,-- a la a certain classic misattribution to Marie Antoinette -- the 'cake' is then held aloft to a breadless population while sundry theologians dispute whatever else it is that man is supposed to be living on.

Obviously the reason that New Year's celebrations are so reliably horrible is scarcely worth mentioning (do I hear: "scarcely blog-worthy"?) on the grounds that the reasons for its unspeakableness are as obvious as an honours thesis in post-colonial studies that has encased itself in a 7 foot neon bustier emblazoned with the words: "Love me, I care about other people."

But the simple (and almost as obvious) thing of which I am reminded every time I get to see in the 'New Year' is that nothing is more anaethema to enjoyment than the imperative to enjoy.

Also: (c.f. "the bride wore apricot") when a ritual is explicilty directed to the gods the disparity between one's subjective state and the power of the ritual is never a problem, for the very good reason that said state is never at issue. On such occassions the sacrament is (mutatis mutandis!) the sacrament: with the performance of the ceremony the gods are appeased; the wafer becomes the body of Christ, the last move of the dancer assures the return of Spring irrespective of whether the dancers would really rather be at home watching a Ken Burns' documentary (or contemporary equivalent.) In such cases, the ceremony performs the work that then carries the soul with it rather than resting on its prior assent. (I admit that what I've just said sounds extraordinarily Catholic: but it's not the time -yet- for theology.)

In stark contrast to this, New Year's Eve is the ultimate example of the hamfisted contemporary tendency to try and combine a ritualised display of enjoyment and excess (like a Medieval carnival) with a bizarre Protestant demand that we also, genuinely, have a good time, i.e. that we FEEL in a manner appropriate to the occassion. And it is this that is behind the breathtaking, Lovecraftian horror that are New Year's celberations. Sure, booze, drugs et al. might nullify some of the pain of this. But unless you live in a moanstery, such things are available ON EVERY OTHER GODDAMN DAY OF THE YEAR. And they do not function better on NYE, they are just more necessary to get everyone through the awful trial that is the annual celebration.

What is most surprising about all of this, is that it is entirely anticipated by conventional wisdom. Thus, surely, everyone knows that the property of 'having fun' is never anything, but a contingent by-product of an event. It cannot be inherent to any kind of activity, nor can its presence be guaranteed by making the appropriate libations to the appropriate gods on the appropriate date. It is a quarry that refuses to be sought, even though it can occassionally be found. (I'm reminded here of one of Strauss's formulae about whether there is more to life than the 'joyless quest for joy.')

Fun, like joy, and in some ways, love, is a target which only rewards Zen archers: i.e., those who have learnt the gentle art of misdirection. Of course we can contingently have a good time, even when trying to do something as insane as living up to the duty of (really, in our heart of hearts) having fun and not just performing the ritual of "fun-having" to whichever gods (and there are many) we worship in this apparently secular age. But this is invariably a "despite" and not a "because." Granted, it's possible to have fun on occassions of obligatory joy, by simply ignoring the disparity between subjective feeling and social imperative (ironically acceding to the imperative to have fun as a DUTY, as if one were Kant or Sade) but this is not what New Year's Eve is about. It's about joy on demand, about shared happiness coinciding with the vagaries of hte calendar.

Lastly, a coda:

New Year's Eve always reminds me of a dream which seems to be shared by every neurotic in the world (myself included). This the dream that we willl one day shed our neuroses like the career-choices of our childhood, or the opinions of our adolesence. One fine day (so this fantasy goes) all needless anxiety will be replaced with the kind of unreflective spontaneity of people who 'just really love, you know, dancing and stuff". We will become Brazillian versions of Walt Whitman and our lives, in consequence, will become a permanent salsa as well as a work of art created without anxiety or anguish.

The problem here, of course, is that my neurotic brethern always dream that they could enjoy the spontaneity/lack of neuroses in exactly the way that they would AS A NEUROTIC. They/we always want the (neurotic's true joy) of REFLECTING on our new newfangeld unreflectiveness:

"Goddamn, I feel unreflective, spontaneous and fun-loving."

"Nope. No reflections. Haven't thought about anything for ages. It's like a lobotomy only you party more."

Obviously, reflecting on the joys of unreflectiveness is not a pleasure given to the unreflective ("spontaneous") idols of neurotics. (These people, are after all, too busy following impulses: "are you lookin' at me?" Stab. Cuff. Kerplow. et cetera.) To desire this contradiction is to be like the old libertine who longs for the first thrill of innocence besmirched/it's to want to be an addict whose every hit is as good as the first.

Having said all this, I am of course, going to a New Year's Eve party in a few hours.

So, dearly beloved, Happy New Year.

I will have (following the advice of a blogging-friend:) what I hope are shorter, sharper, better posts for you in the New Year.

'Til human voices wake us,

-Mal.