Thursday, July 5, 2018

On Two Cynics



 

1.

It takes one to know one – a flippant comment on the fact that most of what we know about Diogenes of Sinope, the cynic, comes from Diogenes Laertes’ book, The Lives and Opinions of Greek Philosophers, a rather slovenly compendium of anecdotes arranged by dubious categories with only a whiff of the philosophical about it. Writing in the 3rd century A.D., Diogenes Laertes tells his readers about the first Diogenes, a contemporary of Alexander the Great (and, therefore, Aristotle), a thinker who demonstrated his doctrine by living eccentrically about 400 BC. (The biographical compendium as it relates to Diogenes the Cynic would be equivalent to a modern author writing about Leonardo da Vinci.) Diogenes Laertes measured the truth of a philosopher’s opinions by whether the thinker lived in accordance with his creed. Hence, his book is heavy on anecdote and light on doctrine.

Diogenes the Cynic came from a mercantile family, upper middle class if those categories applied to ancient Greece. His father was a banker and the young philosopher early demonstrated his independence from his family of origin by defacing currency. This was a criminal act and, therefore, Diogenes was exiled from Sinope, an Ionian city on the Black Sea. The young man claimed as his defense a visit to the oracle at Delphi – supposedly the pythoness informed Diogenes that he should debase the currency. (Skepticism is warranted as to this story and all others about the Cynic.)

Diogenes found his way to Athens where he is supposed to have lived in a large ceramic tub once used to hold wine sediments. He proclaimed himself to be a follower of Heracles, that is, a devotee to virtue. But he defined virtue as an antinomian defiance of all societal norms. He urinated on people’s feet and defecated in public at the theater. When a wealthy man took him into his palace with the caveat that he not spit on the floors, Diogenes spit in the man’s face: "I could find no meaner vessel," he said by way of excuse. The Greeks called these practices anaideia – that is, the practice of "shamelessness."

Of course, we recall that Diogenes is supposed to have gone abroad throughout Athens waving a lantern in broad daylight to advertise that he was looking for an honest man. Curiously, his antics won him a following. He was named a cynic or "dog" because dogs fuck in the streets, shit where they want, and are shameless. Dogs are also faithful and will snap at their adversaries – Diogenes defined his fidelity to the truth as faithful and, therefore, dog-like. Ultimately, the ruler, Alexander the Great, is supposed to have come down to the marketplace to show his respect to Diogenes. Alexander asked Diogenes if there was anything for which he wished. Diogenes told the ruler to "step out of his light". Alexander is, then, alleged to have said that, if he were not Alexander, then Diogenes would be the man to whom he most would aspire to be.

Diogenes famously masturbated in the agora. When he was done, he said: "If only I could banish my hunger by rubbing my belly." He was uncompromising. When a young man told him that he was unsuited by disposition for philosophy, Diogenes commended suicide to him – better to die, than to live improperly. Someone once misunderstood Diogenes and said that his whole doctrine showed that life was not worth living – Diogenes replied that it was life ill-lived was not worth living.

Much philosophy is transcendent in its orientation: the philosopher seeks the truth about God or the Forms – the vector of thought is upward or inward to the divinity that lies within the soul. Diogenes’ thought was not systematic and is transmitted in the form of anecdotes and aphorisms. His ideas are immanent – they are vectored downward to the earth and the flesh. He proclaimed that man was a natural being subject to certain desires and appetites and that there was nothing unseemly or obscene about living naturally. He is the anti-Plato. When asked about his identity, Diogenes said that he was "the mad Socrates."

Diogenes is supposed to have died from eating raw octopus or, perhaps, from an infected dog-bite. He told his followers to throw his body outside the city walls to be devoured by birds and beasts of prey. When a disciple remonstrated with him about these obsequies, Diogenes said: "I will be fine if you leave with me a stick to fend off the predators." "But why do you need a stick? You will be insensible and, therefore, incapable of using it." Diogenes responded that this made his point exactly.

After his death in Corinth, the people there raised a statue to his memory, the image of white dog carved from the finest Parian marble. Raphael, in his School of Athens, shows Diogenes sprawled at the feet of Aristotle.

 

2.

