Tobacco Is A Friend
/When Steve and his brothers puffed stogies in the woods, they felt like men. They felt as free as the smoke that wafted from their faces up into the ether.
Read MoreWhen Steve and his brothers puffed stogies in the woods, they felt like men. They felt as free as the smoke that wafted from their faces up into the ether.
Read MoreFree from delirium, I am full of delusions. Or am I? Where am I?
Read MoreThe skies are clearing, the days warming. I don't mind the pain.
Read MoreA profile of a young addict prompts reflection on the American way.
Read MoreI am giving up.
Over the past several months I've posted about getting my writing published here and there, about landing an internship with KUER, about quitting a lucrative job, about graduating college. I've shared all this in hopes of inspiring people. For I believed there was a way out, and I thought if I could find it and document it then others would find a way out too.
Out of what was I hoping to find a way? This. This whole setup. This whole chase-money-acquire-debt-do-meaningless-work-or-go-broke game.
What? Not all work is meaningless? True. Education, agriculture, craftsmanship, art—these enterprises have real social value. But in general they pay very little, making it difficult if not impossible to support a family, or they are governed by inane bureaucracies and grubby capitalists. Our most humanistic endeavors, in other words, have been appropriated by this mechanistic, soul-sucking sham. (Btw, I’d say healthcare is a valuable enterprise, but it turned cancerous as soon as it glimpsed how much a person is willing to borrow or pay in order to postpone death and ease suffering.)
I have spent the last five years trying to escape industries which to me seem to offer no value to humanity—marketing, advertising, finance, insurance, real estate, transportation, investing, and all things speculative and manipulative. I have not found a way out. I don't know how and when we went wrong, but we did. Today people are paid extremely well if they can create the illusion of value, marginally well if they are willing to support the illusion. But if a person truly adds value to society, he or she is paid poorly, at least in many cases.
Why is this?
Seriously. Think about what and whom our illusions support. Do you benefit if you participate? Yes, to a degree. But also a part of you dies, because you recognize, whether faintly or clearly, this is all terribly fucked up. You feel something amiss. And if you don’t, it’s because the pleasures of the game have sedated you.
Perhaps it’s fortunate, perhaps unfortunate, but I’m fairly adept at creating the illusion of value. I know how to play the game. I could probably even “win” at it if I tried real hard. But I don’t crave power that much. Nor do I want to pacify myself with the things money can buy—entertainment, possessions—or the things it can’t buy yet promises to—security, safety, a guaranteed tomorrow.
What I want is autonomy. Alas, even this has to be purchased—with an indentured soul. The only way out, possibly, is to become the street prophet or mountain recluse or starving artist. Why do you think I beseech such folk, and solicit their wisdom?
Anyway, seeing as I bragged about my highs in the past, about my progress, I thought it appropriate to share this low, this potential regression. I am losing hope that there’s a way out of this game. It seems that I must sell one part of my soul in order to retain another, and I’m prepared to now, after nine months of trying to avoid doing so. I know most of you have already done this, several times, even do it daily. I’ve done it, too, a thousand times. “Get over it,” you might be thinking. If so, I partially admire your pragmatism. But I think there’s something else we should consider: Is it possible that such compromising of self, such repression of intuitions, indicates not simply that life is inconvenient, but that we're living it patently wrong, in this so-called civilization? Yes, to resist is to suffer, but so too is to acquiesce. And whose cause would you rather suffer for?
I don’t know. I haven’t fully given up yet, I guess, but I am mad—in both senses of the word.
Had death come for Willy in that moment, in that matchbox garage, I suspect he wouldn’t have shuddered. Nor would he have succumbed without a terrible fight.
Read More(4-minute read)
There's a popular story going 'round that sounds something like this: excellence is achieved by doing one thing well. Choose something you are passionate about, commit to it, practice and study incessantly, and one day you'll master your craft. You'll achieve excellence. Then you'll be great. You might even get rich or famous.
You know this story, right?
It's been catapulted in recent years by Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-Hour Rule, as found in his book Outliers, which states that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice are required for world-class performance in any field. Since the release of Gladwell's book, youth super leagues have multiplied, teenagers now see pop or sports superstardom as the inevitable result of rote repetition, and parents—if they weren't already competitive—now elbow and politic their way through crowds for the chance to buy multi-thousand-dollar violin lessons for their six-year-olds, lessons which resemble full-time jobs more than extracurricular interests.
But we've been obsessed with notions of excellence since long before Gladwell. Remember Aristotle and his aphorisms about excellence and repetition? Habituation, suggested Aristotle, leads to virtuous character. And look at us today. We laud experts for their unrivaled zeal and singular devotion as though they were saints. We bow at the feet of the Steve Jobses and Tiger Woodses and Kobe Bryants of the world. Some would even suck off Macklemore, while playing on repeat his masturbatory hymn about 10,000 hours spent rapping in the mirror, a hymn entitled, ingeniously, "10,000 Hours."
But Macklemore is rich and famous, so the story must be true: practice one task incessantly, and demigodhood awaits.
