"Ask me next Saturday."
Recently, there’s been a whispered rebellion against “toiling in obscurity.” That exhausted but applicable cliché is the rational fear of those navigating a tsunami sea of mediocrity and half-baked sensationalization. This one wants his biographer present and this one titles everything sexually. This one with his bourgeois Whole Foodsy interpretations of revolutionary thought. All of it made-for-web and as weary of itself as it is of any inflammatory truthful harmony. You’ll be a blip on history’s radar, spineless twats that you are. You’ve spent so much time mutually masturbating with your collegiate confederates that you’ve forgotten to decently write. You’ll be remembered as armchair observers so disgusting your only rival was Noam Chomsky.
How many of you whores swear you’re living? I watched a woman dig through a heap of garbage for fabric yesterday. She grinned each time she found someone’s refuse. Her creations will end up on the backs of children. You’re the resourceful ones in this world, though, aren’t you? So deftly in love with yourselves that you don’t see the havoc you’re wreaking. It’s in the air you breathe—injustice is invisible until it’s granted a name. The dust that came out of my lungs last night was mud in the shower drain and my hair was dirty white. It’s curious that some of us can be here and others can be where you sit, basking in opportunity, sipping coffee brewed in your carpeted middle-class kitchens. Five of the men I work with grew up without mothers, others came from orphanages. Most of us knew poverty early on.
You’ll keep your delusions of equality and democracy, I’ll keep my head on straight.
The phrases echoing in my head are those of people who think that toiling in obscurity is not a deserved toil. There are not many ways to look at this. This idea that you shouldn’t ever struggle, that struggle is the enemy, that you haven’t any need to know rejection, that there is really a place for everyone in the arts, that you shouldn’t have to force your foot in the door, that you don’t need your own ideas (a mid-list author’s are good enough), that somehow it’s okay to be anemic, half-hearted, and cloned in your every movement—that somehow the same rules of pop music should apply to letters and the same benefits should be reaped as a result—these notions are lost on me. I don’t think I’m proposing a new philosophy but instead a cheerful return to honesty.
I’d much rather toil in obscurity my whole life and remain so after death than be held in high regard undeservedly. Fame and fortune are far removed from the creative process. The means are the ends, you bastards! If your means involve the creative energy of another, then so should your ends! All this hero worship and love of those in castles far from here with their perfect families and inherited wealth; premature production and backbone desecration. It’s all murder of something necessary—the reality that bred the very best of what makes our historical footing so precarious and precious.
I’m not reacting to anything specific, but to many things specific; to you who do not love what you do but love what it does for you. I’m reacting to those of you so dishonest as to delude yourselves into thinking your story is any more important than anyone’s. To these abortive sons of bitches writing from the sadist gray area that is the inability to decide what is acceptable and what is not on whose watch anything goes and shades of brown result. A painter would never get away with it.
I’m generalizing. I haven’t given up.
What I see is a generation forming without me. This may be a personal indictment of those excluding me by the tertiary method of neglect. Those who couldn’t get near the cool kids in grade school and thus here build their own clubs (first names everywhere I turn). And what, where is the end? My stomach spins empty circles. I want to know right now. I want to smoke a week of cigarettes awaiting your answer. What are your ambitions, really? A week to write a book you think I ought to spend two hours’ pay on? Please! Go do something of which your prosperous parents approve. Stop using this community. Now.
This generation has little or possibly no time to waste. We’re going to lose this one if we’re not careful. We’ll have another army of conglomerate vassals who won’t consider thinking beyond their prescriptions. Another decade of poor disguises, misguided economics.
It starts here.
brilliant
[...] i don’t understand. Tags: P.H. Madore [...]
I feel you man. I really do.
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When you’re everywhere
Come and get your share
Finally some honesty and passion, very refreshing.
There are a lot of issues in this rant. Several of them stand out for me as issues that provoke questions.
There is the question of mediocrity. And what constitutes mediocrity. There is the question of sensationalism. And what constitutes sensationalism. There is the question of making something solely for the web. And the implication that doing so is easy because the web permits accessibility and allows instant publicity and sometimes even generates attention.
There is the question of history and courage and writing decently. And the implication that writing decently–although never clearly defined–may constitute a writing practice that is more courageous, more memorable, more historically significant, more important, more valuable than a kind of writing which may be deemed indecent.
There is the issue of narcissism. And its effects. Its apparent dangers. And there seems to be a warning. And this warning warns readers throughout the essay. This warning marks the essay’s urgency.
There is the very prominent and pervasive issue of class. And the question of its effects on creativity and artistic opportunity, which is written very poignantly. And with a tone of desperation. And maybe sadness.
There are questions, so many questions, that run through the essay about work and struggle and what comes from such work and struggle. There is the question of fame and fortune. And the relation of fame and fortune to hard work and the scant opportunities poverty provides for success and accomplishment.
There is the question of the value of pop culture and the arts. And the implication that artists or writers today, especially those to whom the essayist refers–and here it is not very clear–seek the kind of fame and fortune people seek on American Idol, for example, or that what they seek is something quick and easy. As if money and fame have become the only reasons people make art or write books in one week. And perhaps it is the only reason people do so.
There is not a lot of money out there it seems. There is not a lot of art either.
There is a question of the relationship between means and ends. And this is a very economic question. And one that implicates an ethics of responsibility in relation to creative works within a commodity-driven culture.
