oh, ry.

you've got me blogging about you way too much, sir. but this is pretty funny.

Ryan Adams has produced albums by Willie Nelson, as well as recorded seven albums of his own, including three with his band, the Cardinals. This alt-country/rock singer-songwriter has performed around the globe and is finishing his first book, Infinity Blues (Akashic Books, 2009). As a voice of his generation, the editors of World Policy Journal asked him to reflect on his world 25 years from now. Following a lengthy e-mail exchange, Adams delivered, with an explanation, this piece which follows.

How to Save the World from Doom Where You and It Are Headed -- Ryan Adams

What I am about to suggest as my final piece is highly conceptual and will piss off (probably) you and everyone else. But it has haunted me. I have written and re-written it so many times. I am currently in Boston, and last night, sitting outside the Harvard Lampoon, by accident actually, as I was just following the smell of pizza (I am endlessly looking for pizza, all kinds—especially awful pizza—it tickles me pink, it’s my “go-to-zen- thing,” which is nice, because incense is disgusting) I had the revelation. I found myself unable to provide anything beyond even a rigid skeletal form of a piece, burdened by what seems to be an ever-looming sense of existentialism which I am inheriting, not by choice, but by the wear of time vs. my undying and ever-unrequited foolish attachment to sentimentality and romanticism—which is another way of saying, simply, that I am over-sensitive and that this will allow me nothing but a greater will to make art and probably buy me a just single plot and a lonesome, old-age passing. (And if there are free donuts there it will be fine by me—as coffee always works, no matter how bad it is, really.)

The best advice I could think of, and its repetition, in my mind, would be art. Gertrude Stein would be smiling someplace. Also I firmly believe that projecting into the future is anti-abstract and, in principle, is just as bad as Descartes, or worse, Cardinal
Bellarmine. I am totally sure of one thing, however. Nobody has any clue what will happen in 25 years, let alone tomorrow and the reason I know is because I am still here.

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How to Save the World From Doom 245
Stay in the moment, stay in
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in the moment. Stay in the moment, stay
in the moment...and f**k you if you don’t
understand, but you just time-traveled
by skipping ahead.
•
246 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2008
©Philip N Andelman