respect profanity, despise mediocrity

only a couple of days since Brook mentioned the late Layne Staley on these pages - which had got me thinking about these two lives of such prominent artists of my generation, both lost prematurely, eight years apart circa April 5th - i saw this:

F-word in Cobain quote sparks controversy - Celebrities- msnbc.com

as i read that article, i was reminded of that Tony Campolo tactic of swearing while sharing poverty statistics in church... and his question, what shocks you more? and i'm reminded of the number of times my dad tells me that someone in the pulpit in his church talks about wanting to be "relevant" to post-modern society and the number of times i respond with why i think that's the gasp of a dying institution and why it is i say i can't go back to that pew with him.
and that gets me thinking about Cornel West and piety and critical thinking, and about when it's time for kids to tell their parents they're wrong. and thinking about getting older and what my generation might have worth teaching the one that follows. of when it's time for us to start listening to those who've gone before us and having enough respect to listen to those who come in our wake. and wondering whose voices are worth holding onto, whose lives might we learn from...

and i wonder if the war on drugs might be served better if more folks showed their kids Alice In Chains Unplugged on MTV and then got them to read the last interview with Layne before his death. and then listened to some Nirvana served up with a side order of Bill Hicks, saying,

Because you know if you play New Kids on the Block albums backwards they sound better. "Oh come on, Bill, they're the New Kids, don't pick on them, they're so good and they're so clean cut and they're such a good image for the children." Fuck that! When did mediocrity and banality become a good image for your children? I want my children to listen to people who fucking ROCKED! I don't care if they died in puddles of their own vomit! I want someone who plays from his fucking HEART!

and wondering if then maybe we'd all be served a whole lot better by not worrying about profanity so much as looking for honest conversation across the generations about how all these prophets had something worth listening to and thinking about...

about how clean is good for an addict, but rarely should it be found in the language of an artist, because the raw beauty and tragedy of life is never ever clean, from the moment we are born... maybe there'd be some intelligent, imaginative talk about how things might have been different for Layne and how he may or may not be any different than they are, or any different from Kurt or Bill or even you or i...
of why some are lost to us and others aren't, and wondering what legacy these lost voices might want us to remember them by...
and why it might be so: that deep listening and loving music and writing our stories from the fucking heart really matters...

if education is that which leads to liberation, then some lessons in life deserve to be expressed in profanity. and some lessons are worth carving in stone.

LB