In
this article, I may use the word “you” many times. By using that word I am
talking in the proverbial, meaning not “you” the reader, but “you” as in the
type of person that strikes me down day by day. If you fit into that latter
category do me a favor and piss off. If you fit into the former category
chances are you’re here for one of two reasons—first and foremost to be
entertained, which is my main charge as a writer, and secondly to learn
something you may not know about individuals such as myself. Before we begin,
know this beyond a shadow of a doubt: I
do not feel like I am above any single one of you, I am made of the same matter
as every other human being and I did not ask for these thoughts and feelings,
they just exist. To those who are bothered by this notion, I ask you “why”?
Do
you never consider that perhaps I envy you?
We
all have dreams, we all have goals, and for the most part I seriously doubt
those dreams and goals include being the foreman of the local peanut factory. Those
who are have nothing to be ashamed of, I merely find it dubious that any child
lies in bed at night with their whole lives before them thinking “Gee, wouldn’t
it be wonderful to be the head snack-packer?” Honestly if you did I feel sorry
for you and you may want to stop reading right now; these words to follow will
piss you off. If you did not, I hope you read on because I would like you to
get in touch with some of those old hopes and feelings again, the ones that
made life itself feel like magic rather than a shit-filled conundrum.
Since
I became sentient, probably around the age of two when my grandfather Paul
Ladwig noticed something different about me and started teaching me how to read
easy words like “exit” and “stop”, thusly graduating me one year later to Dick
and Jane books, I felt as if there might be some appointment ahead of me, a
task or charge, that I was, if you’ll graciously allow, elect. For years I
lived an up-and-down roller coaster quandary between being competitive in the
brains category and terrified of the physical category. While others played
football, I studied. I was that nerd who always raised his hand in class and
suffered hundreds of ass-kickings at the hands of incipient cavemen after
school. Words and books and drawings, sometimes all mixed together in the
glorious form of the comic book gave me aid and succor while I licked my
wounds.
Years
later I got sick and fucking tired of these cocksuckers kicking my ass and I
began to fight back. I did not join football or any team effort, I became what
they now call “emo” but what we used to call gothic. And I did not fit in with
that group either. I fit into no group at all. So I figured. This was not true.
It took a very long time—far too long—for me to realize that I fit into the
category of the Artist, and never ye mind the canvas. Words, music, drawings,
shit, I did it all! And FUCK anyone who didn’t like it! My attitude was, and
often still remains “Say something, motherfucker! Talk shit and see what
happens.”
This
is where the point comes in. I think I have spent too many words already on
explaining how I went from fat, terrified nerdy kid to complete and total
honest-to-spheres bastard. I mentioned earlier that I envy those who are, shall
we say, normal. Those who dress for success and punch a clock or earn a salary
and drive a decent, if not luxuriant vehicle and have more than likely followed
all the rules or, in the worst case as far as I care, kissed the pre-requisite
amount of ass in order to achieve what they consider and achievement. They have
houses and families and probably bowel problems due to the sick fucking fact
that today’s world is based on a credit system where no one really owns
anything except for an illusory take-life-for-granted exit from life’s great
truths and can bury their heads deep, enjoying that Satanic ass-fucking they
take every single day without feeling real pain.
Either
that or they punch a clock to struggle and put food on the table because they
have a few sets of eyes to meet once they return home, eyes that trust above
mouths needing fed. Young eyes that sit in a classroom listening to some
overgrown fuckface who is supposed to be a teacher droning on listlessly while
they should be planting the seeds of growth and goal in the young mind. Older
eyes that hum and clean and do laundry and keep house or more, go to their own
eight to ten hour task to help put food on that very same table. Eyes that
should dream. Eyes that once dreamed. Eyes that may have lost their luster but
not their love.
Those,
I envy. I envy them because as long as they wake up on time and do what they’re
told and try not to think too much they will get by, I hope, without the bank
foreclosing on their homes or repossessing their cars and the like. Now, if I’m
an artist, a writer, being paid at least every so often to do what I love, why
should I envy those people?
There’s
a thing they do not understand. It’s the type of thing anyone who feels that
calling (and if you feel it, I don’t need to explain it) and responsibility to
something further, beyond, not necessarily more, but definitely much more
daunting. The calling to entertain those people, not ignoble, who dip through
their daily lives. The calling to make their lives easier. To make them laugh,
love, share, or even by fuck scare the ever-loving shit out of them so they can
remember what it was like to be a kid and think the devil lived in the laundry
basket when really all that lie within was a bunch of smelly clothes. For me,
the responsibility is to the great group, to YOU, the reader, to give you a
thing to read that will make you feel just that much better in the morning when
you wake up and have to face down some fuckhead Vogon who makes three more
dollars an hour than you do yet somehow thinks he/she is Tony (Collete?)
Soprano.
In
order to do that I have to face down things most don’t even consider. First, I
have to rip my fucking skin and bone wide as if performing a self-autopsy and
stick my soul to your brain via the page (or any other canvas). Secondly, I have
to struggle to avoid all negative thought and lack of faith lest I bumblefuck
my karma and not spin the quite tangible yet fickle and delicate creative mass
of the universe—to please God, if you’re a Christian—into finding me worthy to
entertain you. Thirdly, I have to deal with your (remember, proverbial you)
heckling and shitting on me because I don’t punch a clock or have a set home or
any of those securities you take for granted. And lastly, oh lastly…I have to
find a way to answer you when you ask “Why don’t you just get a job, loser?”
Why?
Because I do not NEED to GET a job. I have one.
It’s
called saving your ass from the conundrum. It’s called making sure you don’t
get bored. It’s called making you feel as though you are THERE when one of my
characters fires a bullet into the eye of his asshole boss for talking too much
shit and then following the murderer (and is that person, really, a criminal?)
as he/she makes moves to escape the law. It is making you laugh. Making you
cry. Making you realize that nothing is promised, there is no taking a single
damn thing for granted. It is, at the end of all, making you feel better about
the things you do and the people you love by nailing my heart to your eyes.
And
it’s the hardest fucking job in the world.
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