Après Le Deluge, Moi: It’s All About Mimi Disorder

Remember way back when the most interesting thing to complain about was the wretched excess, questionable integrity, sleazy tactics, and relentless disingenuousness of what is referred to as the Presidential Campaign?

Seems like ages ago, does it not? Why? Simple. Reality ripped us from the clutches of affected patriotism and metaphorical backstabbing in a big old dramatic manner unique to nature, nature which gives and removes all that is consequential, unlike political gasbags who – at their very best – do less damage than they might.

Sandy seems like a rather benign name for the virtually unprecedented Armageddon-ette that swept across the Eastern United States this week; a 400-mile wide furious lesson in fundamental truth that assaulted us with Old Testament fury, crushing buildings like an angry child might smash a train set, sending entire beaches to the winds, lost in time to the remote corners of this inexplicably altered world of ours.

Have you ever been hit so hard that the wind is knocked right out of you? You cannot regain your breath; your body’s automatic response mechanisms seem temporarily out of order. There is shock, panic, even terror as you imagine breath will never return. Then, in precious wisps, it does. Over anxious, trembling moments you begin to breath once again; life itself returns. Order returns. Everything that is ordinary returns.

When I was a lad learning to sing professionally I spent endless hours warming up by practicing scales. Along with my fellow musicians I sang ascending and descending scales by repeatedly vocalizing one single word – Mi. It is oddly surreal to be in a room full of people who have nothing to say except Mi, who think of nothing but Mi, who only talk about Mi. And yet, as I watched the tides of humanity return to the various social networking utilities so indispensable to contemporary life, that was the song that blanketed the landscape from Alligator Alley, Florida to Muskrat Ramble, Maine – Mi.

Is it too soon to declare this self-preoccupation a disorder, Mimi’s Disorder? With an obliviousness to the wants, needs, desires, sufferings, and sensitivities of others, millions upon millions of self-obsessed Americans told exactly the same story, posted the same photographs, made the same observations, dragged out the same jokes as if a thousand people hadn’t already made them twice, in effect saying – in case you hadn’t heard, there was a huge storm and it effected Mi Mi Mi.

Yes, Sparky, we heard about it.