I can't stop looking at my Easy Rider poster. The re-print of the 1969 film reads: A man went looking for America
and couldn't find it anywhere.
I'm trying to write about Mardi Gras. About how it seems a bit foolish to celebrate in an area that just months earlier was completely devastated by two kinds of disaster: The type caused by nature that is frightening to mankind, and the type caused by man that is even more frightening.
Yet, I keep looking at the damn poster. So as I sit and type what may or may not be the last column I ever write, I'm struggling to think about anything else other than the powerful scenes from Easy Rider.
I think about George (Jack Nicholson) getting beaten to death. I think about Billy (Dennis Hopper) getting shot off of his motorcycle. And I think about the explosion where Wyatt's (Peter Fonda) life is taken. The men simply wanted to ride down to New Orleans and see what the city's annual celebration had to offer. But they all didn't make it. And they certainly didn't find the America they were looking for.
As I think about a post-Katrina Mardi Gras, many individuals might be spending their mini-vacations trying to do the same thing: Find America. There will be booze, beads and Girls Gone Wild. A jolly good time. But I'm in no mood to party.
This is neither a sign of maturation nor a confession of potential boredom. It just means that no amount of alcohol can make me forget that the madness of the last few years has made me disgruntled. And we, the disgruntled, prefer to drink alone.
Let me make myself clear. I plan on consuming large amounts of alcohol in the next week or so. And if coeds flash their breasts, that's their prerogative. But I won't be celebrating. I'll just be getting intoxicated for intoxication's sake. You see I can't really celebrate anything until I have some peace of mind. Until I see some sign that things are unfolding as they should.
I worry about things. Things like education, health care and having a phone conversation without getting spied on. All of this gets my head spinning and keeps me awake and makes me think to myself: Is this as good as it gets? I have a legitimate concern that the safest, most prosperous moments in our nation's history are in the text of history books.
It is completely illogical to expect happiness. That's not how it works. We are only guaranteed the right to pursue it. However, how can we pursue happiness in a time when it seems like the sole purpose of our government is to make us relatively unhappy? Sure, one's happiness has little to do with the price of milk in Lincoln, Neb. But without some form of hope in what has been a miserable decade, exactly how much energy can reasonable Americans contribute to this pursuit?
Then again, maybe happiness should be formulaic. Individuals could evaluate how content they should be by four basic questions: 1) Are you driving the vehicle you want to be driving? 2) Are you sleeping with the person you want to be sleeping with? 3) Are you living in the place you want to be living? 4) Are you working in a profession that you want to be working?
If you answer two of those with a yes than you can be content. Three, and you should be happy. Four, well, then you've got it made. So if Natalie Portman enters my life, I will be living large. But it's my estimation that many of us don't have the answers to what will consist as the four cornerstones of a happy life. So we will keep looking, hence, finding America. But what if America doesn't cooperate with our plans? What if we keep getting told to live in fear? Fear of bombs, fear of terror, and fear of each other. We completely blew our last chance to make a change.
And now I look back to my poster.
In Easy Rider after being asked what went wrong with America, Billy replies, everyone got scared. I know I'm scared. But not because of Bin Laden or Security Level Orange. I'm scared that things will continue to get worse. That we'll continue to be polarized by purposely-divisive issues. And that we'll continue to ignore opportunities to make a change. But I offer no solutions anymore. Solutions are too complicated, and we, as a country, elected a president who attracted us to simplicity.
On the evening of his death, George stares into a campfire and asked, You know
this used to be a hell of a good country ... I can't understand what's gone wrong with it. The answer to his question is not simple. But I know one thing: Mardi Gras won't help answer it. It didn't help them, and it can't help me.
- Trace Hacquard is a graduate student in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Send him an e-mail at lh303403@ohiou.edu.
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