Confucius or Confusion?

Confucius by Wu Daozi (680-740)

Does wisdom come with age? It’s often said that the Chinese, for example, respect the elderly and revere age in a way that is foreign to Americans who treat age as a burden. The Buddhist cultures of countries like Thailand and Cambodia also venerate the dead in a way that is anathema to Western Culture for which “carpe diem” is the most popular shibboleth. Westerners live it up like there’s no tomorrow while if you go to a Buddhist temple in say Vietnam you will find cardboard boxes which once housed appliances being offered up on pyres, so that the dead will be taken care of in the afterlife. But all that being said, it’s hard to feel there's much to venerate in age. The brain declines and the calmness one may read into an aging face is not so much the result of an overarching wisdom, as a loss of brain cells. Any serenity you might detect is the result of resignation, or worse dementia. As Jaques says  As You Like It, “Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is Second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." If you turn to CNN, during those hours that attract an older demographic of retirees, you will find advertisements for daily Cialis which is prescribed for both ED and BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia). The drug treats accidents and makes it possible to have an erection in a case one accidentally feel desire. It’s a hardly a celebration of anything. The same is true of using drugs that deal with aging appearance. If you take Botox and have the wrinkles and removed, the theory is you will feel and then act younger. However, the outside/in approach often has questionable results. How many women do you know who have had their faces done, their breasts lifted, their cellulite removed, vaginoplasties and rhinoplasties have seen a concomitant reformation of sensibility? Confucius or confusion? Medical science can achieve ever greater feats of longevity. But is the lust for life really such an admirable thing or is it just another form of gluttony? Certain people overstay their welcomes and other suffer with chronic diseases that are living deaths. Is the idea of prolonging a life to the point where a half sensate creature is a burden who uses up their own resources on medical care and taxes those of their children really such a great thing? One thing is certain, youth is too often wasted on the young.

Cialis Moments in Harvard Yard

photo of Harvard Yard by Mancala

Every once in a while all your ducks line up and you’re sitting pretty. You have one of those Cialis moments with the wife. You get a parking space in front of the house or if you’re younger you get accepted to Harvard and laid on the same day. Or you have a Cialis moment in Harvard yard, say at the 40 or even 50th class reunion. All the pieces of the puzzle seem to fit together. You begin to think there’s a divine order at work. It’s a little like Pascal’s Wager. Why not believe that God exists and all is well with the world? What’s to be lost? Similarly, why not shoot for snake eyes? The answer is that happiness is like the brick wall that you’re always butting your head up against when you can’t get any of these things. Is a state of being in which you have satisfied all your yearnings necessarily that enjoyable when all you have to look forward to is a downhill ride? You and your significant other stare at each other over candlelight at the romantic French place you go to for celebrations, admiring each other shitfaced grins and feeling relatively restless, bored and discontent. Yes, the stars seem to have become aligned, but you start to feel an anxiety in the pit of your stomach. What about tomorrow? You’ve gotten into Harvard, but you’re not necessarily going to get into Harvard Law or you’re fighting, miss the Cialis moment and actually get a ticket for parking in front of the hydrant you didn’t notice, as you slammed the car door shut. Or you’re a drug addict and you drop the vial, elixir or pill that was going to make everything right and find yourself on the floor of a public bathroom trying to lick up powder amidst the shards of broken glass. Yes you’ve fallen that low in your need to get those ducks lined up again. You begin to feel Pascal’s Wager is a losing proposition to the extent that it’s left out a whole reality in which chaos and unreason predominate and God doesn’t exist at all.

Cialis Now and Then

There’s the famous scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen tells Diane Keaton they have to get the kiss over with so they can get on with the date. So in the same spirit let’s get the Cialis joke off. Contrary to the disclaimer in the television commercials about calling a doctor if you have an erection for more than four hours, wouldn’t it be best to call all your friends?  But there are actually other things wrong with the commercials. In theater circles there used to be a battle between adherents to the Stanislavski, Moscow Art Theater Model, known as “the method” and practiced by the Actor’s Studio in the States and the say Meyerhold creating a mask model of acting. The ferocity of the conflict between the two was tantamount to the struggle between capitalism and communism. The actors in the Cialis commercial seem to be suffering from a conflict between these two kinds of conservatory training. On the one hand they are plainly attempting to create realistic characters by delving into their own psychological histories, in depicting the dilemma of a man who wants to be functional with the woman he loves when the right time comes. But  they are plainly straining under the burden of the realism. In fact as we know all kinds of unconscious drives contribute to sexual performance along with physiological capability and so the actor who taking a Willy Loman approach to his portrait of the slightly over the hill middle-aged man will likely be suppressing his inner Ubu Roi. Naturally commercials are just that—commercial. So they can’t aspire to the highest levels of theatrical art. The technique of Jerzy Grotowski’s Poor Theater will probably never be invoked in the making of a Cialis commercial. But that’s not to say that the commercial wouldn’t have profited if it broke down the putative fourth wall. As Picasso said, “art is the lie that tells the truth.” Directors of commercials for drugs like Cialis might be advised to throw verisimilitude to the winds when they deal with the problem of erectile dysfunction.

