{"id":124,"date":"2005-08-22T18:03:59","date_gmt":"2005-08-23T01:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2005\/08\/22\/re-six-feet-under\/"},"modified":"2005-08-22T18:20:46","modified_gmt":"2005-08-23T01:20:46","slug":"re-six-feet-under","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2005\/08\/22\/re-six-feet-under\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-Six Feet Under"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Who’ll walk me down to church when I’m sixty years of age
When the ragged dog they gave me has been ten years in the grave<\/em><\/p>\n

"Sixty Years On"
Elton John<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It was like a death in the family.<\/p>\n

Last week I watched the show at Monica and Gregg’s.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve got one of those
giant Pioneer plasma sets.\u00c2\u00a0 Surround system to die for.\u00c2\u00a0 All the images were
sharp, I saw detail I never noticed before.\u00c2\u00a0 But I didn’t enjoy the
experience.\u00c2\u00a0 I need to watch "Six Feet Under" alone.<\/p>\n

This art is the most important thing in my life.<\/p>\n

I know, to most people it’s the spice.\u00c2\u00a0 Atop the family life.\u00c2\u00a0 Atop the
relationship.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it’s even subsidiary to hobbies, like snowboarding and
fly-fishing even.\u00c2\u00a0 But I live for the art.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the most important thing to me.<\/p>\n

That’s why I hate seeing it commercialized.\u00c2\u00a0 It would be like having an ad on
the back of the ass of the girl you were having sex with.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, you’d be
having a good time, your mind would have left the everyday world behind,
but when you flipped her over, for a little doggie, and you saw that ad…
oh, you wouldn’t withdraw, you’d still come, but the experience wouldn’t be the same.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’m all about the experience.<\/p>\n

I won’t only go to the bathroom alone, I’ll go to the gig alone.\u00c2\u00a0 The movies.
I don’t want to take anybody who’ll wreck the experience.\u00c2\u00a0 Who’ll need me to
fawn over them.\u00c2\u00a0 Who will ask me questions, will get up in the middle to go
to the bathroom.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how sensitive I am.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though you’re living YOUR
life, I read it.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m overwhelmed by the input.\u00c2\u00a0 I feel I must react, play the
correct role.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas when I’m experiencing art I can be the real me, only me.
Just me and the record or the movie or the show.<\/p>\n

Now and again, I nail a business concept.\u00c2\u00a0 My e-mail box overflows.\u00c2\u00a0 I feel
good.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s meaningless.\u00c2\u00a0 A hundred years from now no one will ever care.\u00c2\u00a0
It’s all transitory, part of process.\u00c2\u00a0 But human life, nature, when I write
from the heart and nail a LIFE experience I might not get as much e-mail but the
people who respond were touched.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t pay compliments, they tell their
story.\u00c2\u00a0 How they got to where they are.\u00c2\u00a0 Who they are.\u00c2\u00a0 Their hopes and
dreams and disappointments.\u00c2\u00a0 THESE are the elements of great art.\u00c2\u00a0 THIS is what’s
missing from most of today’s music and movies…the ESSENCE!<\/p>\n

"Six Feet Under" wasn’t quite "Seinfeld", it wasn’t a show about nothing, it
wasn’t like nothing ever happened.\u00c2\u00a0 But really, it was all about the
characters.\u00c2\u00a0 Even in a shitty episode, you’d get insight.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d see the humanity.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s what I watched for.\u00c2\u00a0 Not for plot.\u00c2\u00a0 One revealed truth in a show could
make my whole night.<\/p>\n

It stuns me that this truth, this essence of life, is not the core of today’s
art.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like the one key element has been eviscerated, it’s like all the
purveyors are Jack Nicholson and they believe the public can’t handle the
truth.\u00c2\u00a0 But the public loves the truth.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The truth sinks in.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not something you get right away.\u00c2\u00a0 But it sticks
with you.\u00c2\u00a0 Like this very first Elton John album.\u00c2\u00a0 I can barely listen to "Your
Song", but I’ve never ever tired of "Sixty Years On".\u00c2\u00a0 "Sixty Years On" FEELS
lonely, like a wasted life.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s playing to the front row, whereas "Your
Song" plays to the back row.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve got news for you, we’re all sitting in the
front row.<\/p>\n

Probably the core of the show was Ruth.\u00c2\u00a0 Ruminating over wasting her life.\u00c2\u00a0
Wanting her daughter not to ruin her own.<\/p>\n

Then again, David’s always been lost.\u00c2\u00a0 And his way out is to make peace with
himself.<\/p>\n

And despite my characterization of myself above, maybe it is all about
family.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the key.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what David and Keith and their two boys represent.<\/p>\n

I was not going to write about the show.\u00c2\u00a0 It was too personal, too raw.\u00c2\u00a0 But,
I’ve been getting notes all day from people, even those who’d written me
before saying they HATED the show.<\/p>\n

"Six Feet Under" will live on.\u00c2\u00a0 In DVD.\u00c2\u00a0 It won’t be in the public’s
consciousness like "The Sopranos", then again, inherently people are less concerned with funeral homes than the Mafia.<\/p>\n

But "Six Feet Under" was about death.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re all gonna die.\u00c2\u00a0 Are we going to
live to a ripe old age, or get killed in an accident, or take our own lives?\u00c2\u00a0
And what’s the meaning of our lives anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what the end of the show
represented.\u00c2\u00a0 We all pass.\u00c2\u00a0 And life goes on.\u00c2\u00a0 To see Brenda with a new love…
But why not, should her life stop?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the tragedy, when those still
here stop living.<\/p>\n

So, I was mourning privately.\u00c2\u00a0 My yearly fix is done.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll probably get
hooked on another show in the future, but "Six Feet Under" will be like an old
girlfriend, you couldn’t stay together forever, but that doesn’t mean you forget
her.<\/p>\n

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Who’ll walk me down to church when I’m sixty years of ageWhen the ragged dog they gave me has been ten years in the grave "Sixty Years On"Elton John It was like a death in the family. Last week I watched the show at Monica and Gregg’s.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve got one of those giant Pioneer plasma […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-20","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}