HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY!!!!!

Gustave Flaubert

Excuse my French but no other language will do:

"Être stupide, égoïste, et avoir la bonne santé sont trois conditions pour le bonheur, bien que si la stupidité manque, tout soit perdu.”  

Could it be that my poor friend David Schoffman has lived in California far too long?

When we were students at the Beaux Arts in the 1970's he was a wonderful anthology of irritable anxiety. His moods went from crepuscular to wine-dark cataclysmic but to describe him merely as an artiste maudit would be to completely overlook the unique subtlety of his pessimism. Back then he was interesting and complicated and maladjusted. He was a chorus of contradiction and was deeply troubled by the twin poles of faith and doubt.

We all were. That was the age and such were the times.

Today homiletic certainties are expressed with the cynical smirk of the carny barker. We all agree to greet each new wonderful day with unfailing hopefulness and mirth. If the daily newspapers mock our aspirations we are told to ignore the news and listen to life-affirming, self-help podcasts instead. If we insist on clinging to the messy reality of human fallibility we are scolded as scourges mired in negativity.

Nowhere is this institutional denial more prevalent than in the American state of California. With savage hubristic zeal social media companies promise redemption and bliss in exchange for simple submission (and personal information). Like the vicars of the Church who created a god in their own image our silicon prophets have fashioned another false idol wobbled in a warped reflection called "the online presence".

Our blessed avatars are always successful, always hygienic and always very happy.

Which brings me back to Schoffman. His curated self has leached into his brick and mortar sweaty-self. When he's asked in all seriousness how he's doing he typically replies with a grin as wide as a football pitch "awesome!" or "never been better!!" 

If corporate, institutional happiness brings such misery I think I'll remain in the grey dismal France of Flaubert.

“Le bonheur," he warns us, "est un mythe inventé par le diable pour nous désespérer”