If you are unfamiliar with Peggy Lee’s hit song of 1969 Is That All There Is? now would be a good time to fill that gap in your education, but be prepared for a somewhat less than uplifting experience, which by no means suggests it’s not a great song. Thought-provoking might better describe its usual effect on people, which is uplifting in a way; at any rate a feel-good song it is not, and if feel-good is all you can tolerate in this moment, find the James Brown song on your device and have at it.
The “song” is mostly spoken word, which is strange enough, but the music comes straight from the culture of Weimar, Germany that prevailed in the 1920s and 30s. If you’ve seen the movie Cabaret you get it, and you might already know something about Kurt Weill, the master of this genre, with its often dark and cynical looks at human nature and life. If you know the song Mack the Knife, about a gang world hitman, you get the picture, as upbeat as the musical arrangement might be, especially as Louis Armstrong sang it.
Is That All There Is? is not Kurt Weill’s, but was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, supposedly inspired by Leiber’s German wife getting him to read one of her fave German writers, Thomas Mann. Leiber got inspired by the Mann story Disillusionment (Enttäuschung) from 1896 and the song sticks pretty closely to the content and spirit of that writer’s efforts. Of course you should read the story and hear the song and come to your own conclusions about this, but let’s just say there are moments – especially when one is feeling particularly disappointed or let down by life – that one wonders if there is much point to living, that the “real deal” in the end might be nothing like what one had previously assumed (if you have never had such moments you are blessed, and good for you!). The song’s refrain offers an antidote: let’s keep dancing/ let’s break out the booze/ and have a ball – which might be good advice sometimes but probably not always, and of course might just be meant metaphorically anyway.
A whole lot more could be said about all this, or at least pondered, but it might help to narrow the focus a bit. The song brings up four different “sobering moments” that raise the question in question for the singer: first the loss that results from a destructive house fire, then a child’s less than impressed reaction upon seeing a circus, followed by the bitter disappointment of lost love, and finally disillusionment with life itself.
Which brings us to the topic of buying and selling, activities that are no small matter nowadays and in fact have been a very big deal since forever but especially for about 100 years now. America and much of the world runs on what is called a “consumer economy”, where 70% of the gross domestic product is based on folks buying stuff. The modern consumer economy developed in the 1920s, an era of economic boom times with the introduction of vast numbers of mass manufactured products, which co-incidentally was the heyday of Kurt Weill. Who knows if he was responding with his dark vision to what he was observing in the world around him? Was he, a man of dark wisdom, wondering if there were limitations to basing one’s well-being on the purchase of a new car or refrigerator or apparel of the latest fashion or whatever, on what is an endless list? This also might include eating another meal at a fancy restaurant or taking another trip to a faraway place, all of it involving consumption of some kind. In the 1920s, the travel industry was in its infancy but look at what’s happened since! Might one finally face the limits of satisfaction in mere consuming and ask “Is that all there is?” Oh wait Kurt didn’t write that song.
But he did write The Alabama Song, where we get “Oh show us the way to the next whiskey bar/ Oh don’t ask why, oh don’t ask why/ For we must find the next whiskey bar/ For if we don’t find the next whiskey bar/ I tell you we must die/ I tell you we must die/ I tell you, I tell you, I tell you we must die” after which the refrain goes “Oh moon on Alabama/ We now must say good bye/ We’ve lost our good old mama/ And must have whiskey, oh you know why.” It goes on with “the next pretty girl” (or boy, depending on the singer), and finally “the next little dollar.” You can hear this in German sung by Lotte Lenya (Weill’s wife) or in English by David Bowie or the Chad Mitchell Trio or The Doors, though Jim Morrison left out the last verse. Do these lyrics not also say something about the limitations of human appetite, and the ultimate disappointment/despair/disillusionment one invites by living a life based on consumption? Is consuming all there is, my friend?
The study of economics is known as the “dismal science” for a number of good reasons which shall not be explored here. In the spirit of ravinginbeantown, we shall take a simple-minded approach to buying and selling and What It All Means. The inspiration, here, comes from a recent email sent to this writer from someone who claims to be one Rosabel Eden at BiggerBetterProfits, part of the bluehost team that supports this website. Rosabel innocently requests whether she might “include this site in her study”, but moves quickly on to make the real pitch about how this writer might “sell more products, increase average order amounts, and get better returns from advertising budgets.” Huh?
It should be said that the original motivation for ravinginbeantown was, as the name suggests, about randomly and impulsively sharing thoughts and observations from this writer’s life with writing and pictures. Back in the day, people – all too often crazy old men – would rave in public places from soapboxes, usually about politics but really on all manner of subjects about which they were passionate. In the city nowadays one will occasionally pass men on the streets with portable amplifiers turned up very high, usually raving about Jesus and biblical prophecies. Maybe the cops leave them alone because America is a Christian nation, at least in the minds of the law, but that is just idle conjecture. The point has been raised that without a website this writer would probably be out on a sidewalk somewhere in his pajamas, perhaps with an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth, pacing back and forth and muttering about the topics covered in these posts. There is some truth to this but as we all know, raving – along with ranting and preaching and all manner of passionate compulsive expression – has found a true home on the internet, and heaven help us all.