I think there's another way of living, a better way, that get's completely overlooked in America because it's not culturally glamorized. I call it the way of the Overzealous Dilettante.
The Overzealous Dilettante grabs life by the balls—or the pussy, for that matter—and sucks and fucks it until he runs out of juice or life runs dry. Let me explain.
Traditionally, dilettantes are disparaged in American culture. They are equated with loafers, laggards, and slackers. When slackers are spotlighted, as they have been in movies like Ferris Bueller's Day Off or Dazed and Confused, it's often unclear whether they are being celebrated or mocked. Few, it seems, take the lifestyles of The Dude or Bueller as guides for happy living. Most point and laugh at them, even iconize them, but then jump on their hamster wheels in the morning to chase down the American Dream. In truth, our cultural depictions of dabblers are caricatures that allow American adults to reminisce about the former selves they outgrew, or to mock the kind of person they wish they would've become. But American culture has never properly shown us the way of the Overzealous Dilettante, the obsessive dabbler.
The difference between your everyday dabbler, or slacker, and the Overzealous Dilettante is negligible on the surface. Both can't hold a job. Both are unlikely to cultivate longterm relationships. Both are hedonists, chasing novelty like trout chasing dazzling lures. But in constitution one is as dull as a pencil eraser, while the other is as smart as that first sip of IPA from a cold aluminum can.
The dabbler loses interest because he isn't interested in life to begin with. He isn't interested in discovering processes, within or without himself. In short, he isn't curious. The lures he chases encourage complacency. So he drifts from job to job or trade to trade. He remains, at best, and 'til his death, an amateur. This man can't even rightly be considered a jack-of-many-trades. You wouldn't call on him to help build your bicycle or drop a tranny or accompany you on an unplanned trip through Vietnam. About the only thing you can trust him to do well is drink your beer and smoke your weed. These dickwads should be avoided as much as the douchebags who subscribe to the myopic 10,000-Hour Rule.
An Overzealous Dilettante, on the other hand, has precisely the opposite problem. His problem isn't lack of vitality, it's lack of time. There isn't enough time in life to do just one thing excellently. He must do everything he possibly can, intensely, and therefore acquires whatever level of mastery he must in order to have increasingly intense experiences. And if and when the intensity wanes, he targets a new path and moves on, continually acquiring new skills and insights, developing new relationships and habits—but not so he can become "successful." His behavior, speaking plainly, is a function of living in and for itself.
So, how does one go from being a Gladwellian cunt or Lebowskian loafer to an Overzealous Dilettante? By jerking off in the mirror while reading more how-to-get-ahead-in-the-rat-race listicles, obviously.
I believe, as Freud and Nietzsche do, that our motives remain unknown to us. So I can't tell you why I do photography. But I can theorize.
Read MoreWhen Tiff was a toddler, her mother would send her to the neighbor’s to borrow a loaf of bread, which would serve as family dinner.
Read MoreThe Delta Bike Project supplies the community of Mobile, Alabama, with transportation, recreation, and simple work opportunities.
Read MoreDo you ever feel exhausted or alone or confused so badly that the answers you normally feed yourself about life and meaning lose their efficacy?
Read More"It looks like I'm kind of a hellraiser and shit, but they think I'm an angel."
Read More"Music is a shared form of art. It's one thing to play a song and enjoy it, but it's a whole other thing when you perform in front of an audience."
Read More"I have no address, no bills, no power, no gas, no rent. I don’t have a care in the fucking world."
Read More"That’s been a huge awakening for me: I am who I am. And whatever God is, he's not mad at me."
Read MoreWhen Hill first arrived in Moab he had no intentions of settling down. He believed he could always live happily out of his truck. But over time Hill acquired—as he puts it—“a bunch of stuff.” Which includes a store full of bikes.
Read MoreWhen Mama Peaches told the police she had been raped by the man who employed her, she wasn't transported to the regional hospital for a rape kit as you'd expect.
Read More“I got cancer in my leg when I was 16, but the doctors were able to save me and keep it from spreading."
Read MoreA few years ago, a tree nearly took Glenn out. Cracked his head, shattered his left arm. But he's still going.
Read MorePeople have been teasing cats with cucumbers. According to some, if you laughed at these felines’ expense, you’re wrongheaded. And if you went so far as to sic a cucumber on your cat, just to see what would happen, you might even be sociopathic.
Read Morea weblog and lifework
Photos
Books
Bikes
Pipes
Music
Joplin blew out a hit. The smoke hung and twisted in the sunlight, and he studied it there, looking for an answer or sign.
I don’t know how best to tell you this, but you’re wrong. You’re wrong about me, and I fear you are wrong about the world.
Misfits threaten to diversify Provo, Utah, with The Boxcar Studios—an atelier and community events center.
A profile of a young addict prompts reflection on the American way.
Meditation has inspired me to "let go." But how can I engage the good fight if I give in?
Perhaps a greater understanding of what it means to be a misfit will help us better understand what it means to be human.
Wordle is unique in that it’s an addiction you can’t indulge to your detriment.