There are other questions. Questions about inheritance and wealth and worship and history–this essay always comes back to history and, thus, to memory, to mourning.
There has been a murder. And yet this murder has killed something in general. And that is what, I believe, makes the murder–not the essay–so murderous, so precarious, so precious.
But the essay, too, is precious.
This essay is also preposterous (in the literal sense of the word). It starts at its end and it announces that it has not surrendered. That it has surrendered to the allegation that a murder has been committed is rebuked by its insistence that there is work to be done, to resurrect history, to start again. Despite the implication that loss is inevitable. This essay seeks to work, to struggle, to militate against a murder it feels has been committed against something in general.
I am trying to make sense of it. I don not think that Sam Pink does not understand it. I like Sam Pink a lot. And I think that Sam Pink–if he wanted–could try to understand it. Anyways.
Jean Genet is one example of a writer who came from nothing and wrote beautiful indecent things.
hey
i didnt read the long comment on this section
your post seems good
i work on a farm two days a week, it is very hard work; for example today we planted over 7 beds of lettuce. to do this you must soak flats of lettuce in fish emulsion and bat guano; the result is you smelling like disgusting shit for the rest of the day, and it being really hot and sweating alot, and showering but not being able to get the smell off. i like the job. i am not saying i dislike it
i have also created a business where i have to go to a place 3 times a week and search through tons of shit to find maybe 5 – 15 things that will sell. i also ‘dumpster dive’ and check craigslist for things
this keeps me busy, i think, in the sense that you are using it, living life
its also how i make money
i live in a shitty studio in capitol hill; slugs come through the kitchen sink and behind the bathtub, the wall is so disintegrated that dirt is just coming through. i have to vacuum it weekly to suck up all the spiders and bugs behind there
i have been living in situations as dirty as this for a 5+ years, i think, with small gaps between (when i moved in with my ex gf for example)
i am not trying to disprove you, you seem genuine
i sip coffee at my desk, but its always in between farming and trying to find shit that will sell, which feels like a lot of work
seems like a bad idea to comment here, because i know you dislike me and will maybe make a big deal of this comment, but i think some of your assumptions are inaccurate
anyways, hi
Janey, I don’t think I was trying to make a complaint against “indecency.” I think I meant the quality of the writing…
PHM, I know. However, the term ‘decent writing’ or ‘writing that’s decent’ or even the kind of writing that forgets decency, that forgets what is ‘good’, puts into play questions about writing. And for me, it is just too hard to tell what is good or bad writing. I mean, I have my preferences!
There is also a politics at play here, too. (And I think your essay addresses this politics in an oblique way). And politics always seeks to determine affiliations by way of exclusions.
The writers associated with HTMLGiant do it. And the writers associated with Tao Lin do it, too. Perhaps they think it makes their writing more precious, more valuable. It certainly doesn’t make writing, or writers in general, a more dangerous force. Compartmentalization is one of the fruits of capitalism. And over here (USA), it is probably one of the main reasons artists and writers never pose a serious threat to political culture, etc.
And it is unfortunate for writing. And for politics. I mean, imagine a group of writers who happened to group themselves together simply because they believed in writing (despite stylistic differences, etc.) Such a group would constitute an awesome political force.
I suspect that these are the kinds of comments Brandon Scott Gorrell doesn’t want (you or others) to read.
Instead, we get Brandon Scott Gorrell trying to generate a shit storm (or hoping one is generated) so that he may benefit from the publicity. Or Sam Pink pretending that he doesn’t understand your anger when most of us know that he is more than capable of interpreting your essay or questioning it or whatever.
You know, whether you like their writing or not, I think that both BSG and SP are smart guys. They are smart and–to a certain extent–they are lucky. And that’s okay.
PHM? You are smart, too. You just need to improve your luck! Anyways, thanks for responding to my comment. You could have tried to dismiss it to make yourself sound cool. But, instead, you disagreed with it. And you tried to explain yourself. I think that’s cool. I hope I made some things clear, too.
I dig this. I read it all very quickly.
Something that rappers say a lot is, “If you feel any sort of way ’bout what I’m saying, I’m prolly talkin to you”
And I felt this on both sides — whoever you’re talking about, I didn’t feel the negative part of your writing. This empowered me mostly. I toil in obscurity (for the most part) and feel immense pressure to be all “out there” and get “the word out” and shit like that. To be in peoples faces constantly. Then I realized some truths. And deleted my facebook and myspace shit and kept my blog. Thinking about deleting that too. But that shit is mostly for me anyway, and whatever randoms might come across it.
And yeah man, I’m stupid broke. Haven’t had a legit job in like almost 2 years. Spent another year on the streets tough. Now I gotta depend on someone else for food. Like the fuck? Trying to use writing to make some money by selling chapbooks. Maybe I should set up a paypal or something. So behind the times.
But yeah, I dig what you’re saying.
And Sam gets it. He ain’t stupid.
Janey, I like what you said about a possible method for writers becoming a political force by means of banding together on the grounds of writing itself and not some stylistic division. The compartmentalization thing is about the truest thing I’ve read in awhile. Your words are a salve.
lol
If I had known you were in Iraq, and not an affected youth posting from his mom’s basement, I would not have quoted John Lennon lyrics at you.
[...] rant on struggling and complacency in our generation’s approach to work. Even crankier than [...]