Greetings, reader. This is an essay I wrote during Jim Goad's visit to Hawaii in April 2007 and expanded as I found time over the next four months. This accompanies the interview I did with Jim that day, which I present here in four segments of roughly twelve minutes each, every Saturday for four weeks. Click on the audio player below to hear segment number one of four. —Bill Brent
April 5, 2007, 7:57 a.m.
Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd. —Dame Edith Sitwell, poet, 1887-1964
Jim Goad has been visiting us for the past couple of days, and tonight he leaves for Honolulu to stay in a Waikiki hotel room that has been paid for by a reader he has never met, and probably never will. They corresponded over the Internet, and she was going to show him Oahu, but apparently she balked and rented him a room instead. She has not been returning his calls.
Jim leads a charmed or a cursed life, depending on how you look at it. Although he would probably deny it, I think he may be that rare example of a pure artist, one who survives on his wits and creative skills alone. Perhaps "pioneer" is a word that Jim would more readily identify with; more on that later. He claims he is not good at business — negotiating contracts and such — although he is arguably one of the smartest people I know. I guess this confirms one hypothesis I have, which is that the brilliant often don't concern themselves with the "petty details" of life, although it is often in such details that we establish or deny our security.
Yet Jim has a strong sense of self-preservation, as do I. Perhaps that's the main reason I like him. He carries himself with a physical sureness that I find appealing, although I am sure it intimidates others. No wonder he runs into men who pick fights with him; they must find his confidence a threat to their fragile masculine egos. No doubt, this is also what many women find attractive about him. This, too, threatens some men. There's a bit of the High Plains Drifter about Jim, that mysterious Stranger destined for mayhem.
So often we try to describe someone by reducing him to analogies. Yet perhaps this one will serve:
We've been having a bit of a misadventure trying to track down poi. With this visit to Hawaii, Jim has now visited all fifty states. Jim makes a point of experiencing the indigenous cuisine, wherever he goes, so naturally he would choose the one Hawaiian dish that nearly everyone associates with the Hawaiian Islands. Moreover, poi is simple — it's mashed taro root — and therefore it would seem readily available. Yet by my count we checked at six grocery stores yesterday, and not one of them had poi in stock. Restaurants specializing in authentic Hawaiian cuisine are scarce — the Yellow Pages list one place in Kona, and one in Hilo — and the Hilo place (really just a lunch counter with takeout and maybe a table or two) was closed when we visited the other evening around 7 p.m., although its Yellow Pages ad states, "open for lunch and dinner."
Other local specialties – musubi (SPAM sushi) and the loco moco — are widely available, yet each was invented by some cook in a kitchen within the past century, and thus are about as "authentic" as the Chinese fortune cookie, which was similarly invented by an enterprising California baker in the early 20th century.
Well, we finally cornered the elusive poi at an overpriced tourist trap called The Coconut Grill, where the food was mediocre at best, and the service so abysmal that Jim left the tip beneath the water glass — a dollar bill folded down to the size of a bitter pill.
Jim's focus on the quintessential strikes me as a trait shared by the best scientists and artists, along with the most spiritually evolved among us. Those who persist in the name of discovery can settle for nothing less. Those who cut away ruthlessly at discouragement and distraction are rare souls, probably because most of us don't really want to hear, in the words of Boyd McDonald, the shameless fucking truth. My friend Romy describes this as "bare-bricks reality." It is in pursuing truth that we have the best shot at achieving real freedom — yet "man is born free and everywhere he is in chains," Jim told me yesterday, quoting Rousseau.
Rousseau's novels inspired the leaders of the French revolution. Often it has been the writer-philosophers who are most keenly attuned to the winds of change, and thus can offer a set of guiding principles during troubled times. Jim would scoff at the notion that he had any such guidance to offer, but I can see that some of the principles he embodies include:
– the courage to change;
– the courage to move through life without the security of the pack;
– the curiosity to try new things and even seek them out with passion.
Of course, such foresight is a blessing and a curse. It's tough to see through the obfuscation of powerful social codes that benefit a few and keep the rest of us fighting with each other. The few gifted have-nots such as Jim who point out these codes are usually shunned as heretics. It's a case of killing the messenger, though, when the point is to heed the message. Were we to do that, and live up to its demands, we would have to stop fighting each other (as did the ancient Hawaiians when they sat down to poi) and seek ways to improve or even abolish the corrupt aspects of our culture, even when this called for revolt. Instead, while the have-nots bicker over whether, for instance, racial or class inequality is the greater social bane — one shining example of distraction — those already consolidated in power remain undistracted by such vagaries, and thus they prevail and prosper.
Freedom implies change. The courage to change is one of the fundamental traits of strong character. Men of strong character are often condemned by those who lack it. All positive change brings about destruction of old, non-functional behaviors and outmoded ways of thinking. If we are not proactive, then, we are doomed to being re-active, which is rarely if ever a position of strength.
The quintessentialists learn this lesson early in life.
I think [artists] create because they have to. Because they were people who just happened to see things a little bit differently than the rest of the world, and because of that they're ridiculed and persecuted as kids. And some of us turned those feelings and that hurt inside and used it to try and create something that we can show to people and say, "Here. You think I'm weird? This is how you look to me. This is my view of the world." And it's not something you can choose whether or not to do; it's something you're driven to do.
—Billy Zoom, musician, interviewed by Mark Prindle, 2004
Someone I once pointed at Jim's NetJerk Lounge remarked that there was a lot of "hostility" on display there. Strangely, this hadn't occurred to me. We live in hostile times. So why would the writer-philosopher's focus on the quintessential exclude projections of hostility? How could one even begin to tell the truth of our time without it? Jim once wrote that "the only pioneers are those who give voice to the ugliest corridors of their unconscious without fear of censure from any quarter." I propose a corollary premise: that such a pioneer sheds light upon our culture's ugliest corridors without self-censure or fear.
Sometimes, though, Jim strikes me as his own worst … publicist. His willingness to present himself and his views in a less than flattering light may be honest, but it is sure to alienate many listeners. On the other hand, this lack of sugar-coating is yet another example of quintessentialism. All humans are flawed, and those of us willing to present our flaws (including our flawed yet evolving views) without apology or self-censure will have it rough at times. Perhaps Jim's saving grace in that regard is his sense of humor, in particular his willingness to laugh at himself. He and I share this trait, as well as some fairly brutal early life experiences. Perhaps it is all one, and humor is the intellect's natural defense against early wrongs. In any case, I know that it is not virtue that redeems a wounded soul, it is laughter.
As a life-artist, Jim Goad is a work in progress, one who poses us with the challenge to evolve … or perish. To my mind, his message, more through his example than through his words, is this: you can lead your life, or let it lead you.
RELATED LINKS:
Buy JIM GOAD'S GIGANTIC BOOK OF SEX and LitBoy.com gets a commission.
Check out Jim Goad's website.
- Buy his fine products direct [click on the "4sale" link] and support Jim's creative vision.
- Read the NetJerk Lounge [click on the "lounge" link].
- Read essays by Jim [click on the "words" link], and more.
Check out Jim's MySpace page, listen to song selections, and read news of Jim's musical pursuits, including any scheduled appearances.
Meet Karlsson/Stephenson, and listen to selections from their album, dog. Brief clips of the album are used as intro and outro music for the various interview segments. Special thanks to Rob Stephenson for mastering the interview audio files.
Check out the MySpace page for composers Mikael Karlsson and Rob Stephenson.
Wishing you a beautiful day,
Bill Brent
[this page last updated: 2007.08.15, 6:45 p.m. Hawaii time]
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