This post is for my dear friend, Allen.
Happy Birthday, kindred soul. I know I promised this to you eons ago- I sincerely hope I do it justice, since we've both talked it up enough by now for it to potentially move mountains and siphon rivers, end world hunger and... Make a lot of soap.
I also hope it beats the 1984 collectible Star Wars plastic cup I bought you last year. (I think it was '84. I have a horrible memory for these things.)
Love you so much. Here's to many more years of mind-blowing scripts and the conversations they spark for hours on end. And also, many more years of Beatles lyrics trivia. "No-one, i think, is in my tree, I mean, it must be high or low- that is, you can't, you know, tune in- but it's alright, that is, I think it's not too bad."
Over a year ago, now, Allen introduced me to my very first encounter with the pop culture enigma, Fight Club.
Amused, he sat across the room from me on the opposite couch, beside a gurgling tank which housed two oversexed box turtles, and he watched my eyes grow wide, glued to the screen, and my hands as they tightly clenched the pillow I was holding- I was alive with wonder and inspiration. He just sat there, privy to my creative undoing and he smiled, knowing full well that someday I would come to alternately loving him and hating him for introducing me to this cosmic and earth-shattering film.
Never had I ever seen anything before quite like this brutally, chemically, forcefully poignant revelation on the human psyche and its' electric thirst to escape the jaded fatigue within which we inevitably find ourselves situated.
I.
Was.
UN-EARTHED.
And paralyzingly impacted. I wanted to scream so loudly- and I wanted to write one-million words that started with the same letter. I was exhausted. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to launch headfirst into the Ocean and keep swimming until the adrenaline wore off.
From that moment on, I knew something very crucial had happened there that night. I became aware. I'm not sure I can really describe it in any other way.
From the introduction of Marla Singer, "Marla, you big tourist.... The little scratch on the roof of your mouth that would heal if only you could stop tonguing it, but you can't."
to the ultimation of the sync between Tyler Durden and the insomniac Jack, I had reached an uncharted island of awareness. I had plateaued into a heightened sense of clarity; and yet, instead of catapulting me in a peaceful, Ghandi-like state, that same heightened breed of clarity only fostered a deep unsettling and frustration within my tense frame. I was as un-Ghandi-like as Attila the Hun.
I was frustrated because I knew that it had changed me. But I didn't know how it had changed me. And because of that, I knew that I wouldn't be getting any sleep that night, and I really hate loosing sleep over anything.
"If you wake up at a different time and in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"
"On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero."
"I don't want to die without any scars."
These three sentences alone could take me days to unpack. I think the thing I love most about Fight Club is that every time I re-watch it, or re-read the book, all-too-familiar lines will pop out of the background like tiny, machine-gun pellets, wounding and changing me in a different way than they did before. It's like every time I watch it, I'm experiencing it again for the very first time.
I wouldn't want to die without any scars, either- and I think the scariest thing about this movie and how much it moved me, was the way I found myself identifying with the characters. I mean, there's so much truth to Tyler Durden's arrogant, jaded cynicism, isn't there?
Nobody wants to die unscathed. Wound us. Change us. Hurt us. Knock us off our feet. Make us feel alive again.
It's disgusting, and despicable, the way that self-destruction is deified in this story. It's horrific, but it's intriguing all the same. I felt like vomiting. I didn't dare take my eyes off the screen for one, single moment. I couldn't move. I didn't want to move.
"A generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is the answer we really need."
Fight Club is no friend of the female sex. I can't tell you how many times I felt like I should be bitterly (and righteously) offended by its blatant sexism. And yet, you read the statement above and you can't help but think: "Yeah. Where did all the fathers go?" For me, this aspect of the movie was like, inception, dude. I didn't realize I felt that way until I saw the movie, and then I realized this seed of dissension and turbulence had been planted there long, long ago. I was only beginning to unravel the threads of discord and chaos. The movie was far from over.
"Fight club wasn't about winning or losing. It wasn't about words. The hysterical shouting was in tongues, like at a Pentecostal church. When the fight was over, nothing was solved, but nothing mattered."
