Malaise (or "Fuck Art, Let's Dance!")

 

 

Warning - this is not going to be a post about erotica. At least mostly not. Sorry to disappoint! 😊 

I’m going to date myself here – I started college at the end of the ‘70s, during the Carter administration. It was not the best of times. The economy had yet to recover from the recession of the early 70s when OPEC doubled the price of oil in ‘79. Suddenly we had double-digit inflation and a slow-growth economy just as we were starting to recover. 

I mention this because I’ve been thinking about the term “malaise”, which became associated with a July 15, 1979 speech by Jimmy Carter, despite him never using the word. He called for civic sacrifice to get us through a crisis of confidence in the US.  

I had forgotten that it was originally well received by the public. Then a couple of weeks later, Carter replaced most of his cabinet, and then a few months later, the Shah of Iran was ousted and 52 Americans were held hostage through the end of Carter’s time in office. So much for confidence. And suddenly his “crisis of confidence” speech had a totally different connotation. 

And then we got Ronnie Ray-gun. 

Malaise is a good word for how I’ve been feeling the past few weeks. I’ll use the 2nd definition in Merriam-Webster: 

a vague sense of mental or moral ill-being  

a malaise of cynicism and despair—  

Malcolm Boyd 

I’m not going to dive into politics explicitly (if you follow me on Bluesky, and you SHOULD, you’ll have an idea of what my politics are). Let’s just say that we’ve swiftly gone past “creeping authoritarianism” to a full-blown dictatorship in less than six months. 

Couple that with my particular situation – worrying about (and sometimes taking care of) aging parents and in-laws, dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, trying to figure out if/when I can retire from my day job in the next year or two, working to continue to improve a 40-year relationship with my SO – let's just say that it’s sometimes hard to find much enthusiasm for, well, much of anything. Sounds a lot like malaise to me. 

I’m not writing this to have a pity party (although Puddles is the only clown that I actually DON'T find creepy). 

I’m really thinking more about the fact that SO MANY people are feeling like me. To quote MacReady from “The Thing”: nobody trusts anybody now, and we're all very tired. 

It’s hard to create when you’re feeling like that. But honestly, that’s the time when you need to create the most. What I do isn’t art – at best it’s a momentary distraction from the shit going on in each of our lives. But it’s goddamn important for us to have those distractions. 

In the early days of my college career (and at the end of my high school daze), there were musicians that were taking on the establishment that had failed us and was continuing to do so. The nihilism of the Sex Pistols, the political awareness of Joe Strummer and the Clash, the cultural awareness of early rap, the overt sexuality of early Prince – that's one side of the equation. 

But there was also a need for what I’ll call “Fuck art. Let’s dance!” There’s a stigma attached to escapism, especially in times of trouble. But damn it, you cannot constantly be in protest mode. It will eat you alive. It will kill your spirit. It will make you old before your time. 

So maybe that’s where disco comes in. Or Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band. Or the Beach Boys (RIP Brian Wilson). Self-care is abso-fucking-lutely necessary to survive in these times. 

And maybe that also includes getting off. Letting the troubles of the day and the month and the year and the fucking decade go away for a few minutes while you watch two pretty people banging away at each other in a video. Or you read a story about a guy that really gets off watching his beloved wife get absolutely railed by some guy they just met at a bar. And you forget about how much EVERYTHING sucks. 

My Medium readership is way down, after so many writers have bailed for a myriad of other platforms. I’ll figure out later whether I stay or not – there's a real temptation to just go back to posting on Literotica for the clicks and comments, and put up the occasional novel on Kindle.  

But the main thing is that I’ve got to get my head back around to writing. It’s not Important that I do so, maybe, but it’s good for me – and if one single beautiful person reads something I wrote and enjoys it or gets off to it or thinks about it or just – I don’t know – READS it, I feel like it’s worth the effort. 

So Ima get right on that! 

If you really want some crazy escapist shit, check out my “Devil Inside” series that just started on Medium. If you don’t have a Medium account, DM me on Bluesky or hit me up on one of the Discord servers I frequent, and I’ll see if I can figure out how to do a guest link. It’s quite the departure from most of the stuff I’ve written the past couple of years – hope you like it (and let me know, either way). 

And, for dog's sake, take care of yourselves!