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Great book, Tom Holland's Rubicon -- of particular interest, anecdotes on the social classes of late Republican Rome. It seems wherever there has been a Republic, patrician youth slummed it with the working class, taking on their accents, the styles of dress among the tradesmen. In 150-50 BC, rich kids played dress-up as farmhands, and rallied behind self-proclaimed reformers who promised a new Rome -- fairness and transparency for the people.
Holland doesn't take a political angle, neither spinning the street politics of Rome as reform or mafioso; he's too busy evoking the scenery as a great novelist would. There are old guard generals forced into retirement keeping the fires of competition alive with the race to build exorbitant constructs: zoos, hanging gardens -- one general built miles of waterlines to the sea, so as to stock the man-made lakes at his home with fish from the ocean. Fascinating excess from a culture obsessed with achievement. Then there are the young upstarts; rich kids like the Claudii of the mid-60's/50's BC, who coming from four hundred years of high office, turned to gangsterism in the midst of a counter-culture against republican values. It's akin to the Bush kids funding Occupy Wall Street, and stocking it with more leg-breakers than hipsters. The leading light of this counter-culture was the one and only Gaius Julius Caesar, who, like any political genius, rode the fence between the left and right, and triangulated himself all the way to, well, you know the story, I'm sure -- at one point early in his career, whilst schtooping every wife and mistress in Rome, Caesar got himself elected to the Pontifex Maximus, the highest religious position in the city.
This is all very well, and really, go get this book. The Claudii, in particular Clodius and Clodia, brother and sister, powerful politically and socially, did not handle the rise to power as subtly as Caesar. At one point Clodia, to teach a lesson to a man who had called her a whore, had her thugs beat and rape the man in public.
Her brother Clodius hung in the working class neighborhoods with a retainer of thugs, street-level muscle for hire; he was particularly effective at "getting out the vote". What is fascinating to me about Clodius, more-so than the bloody stories, and rigged elections, was his obsession with class; his attempt to be "street" when he came from the poshest life Rome afforded. Even his name, Clodius, is a slangy redux of Claudius, a version of his ancient royal name based on the accent of Roman commoners. To the people, Clodius was a reformer, a man who would stand up to the senate; to Julius Caesar, he was eyes and fists in the street, paid handsomely to protect Caesar's interests, (allegedly), while the General was away in Germania pounding on Kelts.
2 But let's get away from Rome for a minute. Having seen a good friend of mine this holiday, we got to talking about hipsters. Specifically Brooklyn hipsters who in the culture are recognized by the costume: beard, plaid, work boots, military issue Buddy Holly glasses, Carhartts. I pose the question: why are these rich kids dressing like lumberjacks?
I want to hear what he has to say, as he lives there. He doesn't have a theory really, but he does tell me that if you walk through Williamsburg, you'll see 150 dollar Red Wings in boot boutiques.
"Nice boots. Against concrete won't last any longer than forty dollar Walmart issue".
I'm being a smart ass, but I am curious about this, as with anything relating to identity. It is as fascinating as when legit blue collar dubs dress in Kiss makeup, or black girls straighten their hair, or my cousin Chazz wears his sunglasses and ball cap, or Bruce Wayne puts on a cape and cowl, or Bruce Springsteen pretends he's from the dust bowl, or some woman gets surgery to look like Angelina Jolie, or some rapper calls himself a soldier.
3 When I used to like movies and read about actors, you had these American, (by way of Eastern Europe), method actors who sought internal truth, and finding it, synced that "truth" to a character; then you had British stage actors who found their characters by dressing in the costume and makeup, and strutting around like a dope; this is unfairly simplified, but I want to get somewhere: doesn't the dressing in the costume strategy seem just like life? In the Ricky Gervais show Extras, Ian McKellan does a funny bit where he says, in talking to Peter Jackson, "You do realize that I am not really a wizard."
But if you or I put the hat and grey robe on, and had mud painted to our socks, whatever we are, we would at least feel a little bit like Gandalf, right? A great artist might need dress like a schlub to get in the space she needs to sculpt. Or a revolutionary to revolt. Or anyone for that matter. Poseurs every one of us. When Joey Ramone sings, "Sheena is a punk rocker.", it feels like there is hidden depth, because the next line is, "Sheena is a punk rocker.. now." Now she's punk. Nothing more American than a self-made bitch, and all she had to do was rip her jeans.
4 My life I tried to find an identity. I hated when others' perceptions of me leaked in, and I was forced to acknowledge what others thought, even if it was complimentary, because acknowledging you exist, that people have thought about you, is terrifying, it always gets in the way. Dogs don't think about what you think of them -- people don't refer lovingly to a "dog's life" because they wish to lick their own balls, (not always), they are talking about losing/rejecting identity; of becoming weightless from what you are, what you have been, what you ever will be; of living in the moment, and disappearing in it.
There are no alcoholic dogs.
5 I want to be a ghost. But one that is exceptionally haunting. 6 So you have all these hipster kids dressing in either military or worker garb. Why? Is this how they costume up to go into the world as men? Armor. I understand. Very fascist perv, though -- they all love Obama, and dress like Hitler Youth. Hip nerds who have Gimme Shelter on Bluray, and are trying to be half-Jagger, half-Hell's Angel. I find it ironic, you can always tell the rich kids in a City by how hard they try to look like workers. I don't doubt those work clothes feel cool; not so much when your hands are numb from the cold, and your boots are full of mud. Everybody wants to be the last Mohican. I have no issue with that, me too. But the boots: I can only guess your laptop is attached to a pedal. Couldn't you just wear slippers to the coffee shop? Okay, no more jokes; I think I understand. It's a pastoral thing; it's romanticizing something lost to you.
7 I don't want to revert to Shakespeare because Shakespeare can be a sad identity if you are the jerk-off who writes a lot about Shakespeare; what can I do?
As You Like It, for instance, is beautiful pastoral...
PASTORAL: A pastoral lifestyle (see pastoralism) is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art and music that depicts such life in an idealized manner, typically for urban audiences. A pastoral is a work of this genre.
Typically for urban audiences!
So city folk paid money to go to the theater and watch plays about sheep-herds, and, well, as Hamlet says, "country matters", which is, to phrase for today: the sweet monkey fucking of hillbillies -- like dogs, devoid of identity, with the in and out, the high and low. Because as all city folk know, no matter how deeply they think, how in touch with the world they believe themselves to be, there's a thrum to country life; there's stars in the sky, and business in the hay.
8 What does this all mean? I have no fucking clue. I'm not a good writer, so I have a hard time concluding all my harvested bits -- I sling, and don't think too hard on it. Then there's the other thing: I hate when jerk writers summate something greater than themselves with petty psychology. I'm trying hard to open, not sure if I can close.
Maybe it's this: All the world's a cosplay. |
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