When Negativity Don't Pull You Through

I don’t understand the taboo against complaining. Do all cultures have this sour disposition toward people who insist on telling the truth? Of lifting the veil? What was it Shelley said, “lift not the painted veil which those who live / Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there.” Things like: Pilates on a spacecraft, as it hurtles toward earth in flames. Crabalocker fishwife, pornographic priestess. The truculence of poets. Ruskin weeping in a men’s room. Who wants to see that? What everyone wants, apparently, is quiet. And who can blame them? Nobody wants to find themselves in Antonin Artaud’s theatre of cruelty. We just want a crackling fire and a huge willingness to gaze into the eyes of a penny and say I love you. It whispers of all sorts of impulse and indication that all those sexy pencils we bring to a sheet of paper just to repeat our grievances over and over and erase them in a fit of shame might be a bit too melodramatic to suit our purposes. Complaining must have an edge, or it’s just a wet sponge. People aren’t always great listeners. The mind wanders. A good complaint can coax a swarm of happy minds out of their fake contentment. Illusions are intoxicating. The truth is an old rag soaked in gasoline.

Art alone, by being useless, can be used to patch an existential tire. And since most people consider complaining to be useless and annoying let me show you how consciousness tosses about like grain in the wind. The grain isn’t complaining because there’s nothing to complain about. It’s grain. At least, I think it’s reasonable to assume that that’s what goes on in the domain of grain. Grain being grain. Wind being wind. Nature accomplishing its tasks in unhurried calm. Complaining is different. Complaining sensationalizes the ideal. Its agitations are squalls. Small craft warnings. Inundations of nihilistic bile. The sharp burn of brandy, exquisite as a catharsis.

All grain does is sensationalize eating. It grows it waves in the wind it turns into bread. Complaining comes from pain. This is why it’s immodest, and irritating, and holy, and annoying. But it should be respected. It shouldn’t be shunned like it’s a sin rippling through the puritan community.

Cowboys, according to the John Wayne Hollywood model, hate complainers. They just look you in the eye and spit at the ground and ignore you. Hamlet would not have made a good cowboy. George Carlin was a spectacular cowboy. And so was Bill Hicks. But there was also a lot of Hamlet in them. People given to solitude, but craving a stage. People seething with preternatural insight. O cursed spite, why was I born to set it right.

Wild Bill was a bit like that, and so was Samuel Clemens, whose complaints were dressed in humor, and buffalo robes and stage coach stations. People hardened by blizzards. And disease. And death. Is it any wonder a cowboy would look at you silly if you complained the service at the Rawhide Saloon was slow and the waitresses were rude? He’d pull out his six-shooter and put a few holes in the ceiling. And laugh like a maniac. Because he survived the civil war. And you’re a jerk and a cheat at cards. Cowboys may not complain. But there’s hurt and devilry in their eyes when they can see the fraudulent nature of things, and feel backed against a wall.

Hamlet was a supremely gifted complainer. My complaints are blunt instruments compared to his samurai pith and wit.

People don’t like complainers because it spoils the meticulously constructed world of denial they live in. Their own personal Disneyland.

If you’re into complaint porn like me, I recommend reading the reviews online. Reviews for plumbers. Reviews for electricians. Reviews for rabis and priests. Reviews for shamans and birthday clowns. Reviews for swimming pools and window installation companies. Reviews for Hamlet and Portnoy’s Complaint. Bill Burr at Madison Square Garden.

Complaints, especially the big complaints, the existential complaints, that whole what’s the point of rolling a boulder to the top of a hill if it’s going to go rolling back down again? Deserve a theatre of their own. And they often do at the comedy clubs. And those little bits in King Lear, when Lear is raging against the heavens in a vicious storm of treachery and abandonment. And the fool and mad Tom seek shelter in whatever hovel they can find. And Gloucester appears with a light and invites them into the castle. Where things get even worse. And hard looks suffer inflammations of harsh unforgiving speech. Grievances so hard they create armies and death.

Complaining isn’t a frivolous endeavor. Complaining will earn you complaints. It’s blasphemous. It’s a clear effrontery to the author of our existence. Who made everything perfect. Which it most definitely is not. Maybe for some creatures. But not us delicate humans. Not with our sensitive unfurred, unscaled skin. Our tiny little teeth and our tiny little eyes and our wingless shoulders and the complications of our fingers and the oppositions of our thumbs. Our big dumb brains inventing telescopes and microscopes but too stupid to take care of a planet.

Astronauts never seem to complain. Maybe its due to the weightlessness. I would definitely complain less if I could float. And good healthcare. And a stable economy. And people who loved me. Who would complain in those circumstances? Larry David no doubt. Because there will always be people who don’t know to park. Or look you in the eye and tell you the truth.

It takes stamina to listen to someone’s complaint. There has to be some appetite for negativity, or such assurance in the world you’ve constructed that its foundational assumptions can withstand a small tremor of grumbling.

Some people are drawn to the negative. These people are called nihilists, and they enjoy hard rock and Beckett, gestures without a purpose and minerals shaped like a Missouri breakfast. They’re surprisingly nimble and active participants in the game of life, once you get them motivated, and hand them some money, and a bag of cocaine.

I wrote a novel of complaining once. And those poor generous souls who were willing to subject themselves to my abuses of the English language, complained about the complaining. I think I may have taken it a notch to high. Too much trouble in the treble. And not nearly enough bass.

It’s hard trying to maintain a balanced view of things in life, just enough reward to justify the punishment. It’s good to remind yourself of the things you’re grateful for. But we all live in a state of acute precarity these days and we’re all trying to keep our dinghies from turning over. The waves are high and their menace is real. Does someone’s complaining help our situation? I believe it does. Maybe a chain reaction of vigorous healthy complaining across the nation of an exhausted people finally fed up with the imbecility of their government will spread a broad, liberating light across the darkness of the prairie all the way to Vegas to the Gulf of the Farallones and Kerouac’s old Golden Gate and brighten the sad dim lights of San Francisco.