the rix mix

I began writing short reviews for Amazon in 1999. Many of them are very brief. For awhile, before Amazon exploded into the monster it is now, I was ranked in the Top 50, then dropped into Top 100, then 500, now I'm hovering around 800 in the Top 1000 despite having contributed little for the past three years. Most of the books & CDs I have reviewed are hardly "popular." Like many writers without much original insight but possessing a knack for grasping key characteristics of style, I'm good at parody & light satire; eventually I headed in that direction for some of the reviews. But most readers don't get the humor unless there's a flashing neon sign that says,"It's a joke, folks!" & then they probably won't understand the intent. They assume the humor is an insult to the artist & to the seriousness of their own regard for the artist.

"Life seems to resolve itself down to a tiny germ or nipple of sensitivity. I call it the Eenie-Weenie—a squiggling little nucleus that is trying to make love to itself and can never quite get there."

Alan Watts, The Joyous Cosmology

For years, WFMU ran the Alan Watts Lecture Series. Watts, a great off-the-cuff speaker, pop philospher, & a very smart man - he helped create the "New Age" - frequently laughed at himself. Watts was an FM radio pioneer at KPFA in Berkeley CA. We called him "The Late, Great Alan Watts," joked about his drinking & unfiltered cigarettes, & referred to him as if he were an active member of the WFMU staff - Watts did believe in reincarnation. Yet, every fund-raising Marathon, the Alan Watts listeners demonstrated in many small ways that they were the most humorless demographic in the WFMU audience. They were seeking Enlightenment, & by all the major & minor gods of the north south east & west they were going to become enlightened if they had to memorize every word of every Alan Watts tape.