dir/new_school/rant: T h e  g r i n d 

For some people, a good place to work is in an shabby bedroom. with a beat up mac and a eightball of cocaine, or it’s that shed, the unpretentious one, where the only thing that matters is you and your art. Finding that harmony is a beautiful thing and usually elusive and so much lies in your surroundings, so much so that a bad spot isn’t unlike a bad situation and you’ll stew in a lack of creativity.

I can imagine what my perfect office would be. Four thousand feet, narrow. I see the back opening on a hill, where rustic barns and old trucks fill the landscape, with lawn chairs and a pool and a jacuzzi. And further inside, nuzzled so that’d you have to travel for the free space, from the clutter; the book, the art that hangs down and the art that looks up. Till you’ve passed couches and chairs, televisions and boxes of wine and liquor, until you came to computers and work benches and video monitors.

Yep, all I need is a warehouse, I prefer not to call it by it’s poppy and shameful new name –The Loft. I need lots of money, or maybe I don’t, remember it’s not what you could have, it’s just that money can make life so much easier. Money lets you live in the city, rather then settling for some surburban digs, with washer and dryer connections. Neighbors, below, above and beside you, strangers.

If we could get money out of the scenario, if we could kill the need to work at survival, if we could just be. Instead, at best, wherever you are, in whatever busy metropolitan or sleepy haven, you know of little places, where people are supposed to think free and live life and enjoy the community of artists. Sadly, those places almost always go trendy and the spot where we can remember wasting so much of our youth is taken away from us and we move on. And if we don’t move on, we settle in, pay absurd realty rates and take a bite our of illusion and order from the Ikea catalog and search for early colonial furniture on the weekend. What is it that we wanted again? Does anyone choose to be different. Did we ever have a chance to choose between the easy life or having to live in our different worlds.

Regardless you work, cause work is necessary, as a matter of fact, if you don’t work, things can get kinda nasty and so you sacrifice your creativity, to keep the lights on, to have food and you spend some of that money, fuck… You spend a good bit of that money you make-after the bills have been paid, trying to forget your job. You have hobbies, addictions, collections and desires and they almost always seem to require money, so you work harder and harder. You pay the growing bills, you feed your habit and in between you desperately hope for good sex, decent food and the occasional night of sleep which you wake rested from. After awhile, you lower your standards a little lower and you hope you will survive, get laid, get a chance to eat something and catch up on the sleep later and we usually forget to create and hope our children will let us live through them.

It’s a drag folks, work, art, life, breathing. I won’t even begin to say I know the truth to that one. I’m a little different, I work and do the art and try to constantly challenge myself to not sleepwalk through life. And I don’t usually feel like I’m succeeding. It’s a slippery slope, mostly cause how I survive is not how you survive. When I wake to the day, I am thankful and resentful, that it starts again and that it will continue in this fashion, for many years to come.

So when you say to me "When we win the lottery this weekend, things will be better." I share in your fantasy. I don’t buy a ticket mind you, better to smoke, or drink or read from that dollar and since a dollar doesn’t go far. I don’t want to waste it on a millionth of hope.

And when you call me a sell out or stuck on things or…afraid. I nod my head in agreement. I psychoanalyze myself and wonder if I’ve lost my stride, maybe forsaken myself for the better chances of survival.

And every day, to that routine, I rise with the sun and we set to the moon and I wonder, hoping for enough light, to see whether I have lost or gained something through the day.

So much of the shit, that I take in, when your lips move and things come from below rather then above, when the heart blocks the song of reason, when the sex, confuses the moment for a image. I take it in and I listen and I pray and laugh and cry with you, but I am always a little bit off. Watching for my time to fade, waiting for the moon to steal me to darkness and feeling the dread, the passing of today for the coming dread of tomorrow.

Hm…

Starting to feel like a post modern angst journal entry huh?

Trying to find my groove folks, bear with me. It’s an up and down situation, when you try to lead a creative life. Lord knows, I sometimes want to hold my arms forward, close my eyes and walk the walk, talk the talk and share in the joy that comes around the water cooler chats. Share the sports section with my boss and tell dirty jokes.

I wish that I could drive to work with a pleasant buzzed sensation rolling through my veins and a utter sense of this is how it’s supposed to be. Instead I lean on the horn and call my fellow drivers cocksuckers-they are. I think I should maybe box and spar. I think some of my time should be spent screaming and raging. Maybe I don’t rage enough, maybe, I think… I think I try to keep a bit too much in.

I try to alleviate the pressure at work, occasionally I make the most realistic barking noises and scare my cube mates. Sometimes I talk like I really talk, when I’m not so careful and I mention ass fucking to an executive.

It’s usually not enough though. Being tolerably weird, is a quick road to entertaining people during smoke breaks. It’s not as freeing as much as it is letting steam off.

When I do occasionally find my balance, I am haunted. I hear things and see sights, often while I drag my conduits down the corridor, tapping into the cosmic unconscious, trying to decipher the code, find god and meaning. Some reason to understand why I’m doing any of what I’m doing and if I am right in not doing the things I think or want, should, could might do.

I don’t honestly know, but it seems like everybody is keeping score and no one can agree, on ourselves or each other, but the audience is eating it up and I got to say, we put on a mighty good show.

So stand back…

Stand back I say!

If you have come to observe spectacle, then I take no responsibility for your well being, but if you’ve come to fight, show me your KungFu.