Confessions of a Starving Artist

Doesn’t anybody notice this?!  I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!!  ~ Will Ferrell as Mugatu, Zoolander

A recent reduction of phone numbers in my cell phone directory reminded me that I’m losing friends and not replacing them.  Not by any malicious means; I do not think that I am running around burning my bridges and writing off friends for petty differences of opinion or some self-serving sense of being dishonored, though I have been known to do that from time to time.  Rather, the instances of life have simply been conducting business as usual, and a busy man whose normal social routine of the past several years has been disrupted by a truly wonderful woman can be made to suffer in this transitioning time where outlets for new acquaintances are slim.  This was punctuated today as one of my dearest and most go-to friends of this area sent me a text from the road as she and her boyfriend drove away to Phoenix. 

The daily grind is no better.  A series of personal setbacks have left me questioning the nature of being right… or rather the nature of believing that you are right.  Feeling that you are correct on a given matter when you are the only one who feels as such is not unlike madness.  First, a part of you looks around and wonders if you are wrong.  Then later, when that part of you looks back inward and decides that you are not and that the rest of the world is wrong, the next logical step is to wonder why it is only you that sees things in this manner.  Without fault anyone who has found themselves in this situation has considered themselves to either be an absolute genius and thus comfortable with their stand point to the degree that the issue itself become mute; or they hearken themselves to some sort of insanity or dysfunction, at which point they drop the given issue in hopes that people will perhaps forget their grievous and odd perceptions of what is said individual considers to be absurdly right.

That’s most people anyway.  There are extreme cases unlike this that have appeared throughout history.  Galileo for instance stood his ground against The Church and in the end was vindicated by history.  Another end of the spectrum could be Adolf Hitler who gripped the world to a new methodology through demonstrations of shock and awe.  Do I think that my petty and current situation at work warrants the invasion of Poland?  Probably not, but it’s the principal of the matter, I think. 

More to the point, I think that there are more than simply my interjections at work being ignored and ridiculed, even punished.  I think that the resulting overlying feelings that are present right now for me are not a symptom of just this, but of a series of events all leading to a general level of melancholy, which, by rights, I have no business having.  If you were to ask me ten years ago where I wanted to be when I turned thirty, I the outline that I would have drawn from you could not look anything more like this life that I have in front of me.  I have a beautiful home, I have the dream job that I worked for nearly eight years to obtain, I have an amazing woman, I have all the bells and whistles that I could imagine affording… and yet physically this is the most lonely that I have ever felt. 

Whether your dystopian view of the future is more akin to 1984 or A Brave New World, the sedation, the repression is starting to set in.  Like Lester Burnham in American Beauty, these days become measured and fixed.  Perhaps that is why so few break out or even release that the matrix has them.  My days are concerned with being part of the waking world… and being right… though I could see myself easily being locked up for both eventually.  What would Dr. Thompson do in this situation?

Like all low points, this too will pass.  Something will have to give, and in my humble experience, I have found that it tends to give ground faster the harder you hit that seemingly immovable brick wall.  However, normal methods of rebellion against The Man must be modified as of late.  In more normal circumstances, I would take a page from my own book, head to the bar, and drown my current afflictions with gin and tonics and then set to a mental cat-and-mouse game with some young twenty-something year old ‘empowered’ and ‘educated’ woman that would eventually end with my checkmate coming in the form of a one night stand.  I cannot do that anymore, despite how therapeutic it can be for the Ego and perhaps the soul.  Probably a good thing though.  As I get older, the odds of winning those games start to get stacked against you, and nothing is more damaging to the male psyche than being made to feel subservient to a set of Double-Ds.  Besides the matter, the likelihood of any painted-up hussy being as mentally grounding as my current steady is about as likely as any Red Bull addict claiming that they are surprised that the energy drink was found to have trace elements of cocaine in it.

Regardless, creative measures must be taken.  New outlets must be found, cultivated.  A return to innocence, at this point, is in order.  Unfortunately, my body is still not fully recovered from its latest injury, and to be fair to myself, it may never be.  So soccer as a meditative escape is gone, much to my sadness.  Thus, in a tender bit of counseling, I was reminded of several past-times that used to make me happy; things that I set aside along the way in order to galvanize my efforts to get to where I am today.  As stated, where I am now is not be all it was envisioned to be, so perhaps the careful re-assimilation of these things will bring us all back to the bountiful.  Who can be sure?  It does not hurt one for trying.

In the meantime, I will keep on keeping on.  No reason not to.  Granted, the geniuses and the tyrants became such by first becoming radicals but, “…Insurrection, like any art, has its laws that must be followed.” (Trotsky)  Regardless of how wrong you may be perceived, the fact remains that perception is truth.  In order for the individual to change what is viewed as right, one must first change perceptions.  This requires measure, opportunity, and above all, patience.  Regrettably, we do not live forever…