lava lamps and st. anger

Maybe your altar needs a lava lamp. Maybe you never thought of it as an altar, only as your own space, and you resent any encroachment into that space. You hate lava lamps, after all. They represent the hipster condescending attitude towards prior generations, the too-cute "weren't they just so groovy, man," the revisionist tendency to take any cultural shift and package it up as just more disposable crap to sell (see also: the entirety of the 1980s.)

But it's more: lava lamps in their original context were annoying, something for stoned heads to stare at and go "Ooooohhh!" Presumably while listening to Pink Floyd. The idea that drug taking could be a legitimate spiritual inquiry is lost in the molten wax. Thinking about life from a different angle simply becomes another novelty. "Dude, pass me the Cheetos. Netflix is streaming Up in Smoke."

So you don't need a lava lamp in your life, nor do you need it on your altar that is not an altar. Except maybe you do. Is this meta enough yet? Meta--the Internet Age version of too clever by half. What you say when you think you are above your audience. Everyone nod seriously. Mmm-hmm. And let's not forget irony! It's good for your blood. It also makes it easy to prevent any meaningful exchange from taking place. Those are messy.

You are grumpy tonight, sir. I think you do need a lava lamp on your altar. It fits because it doesn't fit. You are listening to St. Anger right now, perhaps the most reviled album of the last fifteen years before people stopped caring about music altogether unless new U2 albums were appearing unwanted on their phones. (You really like that U2 album, too.) St. Anger is part of your altar, sure, just like everything Metallica has ever done is part of why you are alive. In your very DNA. But if someone were to build a Metallica altar, it would almost certainly stop after the first four albums, maybe the first five. It sure as hell wouldn't have St. Anger on it. But you like St. Anger for the same reason everyone else hates it: it's raw, honest, self-indulgent, and a complete and utter mess. It has the worst drum sound ever recorded. The lyrics are often cringe-worthy from a band that once wrote beautifully structured epics intelligently exploring a variety of topics. To go from that to rehab speak! But you dig it anyway. Maybe it doesn't hold a candle to the other records. It still, at certain times, speaks loudly to you. Loudly with a ping (god that fucking non-existent snare sound!)

A flawed altar needs a lava lamp like a tourniquet needs a chainsaw. Or a wisdom tooth needs a jackhammer. If you were more clever...oh hell, if you were more clever you wouldn't write unfocused ramblings about lava lamps and St. Anger. The altar that is not an altar needs a lava lamp that is most certainly a lava lamp.