By some miracle of karmic destiny, in 1956 Diogenes was reincarnated in G. G. Allin in Lancaster, New Hampshire. Allin was the son of a religious fanatic who proclaimed that he was going to kill all members of his family and bury them in graves that he had dug in the basement. He made his chidlren help dig the graves. Allin was named "Jesus Christ" Allin by his father and was declared the Messiah, an appellation that Allin took seriously later in his life. His little brother, Merle Jr., couldn’t pronounce his first name "Jesus" and called him "GeeGee" – hence, his stage name. G.G. liked the cross-dressing New York Dolls and, by the time, he was in second grade was wearing a girl’s dress to school.

Allin was the front man for a series of punk bands. He lacerated himself with broken glass on stage and claimed that he had raped both men and women during his performances. (There’s no real evidence for this.) Around 1985, during a performance in Peoria, Allin defecated on stage, smeared the shit on his body, and, then, threw feces at the audience.

Nothing succeeds like excess and so G.G. became a sort of star – he appeared on TV shows with Geraldo Rivera and Jerry Springer. Convicted of rape and assault, he served fifteen months in prison. (He raped a girl, burned her with cigarettes for 15 hours, and drank her blood.) A psychiatric evaluator said that he was "courteous, candid, and intelligent." Of course, he was a heroin addict.

Allin’s schtick of shitting on-stage was compromised by his heroin addiction. Opiodes, of course, are severely constipating. Accordingly, Allin couldn’t defecate on command. Accordingly, he had to take Ex-Lax in increasingly large doses in order to move his bowels. Allin claimed that his shit was divine and that he was providing communion to his disciples when he defecated on stage and threw the stuff at them. Sometimes, he gobbled down a few choice morsels of shit before pitching it into the audience.  

Around 1991, Allin began teasing his shows with the promise that he would commit suicide on-stage. This invariably attracted a crowd of people willing to pay 10 dollars a head to see G.G. off himself. But it was just a tease – Allin kept up the shit-eating stunt and continued to cut himself at shows, but he survived them all.

In the summer of 1993, Allin told everyone that he was at the height of his powers as a rock and roll messiah and that he was going to kill himself on-stage. Allin’s band, the Murder Junkies, was led by his brother, Merle Jr. Merle Jr. wasn’t about to participate in his brother’s death and so he refused the gig. Allin went to a small club in the East Village and tried to perform alone, a capella as they say. He broke the microphone on his skull and it seemed as if the show would be canceled before it began. But, someone found another microphone and Allin shouted out three songs. By this time, he had punched several members in the audience, cut open his chest, and was throwing feces around. A riot ensued. Bottles were thrown and a number of people were hurt. Pursued by a crowd hoping to beat him up, Allin ran down an alley. He was barefoot and wearing a leather jock-strap but nothing else. He met his girlfriend, Liz, nearby and pulled off her mini-skirt. Wearing the mini-skirt, he wandered around the East Village getting into fights with people.

Later, Allin went to the apartment of a punk rocker who went by the name of Johnny Puke. Allin shot up with heroin and passed-out. Johnny Puke and his girlfriend noticed that Allin was snoring stentoriously. They took some polaroids cuddling with the inert Allin. The next morning, Puke found that Allin was cold and stiff – he was dead. The cops were called – Allin was wearing a leather jock-strap, was smeared with shit and blood, and had a Nazi helmet on his head.

G.G. Allin was buried in Vermont where his mother, Arleta, lived. He had given instructions to the undertaker that he not be embalmed and that his corpse not be washed. In some ways, this was the equivalent of Diogenes’ demand that his corpse be pitched outside the city walls and left as carrrion for predators. There are thirty minutes of VHS footage, now on You-Tube, showing Allin’s funeral. Allin’s grey and bloated corpse is in a casket under a picture of Jesus. Punks pat the body, stick things in its mouth, and put booze and cigarettes on Allin’s chest. The undertaker, wearing a suit, opens the casket more completely so that the onlookers can see that the grey-blue cadaver is naked except for a leather vest and a jock-strap. People drink some beer and spill it on the body’s face.

Allin’s mother erected a nice granite stone over her son’s grave. But fans came and smeared the granite headstone with feces and pissed all around it, leaving cigarette butts and beer bottles. Arleta was appalled and she had the gravestone removed.

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