The Web

Another Song and More Thoughts on Act of Confusion's BURNOUT SUPERNOVA

The Web

Blinded by the sun.

Instinct subterranean.

<>

Frozen in time in my mind but I don’t know why

I have to believe this innocent lie…

<>

Far too exhausted and sore

To bother to struggle anymore.

<>

Did Atlas shrug or collapse

Or develop a new synapse?

<>

The web that we weave has caught me

And I’m waiting to die…

***** * *****

Rommentary:

In my youth, I was impelled to escape my conditioning, whatever that was. I succeeded, for what little that was worth.

However, though I am free of the conditioning, I am not free of the system which conditioned me. I am locked into a web of responsibilities, leveraged by the system, that binds me to a workaday world which exhausts my time and body. I do partake of a healing hermitage which happens in small doses, a motley rag for a fool made up of Sundays of liberty in a vast waste of work-weeks, and holidays I never cared to celebrate.

When Jon played this beautiful, wistful guitar melody for me, it conjured the feeling of resignation with which one falls into the couch cushions after a hard day’s work.

We did all we could.

This was all we had to give.

We surrender to exhaustion.

We are encouraged to believe that we are doing something noble, and in some ways we are, where we give the hours away so we can provide for others as well as ourselves. It may not be glamorous, but the life of a working-class individual is, I think, noble on that account.

This makes such treatment as the working class receives from the upper class all the more ignoble and deservedly ignominious.

In the sort of corporate newspeak we hear from the members of the executive elements of our society, we are told the innocent lie that we are cooperating in a grand venture, a manifest destiny, an American Dream.

Anyway, that’s the unique USA version of the same old bullshit.

But every country, and every political or ideological system within it, yields the same top-down aggregating bullshit-ball as every other. They just want to make sure the workers keep working for as little in return and as long as possible.

At least until they can get the robots online.

It is the proverbial Sisyphean task; bullshit-ball is bullshit-boulder.

Camus says, “We must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Bless Camus. Anyone who makes a heartfelt attempt to dissuade others from taking their own lives is okay in my book.

But perhaps we should stop imagining Sisyphus happy and instead imagine what it would be like if the executive folks took on their share of the bullshit.

There are no heroes, only villains and fools.

Yet the fool would become wise. The villain remains ever the villain.

So this song is about enduring in the face of misfortune. Enduring the bullshit without yielding to the villains’ vitriolic attempts to pawn that bullshit off on us, as when they try to make us feel responsible for their errors with their bland euphemisms, their prepackaged ventures, destinies, and dreams.

The third verse is indeed a reference to Ayn Rand, though not necessarily a positive one.

I don’t believe Atlas would shrug. A man doesn’t take the world on his shoulders just to shrug it off. Such a one would rather be crushed by the weight than cry off his holy, sacred task.

So here, perhaps, is a bright spot in this otherwise melancholy melody.

We can find a way to hold the world up just so long as we keep thinking about how we should go about it.

We won’t need to sacrifice the hero if the fool becomes wise.