The death knell of the simple existence

By Steve Janoski


A man, however well educated, who has once sampled extreme simplicity of existence will seldom return to the artificial life of civilization. The burden of it is not realized until it has been laid aside.

-     English explorer Percy Fawcett

When I first wrote the initial draft of this column, it was by candlelight, on paper, in the earliest part of the night.

This wasn’t by choice, of course — it was during one of those rolling blackouts that struck every few days in the early fall when the wind would blow too hard and PSE&G’s infrastructure would shatter again.

These frustrating instances quickly exposed once again that society’s reliance on electricity is immeasurable at this point; it does indeed seem that we’ve forgotten how dark the night truly is when there’s no burning bulb to show us the way.

But as someone who divides his time between the gym and reading (neither of which require much light), I can honestly say that in small increments, power outages don’t bother me.

Yes, I was without an iPod or TV, but I am no great watcher of television in the first place; the cable could be out for six weeks and there isn’t a show I can say I’d actually miss.

I’d be lying if I said that I don’t spend an inordinate amount of time online, though, and my job would be drastically different.

Of course, I’m not sure how different, because I have only a vague awareness of how newspapers used to be printed in the days when phrases like “setting type” and “upper case” had real, tangible meanings.

But then really, isn’t that the problem?

Most of us don’t look at setting type as a necessary skill, but at one time, it was as prized as any other in the industry.

And the same thing has happened to other basic skills, like carving a piece of wood, using a forge, or even remembering a phone number — they have fallen by the wayside in the computer age.

Before electricity, candles were the “sine qua non” of life at night; now, they are for mere aesthetics.  People who have not yet traded in pocketknives for cell phones are looked on with amusement, as are those who cram a road map into their glove box instead of a GPS.

Call me a luddite (most do), but this worries me.

I cannot help but wonder if, in our zeal to make our survival easier, we are turning into one very fat, very lazy race that’s working so hard at improving the intelligence of our computers that we’re sacrificing our own.

Even the simplest of skills — navigation, fire-building, purifying water — are the culmination of thousands upon thousands of years of human experimentation, and their dismissal as quaint reminders of a time long past is a grave mistake.

The advancements made by computers are certainly a remarkable achievement, one that will bring great benefit to the human race…but with that comes a great danger.

We no longer “turn off.” We no longer “unwind.” Smart phones, Facebook, email, text messaging, they haunt us, swirling around us just inches away from our collective fingertips and inundating our minds with a constant swarm of useless information  that we’ll forget in the next instant.

The sun has set on the days of our self-educated forebears reading the classic works of literature by firelight in the cabins that they built themselves. No longer do we think that a man’s business is his own, or that anything can be solved by the labor of our hands or the power in our fists…the sun has set on “rugged individualism.”

When I was very young, my grandparents were close with a Mennonite family in Pennsylvania.  I don’t recall much about them, except that their children often ran barefoot through the hand-plowed fields and their wall clock had Roman numerals instead of Arabic ones.

But there was one man in that family, I remember, who made his own furniture — utterly beautiful works of art that would rival the best to be found in any store, and last decades longer.

There was no doubt, looking at every finished piece, every hand-carved loveseat or chair, that he’d let a piece of his soul soak into it.

At the end of my writing the draft of this column, I noticed that I had black ink on my right palm.

It’s been so long since I’ve had ink on my hands.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

Where have all the rockers gone?

Wednesday, April 7
By Steve Janoski

Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bruce Springsteen, Metallica, AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, the Doors, Motley Crue, Buckcherry.

They didn’t begin modern rock n’ roll, but they’ve kept it going through its toddler years of the 1960s and have kept it rolling since, bringing this hard, swaggering style of music to the masses by playing show after show for year after year, paying their dues and rising to fame.

And that’s the one thing that they, along with most other rock bands that have “made it,” share: they all started somewhere.

It was in some guitarist’s parents’ basement in Los Angeles or Freehold or Jacksonville that they got together.

They progressed, as we’ve seen so many times in “Behind the Music” fashion. They played in smoke-choked, dimly-lit bars, sold their brand to swaying, drunken crowds who, at least at first, didn’t care that they were there.

They lived in roach-filled apartments, drove for miles to play gigs, and kept on playing until they got so damned tight that you knew they were in it for the long haul, live or die. And eventually, they got “noticed.”

At least, this was the formula back then. Now? I’m not so sure.

In my carousing across New Jersey’s nightlife, I’ve come to believe that there just isn’t anybody playing their own guitar-driven, gut-busting, fight-starting rock n’ roll anymore. It’s become a “scene” of lowly cover band after lowly cover band, playing the same Rolling Stones and Billy Idol cover songs before their huge finale of “Sweet Home Alabama” rolls out.

C’mon. Really?

I’m not sure why this has all gone down the way it has. There are less venues to play than there used to be, but that’s not a reason that long-haired 17-year-olds should lay down their guitars, take their torn Maiden t-shirts off, and start going to school.

There are definitely enough places for these cover bands to play — they seem to find where I’m at every Friday night, so I don’t know why it couldn’t be an original band instead, or even a band that plays original songs at least half of the time.

I’ve never been in a band myself, but I’d imagine that there’s a kind of special feeling that happens when four or five guys get together and create a new song that they play for the first time and say to themselves, “Damn…that was good.”

It’s probably a way better feeling when they play that song out in public the first few times, and get a reception from the crowd that shakes the rafters and knocks beers off the table — I suspect that’s why musicians get into the whole thing in the first place.

There’s a clip on YouTube that I found recently of AC/DC performing their song “Whole Lotta’ Rosie” live in 1978 at what looks to be a small club in England.

The people are packed tightly together like toothbrush bristles, while onstage a shirtless, tattooed Bon Scott howls on the microphone while Angus Young races around headbanging and kicking and tearing through solo after solo, captivating his rollicking audience of reckless youths and the thing is just the embodiment of wild energy and passion, of fire!

Somewhere, sometime, that band played to an empty bar when they began; maybe they thought about just playing covers on the weekends when someone told them that they weren’t any good.

But they forged ahead… and look where it got them.

I hope the kids today are doing the same, because without them, rock n’ roll will soon die off, and the only things playing at bars will be the same half-hearted Skynyrd covers or the whiny songs from the bartender’s iPod.

Until then, though, I keep hoping that every bar I walk into, the next Bon Scott is nervously getting ready to walk onstage for the first time, tapping his fingers and shaking his leg, waiting to hear what the crowd will say about his band’s set.

To those about to rock: we’re all waiting for you.