The Monetization of Health Care

The problem with the health care system is that is participates in free market economics. With or without Obamacare the same condition prevails and many of the problems which insurance companies and providers do, in fact, face and which they pass down to patients are the result of ways in which medicine and health care are plugged into the vicissitudes of supply and demand. Thus some life saving cancer medications are out of the reach of those who need them because there are not enough of these patients to provide the kind of economy of scale that would bring down the prices. Insurance companies who refuse coverage are only reflecting a reality. Of course there are certain drugs which have enormous followings and which are so prized that manufacturers are able to charge exorbitant prices which in turn produce windfall profits. Cialis is one of these and one wonders if there isn’t a touch of old Salem not only in the extraordinary sums that are demanded for the pleasures of having an erection, but in the fact insurers have not been successfully challenged in their refusal to reimburse those of their constituents who use the drug. Of course the attempts by the Republican candidate for president to deny coverage for birth control (and in fact to disenfranchise Planned Parenthood) represent a similarly punitive attitude towards sexuality. But what about the right to life for those who can’t afford or aren’t covered for dialysis (which is what could happen if Obamacare is repealed)? People are aghast when they read about the black market in human organs and see a movie like Steven Frears, Dirty Pretty Things, but isn't this seemingly hyberbolic essay in human greed a metaphor for what happens when the caduceus is turned into a dollar sign? 

Paris Journal XIII: Voix Douce

American radio and television commercials have a rendezvous with reality. It’s as if they’re stuck in the Ashcan School of art. Even advertisements for Charmin toilet paper or feminine hygiene products designed to prevent embarrassment on heavy days, or Cialis for men, created to prevent embarrassment on soft ones, have a guttural appeal. It’s as if the advertising were based solely on the principal of identification. Naturally, all advertising also functions as idealization, but how do you idealize the adult diaper or the ambulance-chasing law firm that will win you millions after a neuro-surgeon operates on the wrong side of your brain? But  if American advertising is marooned in the world of stark reality—with lingerie ads for plus-size women that make them look like paratroopers about to make a jump—then the Twilight Zone of French advertising is a combination of the romantic pre-Raphaelite world of Millais and the painting of academics like Poussin, with their classic figures in sylvan settings. There is nothing like the female voix on a French voiceover. Listen carefully and you will fall in love with her, or at least the Trojans she is trying to sell. No one has ever talked to you this way, in or out of a commercial. Listening to this voix douce féminine, or even its strong, all-knowing male counterpart, you begin to question your own existence. You are in love and you wonder why you have wasted a lifetime using Charmin when you could have moved to Paris and wiped your ass with an infinitely more desirable French product. Driving from the airport in a taxi and hearing a female voice intoning mangez un sac de nos cacahuètes is like listening to Mata Hari. You will gladly forswear your nuts. 

Sex Tips for Seniors

The metaphysical poets regarded every sexual consummation as a tiny death. Of course, studies have shown that, among the elderly, the imminence of death is inversely proportional to the frequency of sexual activity—something Marvell and Donne would undoubtedly have been thrilled to hear. But speaking of endgame scenarios, Nagg and Nell, the aging couple encased in garbage cans in Samuel Beckett’s classic drama, offer a heartening depiction of the wealth of sexual possibilities available to couples in their golden years.

The fact is that geriatric sex opens up a world of opportunity, with dementia unlocking the doors of inhibition. Retirement colonies are notorious for STDs, and rape is not uncommon. The French author Héléna Marienské sets her racy novel Rhésus in an old-folks home whose residents are invigorated by the introduction of a free spirited Bonobo.

Cialis ads on television advertise sexual readiness that lasts for 36 hours, so that old-timers can be ready when the time is right. Is there a Princess “cruise to nowhere” that offer Cialis and Lipitor cocktails with little umbrellas right before Bingo?

Carpe diem should be the byword for all aging couples when it comes to sex. What happens when an 85 year-old woman tells her husband she’d rather wait until tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes?

The painter Lucien Freud was the poet of imperfection, and his portraits of unwieldy naked figures (like overweight performance artist Leigh Bowery) are liberating to aging couples who feel inhibited about the exhibitionist romps that are the joy of foreplay. On the other hand, Courbet’s “The Origin of the World,” with its luscious study of wide-open feminine glory, is hardly the appropriate prescription for an aging woman who is self conscious about her vaginoplasty.

Every Sunday, The New York Times Book Review offers an ad featuring a photo of a very well preserved couple demonstrating their lovemaking techniques for any audience willing to buy the DVD. There are two programs offered, one for beginners, and one for aficionados who are seeking post-graduate degrees. The appearance of these ads, week after week, leads to one conclusion. The New York Times Book Review appeals to an older audience.