Are endings fascist? And other worries.

I once told someone that endings are fascist. By “once”, I mean a few months ago, and by “someone”, I mean a woman I was trying to impress. But it was the kind of thing that, once I said it, I wasn’t so sure I didn’t believe it.

I mean, of course it’s more complicated that. Sometimes I wonder ifn the problem might be that I’m not very good at endings, so I tend to feel that they’re fascist because they piss me off and I like to feel as though it’s not my fault. I do think that a great deal of many artistic “manifestos” boil down to a list of excuses to be the way the artist already is. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I am always suspicious of artists who assert that their way of arting (not a word — I’ve had some wine; it’s almost Christmas; don’t judge me!) is the way of arting, or the most interesting way of arting. My ultimate feeling is that the vast majority of what we do doesn’t really matter at all, and while manifestos might help people feel like they’re not wasting their time, most of them just aren’t that true, or meaningful. I guess I’m a nihilist in the end: none of it means anything. But then, why explain yourself if it doesn’t matter? Just do what you do.

Anyhoo. Where was I? Oh, right, endings. It really was one of those things that one says to impress a woman that turns out to reveal a little more than one expected. What’s fascist about an ending? I guess what’s fascist about it is that most endings impose a single meaning on a story, whether they want to or not. But then, the human psyche works so that an ending that imposes no meaning feels weird and unsatisfying, and not always in a way that is really that rewarding. Maybe endings are less fascist — which feels judgmental, and I get less comfortable with judgment as I get older — than they are a collection of catch-22s. Or paradoxes. I don’t know. Sometimes I have a hard time keeping those things straight.

Now that we’re coming to the end of this post, it’s time for me to tack on a meaning. So, what’s the upshot? Maybe the upshot is that I should spend more time hitting on off-the-wall poet chicks. Worst case scenario, I’ll accidentally say something I kind of believe again.