I guess I've been out of the academy too long, because far from "often being told we are now living in a 'risk society'," I never came across this term until about two days ago, linking to the "also boughts" on Ziggy Bauman's Amazon pages. I suppose I should call him Zygmunt, but the Spiders from Mars association is just too strong. And then there was Ulrich Beck. And then, as so often happens, a whole new unsuspected world opens up, and it seems everyone but you has been talking about risk all
along. "My god, you mean you haven't read Mary Douglas's seminal work Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo?" Well, no. I keep trying to tell you I never read any of them. However, it is sitting right here somewhere under a massive stack of other books on my coffee-table-cum-starship-command-deck and if I just reach... umf... over... argh... Ah yes, here it is. And now that you mention it, yes, I do remember looking at it for the longest time, but nothing was clicking. I thought it was about how you could get the flu from those nasty British telephones if someone sneezed right into the blower and you, well... I dunno, if you licked it or something. Which I must say, didn't strike me as all that plausible. I guess I have to admit that just staring at the cover -- for however long, and I stared intently for quite some goodly time -- would never have alerted me that what was inside was a key to "one of today's major sociocultural concepts." Shit. It's getting to be a devil of a job to keep up.
And, nota bene sportsfans, this isn't any old garden variety risk we're talking here. Oh no. Nothing as simple as a displaced band of camel jockeys flying a couple fully tanked-up airliners straight up your global commerce wazoo. As it turns out, that was just a side-effect. If you'd gone to grad school -- I know, I forgot too -- you'd understand that the real terrorists lie sleeping in all of our hearts, and because we no longer know who we are (if we ever did), they are now waking up en masse and trying to slash their way out. How I wish I'd known this earlier. When she said that about love always being a risk, I thought it was just one of those profound-sounding bullshit lines that translate down to something quite a bit more pedestrian. Like when I asked her on the telephone if we were breaking up and she said, "You don't see me there now, do you?"
Perhaps, without even realizing it, I was speaking into the patent-pending Mary Douglas Risk-O-Fone. I knew I shouldn't have done all that acid and dropped out of college.
Because here's me still stuck back in the '60s with love is all you need and the word is love and I want to hold your hand. I see now it was way too simpleminded, not nearly half complex enough. How naive I was to think that someday when we were dreaming, deep in love, not a lot to say, then we would remember, things we said today.
I woke up with her one morning when I had to go into the studio to tape my piece for Marketplace. I called the local station to double-check the schedule and got put on hold. Instead of muzak they were playing news and it was like Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast I thought maybe. This guy was shouting that the World Trade Center had just disappeared. "It's just gone!" he kept shouting. Later that day I saw the video. Over and over. And weeks later, back in her bed again deep in love I was dreaming that I was the pilot and I was also the horrified faces behind the glass thirty stories up. Somehow as only in dream I was on both sides of this gap now closing silent at the speed of sound and on contact I shot bolt upright in the bed awake and shaking. It would be months before I realized I'd experienced our death.
And it wasn't all just happy Beatles tunes back then when I first met her. There were always the Stones, deeper, darker. Heartbreaker, Exile on Main Street. There was Life During Wartime. There was Laurie Anderson, and I liked one particular song a lot. But I was hardly listening. You don't see me there now, but listen anyway...
O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad...
Hi. I'm not home right now.
But if you want to leave a message
just start talking at the sound of the tone.
Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there?
Are you coming home?
Hello? Is anybody home?
Well, you don't know me
but I know you.
And I've got a message to give to you.
Here come the planes.
So you better get ready. Ready to go.
You can come as you are
but pay as you go.
Pay as you go.
And I said: OK. Who is this really?
And the voice said:
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
Here come the planes.
They're American planes. Made in America.
Smoking or non-smoking?
And the voice said:
Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night
shall stay these couriers from the swift completion
of their appointed rounds.
'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms...
In your automatic arms.
Your electronic arms.
In your arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
Your petrochemical arms.
Your military arms.
In your arms...
