On Atheism: The Heretic, Heine and Me

• Atheist (noun). A person to be pitied in that he is unable to believe things for which there is no evidence, and who has thus deprived himself of a convenient means of feeling superior to others.

— Chaz Bufe, The American Heretic’s Dictionary

I empathize with following your gut, testing a possibility, letting go of worry or following any number of other rational directions whose hypotheses remain unprovable. Pre-enlightenment, Heine's idea about when religion "makes sense" (see below) fit, in a way. Since then, the religion of science has been at times as wildly foolish as the science of religion. These days though, the church and fetish crowd just makes me shudder. Hypocrites...ewww.

• In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.

— Heinrich Heine, Gedanken und Einfalle

There's something about this analogy that I like, though I can't agree completely. It works in a historical context, I guess. But personally, even in the darkest depths, I'm not going to follow the yellow brick road and sleep in the poppies. I might flail around and look quite mad, but not knowing is not knowing.

• An essay: Authenticity and Art Making

— Trish Szymanski, CityBelt

Who's the creator here, anyway?

...

The Fog

I met the original Baadasssss tonight. He showed up at a fundraiser for BlackWaxx Recordings (http://www.blackwaxx.com/) at their Jersey City studios. Other luminaries were in attendance, including Bob Law of "Night Talk" fame, who proved his finely honed wallet-squeezing skills.

Melvyn Van Peebles is 75 now, a diminutive-looking man with a white-gray beard. He wore black parachute and an orange/black bandana. His cinematographer, whose name I regret I did not catch, drove/accompanied him. We chatted about the fire in the Deutsche Bank building, south side of Ground Zero, that burned today. Weird.

Here's what I took away from him.

He said that when he was starting out -- he's been writing for film since the 1950's! -- it was like he was rowing around in the fog. He called out, "Hellooooo," but all he heard was his own voice. It was lonely but he kept rowing. Periodically, he would call out again, "Hellooooo."

Finally, once, he called, "Hellooooo," and listened hard till he heard a couple of small voices, far away, calling back -- "Helloooo." He rowed in what seemed like their direction, and they did the same. Eventually, they met up and made contact. Together, they rowed on, called out, made contact with still other, like-minded artists of vision and together, they made their way and backed each other up.

Van Peebles's 1971 Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song exploded into black America, first, and then hurled itself at the rest of us, lauching more than a genre, not a movement, but the ship called Equal Opportunity, the chance to create work, control its creation and profit from its sale. As author, producer, star and director, Van Peebles owned "Song" in every way.

The thing is, he made it because he KEPT ROWING HIS OWN BOAT and worked with people whose sense of integrity was compatible with his.

Funny

Some things are. Even when they're stupid, or ugly, or damning, or seriously fkd up, or mind-numbingly, bizarrely, ironically poignant.

Funny, though laughter isn't always an appropriate response.

Me in May 2007