So Rosabel – if there truly is a real person with that name – might seem a bit off base with her assumptions about what ravinginbeantown is about. This website started with the simple impulse to start a blog. If one does the obvious and searches for “how to start a blog”, one can readily get totally confused and intimidated by all the “helpful” and rather elaborate advice and instruction about how to do this. If one is older, having grown up in a pre digital world, it can be off-putting, especially the constant cheering about “how easy it is!” Most of the advice steers one towards having a “hosted” site, which is how bluehost became this writer’s partner, mostly for the better but in some ways for worse. One mystery and annoyance is the endless almost-daily stream of emails informing one that this site, usually its “plug-ins” (so what’s a plug-in? and why should I care?) have been updated, with no further explanation. By now these communications number in the hundreds.
The other is the endless stream of bluehost pitches to buy services like Rosabel describes, most often about strategies for “growing and monetizing the audience” through search engine optimization and “key words” and other enticements that lure internet browsers looking for the next new thing to amuse and enlighten themselves. Escaping obscurity also seems to demand getting the word out on social media, but as a non-participant in that realm, this writer has little enthusiasm to go there, for some reason. There are suggestions from a number of sources about the importance of writing posts using simple words and grammar, along with offering a catchy graphic presentation with striking design (for which one can pay one of their creative types to achieve this) so as to develop “powerful content and broad appeal.” This is where their intentions begin to part ways with this writer’s, for whom “broad appeal” is clearly not the highest priority. One assumes every writer strives for “powerful” content, but seeing this as just another strategy for website success suggests that the word can mean a whole lot of disparate things, depending on whom you ask and what their particular intentions are.
Then again, what if Rosabel, here, is on to something truly important? In a consumer economy, is it possible that everything is about buying and selling in some way? Does one even get to choose to stay out of that? As the pandemic has wound down, “pent up” consumer demand for new cars and airline tickets has led to bonkers sales levels. The biggest e-commerce markets are (reportedly) for beauty products, jewelry, TV and smartphone accessories, shoes and designer eyeglasses, and pet supplies and such, but we all know that demand for an infinite variety of items – all of them delivered to your door! – currently seems to have no limits and no end.
Of course any “economy” worthy of the name is about more than just products fueling the economic engine. Humankind cannot prosper by goods alone; it needs services, as well. The communications services of the modern digital world, the social media and entertainment options that occupy the eyes and minds of so many at what is now an overwhelming level, have transformed life for homo sapiens on terra firma. Even if this writer were to drag his soapbox down to the street and start raving as loudly and obnoxiously and passionately – always passionately – as he could about the concern of the day, chances are few if any passers-by would look up from their screens. And of course that universe of communication and entertainment has created the most powerful advertising platform in history, for more goods and services. Sic transit gloria mundi, amen and heaven help us (he raved, looking around for his soapbox).
Of course with more time and less bewilderment this writer might’ve discovered more “writerly” venues for these posts, such as Substack or Medium or whatever, but if one peruses those sites, the talk is still all about SEO and growth strategies and “doing your best work, supported by your subscribers.” It’s called monetizing the audience which gets us back to buying and selling and statistics for the GDP fed by the consumer economy, though admittedly in a less crass and materialistic arena, so to speak. One wonders, though, how successful writers of romance novels and mysteries and “beach reading” think about their craft. Hey, it always beats a day job! And to make a living, especially a good one, in any writing endeavor whatsoever speaks to talent that is impressive however you look at it (said the man who struggles with reading mysteries and romance novels and only goes to the beach to look for birds).
The final question, and the rationale for the pictures posted here, is what role does ravinginbeantown play in this scenario? No money changes hands, thank goodness – after a lifetime of great and horrible day jobs this privileged Boomer retiree don’t need your stinkin’ money, and you wouldn’t part with it on his behalf anyway, so it’s win-win. But the truth remains out there – is some manner of selling in play anyway? Can this even be avoided in our consumer economy, where buying and selling has become a state of being? If this is the case, then what exactly is for sale? The pictures and whatever their captions suggest are all that came of a careful review of the major blog category on this website, General Thoughts. The results are somewhat vague and mysterious, nothing obvious, though we know whatever-it-is exists as an abstraction. Any product or service presented here that is available for you to buy exists only as a concept or belief or item-of-amusement or odd distraction. And that’s just for General Thoughts. There are seven other categories probably selling other things, with at least one category, Peddling Pedaling, letting the cat out of the bag with no apologies. So are you buying any of it? At least sometimes, if only in your mind?