Is it terrible that I wanted to feel that? Even if only for a moment. The sheer brutality took me by force. It all seemed so glamorously instinctual- I mean, it was overwhelmingly Hollywoodized, I knew that- but I didn't feel like Hollywood was lying to me, either. I kind of felt this nirvana-esque ambiguity to it.
The primal idea of fighting to feel one's own worth. Not prove one's worth, no. Fight Club never was a competition. It wasn't a sport. These guys were self-healing their lifelong traumas. The era of prescription drugs was over. Self- medication had taken over in it's basest form.
"I got right in everyone's hostile little face. Yes, these are bruises from fighting. I'm comfortable with them. I am enlightened."
See what I mean? And for a moment, a dangerously scandalous moment, I toyed over whether or not I wanted that, too. Enlightenment. Gosh, that's so enticing, isn't it? I almost believed it. I stand before you today, in full admittance and bearing no shame in the fact, that I almost believed it was possible. That Fight Club in itself was a probable answer to a lot of society's problems.
Is that possible?
"Ancient peoples found their clothes got cleaner if they washed them at a certain spot in the river. Why? Because, human sacrifices were once made on the hills above this river. Year after year, bodies burnt. Rain fell. Water seeped through the wood ashes to become lye. The lye combined with the melted fat of the bodies, till a thick white soapy discharge crept into the river. The first soap was made from the ashes of heroes. Like the first monkeys shot into space. Without sacrificing, without death, we would have nothing."
.... And then, ladies and gentlemen: the chemical burn scene.
"The pain you're feeling is premature enlightenment. This is the greatest moment of your life and you're off somewhere, missing it. Shut up. Our fathers were our models for God. And, if our fathers bailed, what does that tell us about God? Listen to me. You have to consider the possibility that God doesn't like you, he never wanted you. In all probability, He hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen... We are God's unwanted children, with no special place and no special attention, and so be it. You can go to the sink and run water over your hand. Look at me. Or you can use vinegar to neutralize the burn, but first you have to give up. First, you have to know that someday, you are going. to. die. Until you know that, you will be useless."
Now, I don't for one second believe the above statement. I'm sorry, I know disclaimers can sometimes ruin really good writing, but I feel like I have to make the distinction here. I don't believe that God hates anyone.
I don't believe that God sees anyone of us as "unwanted."
Regardless of my disclaimer, this is pretty brilliant writing in and of itself, I have to say. It's all in the way the sentences are built. Ground-up. The good, old-fashioned way. First you start with an idea, and then you build off that with an example- followed by a consideration, and then you unpack the consideration and build another level of seemingly persuasive credibility. And then you finish with a slam-bam power-packed sentence that really leaves the witness reeling in a world of cyanide and spirituality. This is a fiction writer's porn-like demographic. This is a literary ultimatum.
I've probably watched this chemical burn scene about 6 times in my life, and each time I get chills. Still, after all this time, I'm not really sure I can explain why I get these chills.
"We are the middle children of history, with no purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. The great war is a spiritual war. The great depression is our lives. We were raised by television to believe that we'd be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars- but we won't. And we're learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. We are the quiet young men who listen until it's time to decide."
I think, deep down, in the very core of every human being, is a tiny little facet of radicalism. We as a human race are born to revolutionize. That's what we've been doing since the dawn of time, right? Fire, the wheel, electricity, plumbing,submarines, rocket launches, nuclear war, cloning devices. We organize to revolutionize. We revolutionize to radicalize. It's been abused, and easily so. I'm not encouraging it. I'm just revealing it.
I just think it stands to reason that there's a switch within all of us that can be radically flipped over one thing or another in our lives. Maybe in unconventional ways, maybe it doesn't have to be political radicalism, or religious radicalism. It could be the radical decision to quit social networking. You could refuse to be a part of the United Postal System. You could stop eating gluten.
"Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel's life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal he has ever eaten."
Warped- but you get it, don't you? It's about taking things for granted. Shouldn't every breakfast be the best meal we've ever eaten, just because we're alive? Shouldn't life continue upwards and forwards in a nebulous reach for the expansive, elusive future?
