So I was angsting into my journal, and something came out that I actually kind of like as a piece of writing. And I'd be interested in your feedback on whether this might be a truth, or whether it's just well-wrought paranoia.
I'll spare you a good deal of my blues....We enter upon your protagonist (me) thinking this:
The economy of this art world has just left me behind. I don't have facial hair and dorky-cool glasses, I don't know the latest bands or even drink PBR anymore, and unless this kind of anxiety is what it takes to be cool these days, I am just out at sea with no land in sight.
Hm. Well, maybe that is part of this whole coolness thing. Anxiety would certainly explain how awkward and sensitive people are. Maybe I'm just jiving off the vibes of so many anxious people clustered into a metropolis with nothing but one talent that barely anybody cares about; that one talent that is your entire passion, and the weight of a fame that is now out of reach because it is owned in perpetuity and all conceivable media by the generations who came from the stars who we always wanted to become, and now infuriate us in everything we see.
We came here to find a way in: a secret passage that would somehow eject us center stage at Madison Square Garden, where some roadie would throw us a guitar and the spotlight of forever stardom would shine. Or that sidewalk that would shoot us in front of a live camera for a second long enough to inspire some person with absolute casting authority to cry "Stop tape! I must have that kid!" And then it would be all paparazzi and famous lovers on white sand beaches, and laughing it off all the way to the bank of cash or cultural memory.
Instead we get here and there are 10,000 different portals and six times as many maps sold for a dollar on the street--and those are just the ones that I've seen personally--and there's nobody with starmaker power anymore except the advertising executives at GE. Or at least nobody who's interested in chatting with the good looking valet (who has an MFA from ACT), anyway, because those people have let their determination blind them to their depression, and they now think that they're just too important to wait even forty seconds before writing everyone off as a complete moron, and yelling that too.
No, those people, the ones with any ties to power, just really want a footnote in one of the real stars' biographies, so they cast that star's son or granddaughter--who have taken some classes, sure, and picked up a goodly amount from growing up on set--but who lack that smoldering coal of want or hunger that burns and blisters in the rest of us dopes, who now fester away in our falling down apartments, hoping always for that one pure spotlight moment of a chance.
So maybe the system--the one that we've been taught to revere and assimilate into--has eaten its own tail, and now doesn't know whether to swallow or shit. And maybe, if I stayed out here long enough and put up with this hipster malaise and its attendant anxiety, perhaps I could make a new way. Then, some day I might look back and be proud and feel satisfied. But every trailblazer will tell you, You'd have to be crazy to choose this path.
And anyway, I came here to hide in the forest a little, because my trail done blazed me out already.
I'll spare you a good deal of my blues....We enter upon your protagonist (me) thinking this:
The economy of this art world has just left me behind. I don't have facial hair and dorky-cool glasses, I don't know the latest bands or even drink PBR anymore, and unless this kind of anxiety is what it takes to be cool these days, I am just out at sea with no land in sight.
Hm. Well, maybe that is part of this whole coolness thing. Anxiety would certainly explain how awkward and sensitive people are. Maybe I'm just jiving off the vibes of so many anxious people clustered into a metropolis with nothing but one talent that barely anybody cares about; that one talent that is your entire passion, and the weight of a fame that is now out of reach because it is owned in perpetuity and all conceivable media by the generations who came from the stars who we always wanted to become, and now infuriate us in everything we see.
We came here to find a way in: a secret passage that would somehow eject us center stage at Madison Square Garden, where some roadie would throw us a guitar and the spotlight of forever stardom would shine. Or that sidewalk that would shoot us in front of a live camera for a second long enough to inspire some person with absolute casting authority to cry "Stop tape! I must have that kid!" And then it would be all paparazzi and famous lovers on white sand beaches, and laughing it off all the way to the bank of cash or cultural memory.
Instead we get here and there are 10,000 different portals and six times as many maps sold for a dollar on the street--and those are just the ones that I've seen personally--and there's nobody with starmaker power anymore except the advertising executives at GE. Or at least nobody who's interested in chatting with the good looking valet (who has an MFA from ACT), anyway, because those people have let their determination blind them to their depression, and they now think that they're just too important to wait even forty seconds before writing everyone off as a complete moron, and yelling that too.
No, those people, the ones with any ties to power, just really want a footnote in one of the real stars' biographies, so they cast that star's son or granddaughter--who have taken some classes, sure, and picked up a goodly amount from growing up on set--but who lack that smoldering coal of want or hunger that burns and blisters in the rest of us dopes, who now fester away in our falling down apartments, hoping always for that one pure spotlight moment of a chance.
So maybe the system--the one that we've been taught to revere and assimilate into--has eaten its own tail, and now doesn't know whether to swallow or shit. And maybe, if I stayed out here long enough and put up with this hipster malaise and its attendant anxiety, perhaps I could make a new way. Then, some day I might look back and be proud and feel satisfied. But every trailblazer will tell you, You'd have to be crazy to choose this path.
And anyway, I came here to hide in the forest a little, because my trail done blazed me out already.
