Timelessness: A Vermin Affair

David Mikics (Ozymandias critic) describes time as ruinous and devastating, indifferent to those who dare to stand up to it.  That is why the poet Shelley despises Ozymandias and his sculptor so much.  In their stupid gallantry, both took on, and were defeated by time.

Yet I find it interesting that Shelley’s own success depends on others possessing the very audacity that he despises.  It is as if, rather than rise up to time, Shelley disappears from it’s sight, only to turn up later riding on it’s coattails and collecting the scraps of it’s havoc.

But Shelley is not the only one to have taken such an approach.  I recently read A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.  The book derives it’s title, in part, from the expression “Time’s a goon,” voiced by a series of world-weary characters, each of whom, by way of drugs or love affairs or even genocide instigation, seem to laugh in the face of time, only to be cornered by it later.  In these desperate circumstances, they find creative backroads to redemption.

Perhaps the strongest example is Scotty.  After a glamorous high school career as a punk rocker, Scotty ends up custodian and divorcee.  He spends his time scoffing at the socialites around him.  He is actually borderline crazy.  But in the end, he gets endorsed by an old friend/current record producer who is amazed by Scotty’s “pure” sound.  Scotty is the only one in the 2020s who still plays music without all the technological enhancements.  A social networking hoax gets Scotty his first show, and he revolutionizes the music industry.  He is a screaming success because computers have simply repulsed him for all those decades.  Yet he would never have even gotten the gig without them.  It's chilling to think that if we are to last as artists, we might depend most upon those things which we most disgust.