And then, Fight Club begins to spiral out of control.
Vandalism becomes rampant. The commissioner's held under threat of castration, "The people you're after are everyone you depend on. We do your laundry, cook your food and serve you dinner. We guard you while you sleep. We drive your ambulances. Do not fuck with us."
Jack almost kills the Angel Face character in hand-to-hand-combat.
"I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every Panda that wouldn't screw to save it's species. I wanted to open the dump valves on oil tankers and smother all the French beaches I'd never see. I felt like destroying something beautiful."
And even though I knew it was all going horribly, horribly wrong- I hated myself for finding such a terrestrial sort of poetry about it all. That cliche, about finding "beauty in the breakdown?"
That is Fight Club. It's a beautiful, disgusting, unforgettable, poignant, violently unforgivable breakdown.
It's a revolutionary idea which could never be accomplished in a pure manner- because man would inevitably screw it up every single time.
It's like world peace- the most desirable and beautiful concept in the entire existence of humanity, but as long as man is in control, we will never, ever, EVER attain world peace. It's impossible. We cannot handle such purity. We will stain it. Our fingers are smudged with tar and asphalt.
It's a conundrum.
"This does not belong to us. We are not the leaders. We are not special. We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. We are all part of the same compost heap."
And then, after a confrontation, a struggle, a diffusion and an acrid argument between Marla and Jack, several very large explosions and one ringing gunshot later- it's all over.
The credits roll.
Tyler and Jack are one and the same. The clues are written all over the story-line.
And how do you feel?
How did I feel?
To be totally honest, I'm still trying to figure out how Fight Club makes me feel. I'm still contemplating and discovering new facets and eccentricities of the psychological warfare this movie has brought to my life.
I think it's abundantly extremist. I think Tyler Durden is the ultimation of a very lonely, very entitled and unhappy man's cry for help in all the wrong places.
Do I think Jack was a victim of temporary insanity?
No.
I don't for one second believe that Jack was a victim of mental instability. I don't think Jack was a victim of a consumer, materialistic society by-producing spoiled, angry children in mass quantities like a meat packaging plant, or the Apple Inc. factory.
I think Jack was human. I think Jack was weak. He was the tiny, frail match that ignited a spark- and Tyler was a tank of gasoline thrown in to keep the fire burning.
I think the movie in some aspects is ridiculous and overdone. I sometimes think to myself as I watch it, "Chuck Palahniuk was trying too hard to make a point."
At other times, I wring my hands over the fact that I don't have the same grappling hold on the English language that Chuck P. has. And I do honestly think that Fight Club has defined an entire generation of misfit, IKEA-addicted nobodies who are dead tired of all the endless drudgery which the middle working-class has to offer.
I don't doubt that for a moment.
What does this movie mean to me?
Everything. This movie and this book and this entire franchise means everything. It's a reminder of who not to be, and how to strive for excellence all at once.
It's the single, solitary, most revealing and challenging fictional movie I've ever watched on a deeply personal level.
I'm not sure if that means I have an entire host of demons that I struggle with that I wasn't even aware of, or if it just means I share a sympathetic bond with writers and people like Chuck P.
I understand their messages. I get where they're coming from. I validate their disaffection and disillusionment. Their frailty is compacted within their social martyrdom. I can respect that.
And I owe all of this dogma and life criterion to Allen Barber. Who knew from the very beginning that I was the kind of soul who would love this movie, and how it changes people. He could sense the Fight-Club-Lovin' Vibes all over me.
So he gave me a gift that day.
A gift that, occasionally, can actually be a pretty big curse, too, but a gift which, altogether I couldn't imagine my life without.
So thank you, Allen. Here it is, 11:24 PM on 6/19/2013. Just moments before your 25th birthday.
I hope this year is a blessing for you, dear friend.
Happiest of birthdays.
May the force be with you, you rebel-alliance-tattoo-bearing-friend-of-mine, you.
(funny note, I almost wrote, "may the odds be ever in your favor," just because. I really have no idea why. I just thought you might appreciate the fact that apparently I'm starting to quote The Hunger Games for no valid reason. Mmmkay. Night-night.)
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