An climate-focused artist friend once recounted a discussion he had with his now ex-father-in-law, an architect of trickle-down economics — a bad guy.
Artist: So what would be your reaction if the tiger went extinct?
Father-in-law: Fuck ‘em.
The prosperity of the trickle-down class and their cronies turns my stomach in knots. But outrage isn’t saving the tiger. Righteous indignation isn’t moving the needle against the trickle daddies. So lately I’ve adopted a simpler coping strategy: fuck ’em.
Just a spoonful of fuck ‘em helps the existential pain go down — a time-release coating for suffering — in a more delightful way.
Enjoy a fuck ‘em discount
Over the past few years, I’ve fallen down a few spiritual rabbit holes. First Ram Dass, which ate a year of my life. Then an unexpected OSHO detour where I briefly fell in love with needing nothing from anyone. Then dissociating on ketamine in California Adventure while my sober brother guided me through the Happiest Place on Earth.
That night ended with me buying a camcorder containing a VHS tape.
The tape was labeled SUR.
I only got around to watching it recently. The first half was people from the late 80s or early 90s shaking and yelling, while the second half was unwatchable since the tape too degraded. Only this past weekend did I find someone who could salvage it. What came through was a Q&A session with a guru.
A guru who looks like me named Sur.
I want to be precise about this, because I have a history with it. I know what happens when I find a spiritual figure and start seeing my own face in theirs. I know the trap. I fell into it when I saw an illustration of what seemed like my face in Be Here Now and sought out my artistic “birthright” which alienated Ram Dass’ community. I am, at this point, clinically aware that this is a thing I do.
And yet…
A young woman in the video asks: Sur, you say everything is perfect, but there is still so much pain in the world. Why do people suffer?
Sur offers that pain is biological necessity while suffering is identification with pain.
‘I shouldn’t have been in pain that one time.’ The pain is gone, but you are still attached to the pain. This is suffering.
Jeff told me, a few weeks before he died by suicide, that when I was stoned I wasn’t as good at talking about feelings. I conceded the point, but kept smoking. Then he died, and I smoked more than ever — higher potency, almost always alone. Before and after his death, there was pain I didn’t want to feel. I resisted it indignantly: “I shouldn’t have to feel this pain from that one time.” It is suffering that Sur describes. The pain moved through eventually. But the suffering — that was the part I kept choosing.
I’m not saying Sur fixed this. I’m saying it landed.
Here’s the thing I keep returning to: Despite everything I doom-scroll, feel outrage about, dread, resent, doubt — the clear and present truth of my actual life, the thing literally in front of me right now, is very good. There’s food on the shelves, clean water on tap, birds singing, Jess, rugbrød on Sunday mornings…
And no doubt the doom feels real. The fascists will win, the climate will cook, AI will prompt our undoing, and the prediction markets will turn profits off these misfortunes.
But even in their likelihoods, these are still just thoughts about life. Not life itself.
And I live my life almost entirely inside thoughts — about the next project, about whether my show meant what I thought it meant, about whether I’ve already made the best thing I’ll ever make. None of that exists anywhere except in my head. And yet that’s where I spend most of my time.
The only suffering of the end of the world may be worrying about the end of the world — while our actual lives pass by unnoticed.
This is, I’m aware, a profoundly convenient philosophy for someone who has not yet lost everything. My pain has not yet arrived, but I attempt to feel it anticipation.
He’s right about suffering, this guy who looks like me.
So of course I did what anyone would do: late-night Reddit threads and obsessive Google image searches. With difficulty, I turned up his community’s janky website:
Sur wrote a book in the ‘70s called This Is It. Not the Alan Watts book from 1960 — though there’s an Alan Watts pull quote on the cover, which I cannot explain and have stopped trying to. While I can’t find the publisher, Certain Curtain Books, I did find a rare bookseller in Halifax who has the book listed, but I get an error page when I click.
I haven’t yet found a copy the book, but if you have one, please message me.
Here’s a pull quote from it on their website:
It’s not over there. You’re not going to find it on the road. Around some corner. Down someone’s pants. It’s not on top of the mountain. On the guru’s tongue. Or in a hit of acid. It’s right here. Right now. This is it.
I assumed, given the name SUR, that this group would be in Big Sur. Reddit agrees. But no. The website says they’re in Northeast Los Angeles.
Where I also live.
At the end of the tape, Sur sings a song. Thank God I just look like him and don’t sound like him. Warning: this song is cheesy and aggressively earwormy.
And yet…
You just gotta keep it simple / Let it go / You just gotta keep it simple / Let it go / But it’s never really ever that simple, is it though?
La la la la la la la la
posted with permission from SUR
These people seem loose and unambitious, which I’m attracted to:
We are not an organization. We do not have a mailing list you can join. If you found this page, you probably know someone who knows someone. That’s how it works.
They’re asking for any photos of SUR gatherings and provide an aol address. I feel like I should give them their video back, but I feel trepidation about going there in person.
I know this cycle all too well.
I find a man in a mirror. A mirror in Maui. A mirror in Greece. I think the man in the mirror has something I need. I chase the reflection until I disappoint myself. Like when I sat in Ram Dass’ wheelchair — meant only for his portrait — practicing acting like I’d had a stroke for my vanity project. I know who I am in this story — Narcissus at the lake. At some point you have to ask yourself why you keep finding men in mirrors.
But the man in this mirror lives in my neighborhood. And he’s still alive.
And he somehow found his way onto a VHS tape inside a camera I bought at the precise moment I’m trying to figure out what comes next.
I should bring this VHS tape back to them, but it’d certainly be simpler to just drop it off and to let this go, wouldn’t it?
This is it, says the book, the song, the tape, the mirror man.
But the message seems subtler: Keep it simple.
I should live my life right here, right now, as it is, and that should be enough.
Let it go.
But it’s never really ever that simple, is it though?
To quote an earworm from another bad guy:
I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change
Fuck ‘em.
Na-na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na-naaaa (make that change)
