Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [84]
According to his set of filters, inanimate objects are alive, and plants and animals share with them the capacity to think as well a;feel. Don sees perspicacity in a mesquite, an old broom handle even. I his lyrics are about anything absolutely, they are about ecology.
You're a painter. In “Run Paint Run Run” are you saying that the paint itself is a conscious entity with a will of its own?
Yeah! Definitely! Hey, you got it. Yes, it does have a will of its own. Do you generally feel that about the things around you, inanimate objects?
Um hm. Yeah, I really do. I think they’re all alive. Don’t you? I don’t know.
Come on, you do too …
So how do you and the paint get along?
Pretty damn good, I’ll tell ya. I’m just looking forward to getting enough money to be able to really paint big. I don’t wanna paint any littler than five by five. But I’d like to paint twenty by twenty.
Do you and the paint ever have fights?
Yeah, definitely.
Do you feel the same way about the electric guitar, that when you plug it into the wall it's this battle of wills sort of?
I think so. It’ll spit out atcha anything that's out there. Was that what you were talking about in “Electricity”?
Yeah, that had a hell of a lot to do with it…. It always seems to come out the way it wants to, y’know
I think that partially Don anthropomorphizes animals and objects as a defense against humans, who empirical observation has told him are by and large incomprehensible to themselves as well as him, that's when they’re not also out to getcha. He's like an Androcles that would chat a spell with Leo but see fangs and claws on a delivery boy. Lacking aforesaid filters, he has devised an elaborate system of checkpoint charlies to keep most of humankind's snoots at bay. This can sometimes be frustrating. His favorite device in the past was to always say some bigtime gonzo Dada non sequitur (“All roads lead to Coca-Cola” was the first one I ever heard), then look you straight in the eye and insistently enquire: “Do you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, sure, Don, sure!” everybody (except Jan) would always huffn-puff. He is a very charismatic person, a guru, of sorts. He knows how to charm, and has a way of flattering you by asking you all kinds of questions suggesting real concern. He really means it, too, his basic philosophy has always been summed up in the open invitation to share his suddenly brighter sunshine in Trout Mask Replicas “Frownland.” But see, that's just it: it was always his sunshine, on another level all these things were and are distancing devices (though he's not nearly as ego-centrically defensive as he used to be) and it can be extremely frustrating because no matter how intimate you get with somebody if all they ever say practically is stuff that sounds like it came out of their lingotango lyrics (another technique is to ask you to elaborate when you ask a question and then just agree with you) you go home with a tape recorder full of words that mean nothing in particular and the sad hunch that there was something a bit impersonal about this whole affair. I’ve been told that with Don the best countertactic is to try and pin him down: “Just exactly what do you mean?” But somehow I’ve never been able to draw that hard a line. The man is too magical. Literally. Once in Detroit I walked into a theatre through the back door while he was onstage performing. At the precise moment I stepped to the edge of the curtains on stage right, where I could see him haranguing the audience, he said, very clearly, “Lester!” His back was to me at the time. Later he asked me