No Thing Else To Do

The reason I'm starting a mature mass culture is not because I dislike the culture we have, quite the opposite.

WHen I was a kid I jonesed for Neil Young like it was crack. Every day I'd go home and put on "Everyone Knows the is Nowhere". Usually followed by Quadrophenia and if I was lucky (meaning if my neighbor had let me borrow his picture disk), Metallica's Creeping Death.

I was so relieved to have someone who knew that this WAS nowhere, because it really was at the time.

There were very few kids who skateboarded. Everything shut down at 5pm. There wasn't anything downtown. And even when an album like The Ramones first one came out, you were lucky if you could even find it new.

Finding it used, which I could barely afford, required constant searching in the record stores along the University District's Ave.

If it was a hip-hop song, forget about it. One kid I knew had The Message. I have no idea where he got it. Schooly D, The Fila Fresh Crew, or Luke? Forget about it. You could hear it at a party if you partied with the right people (who likely had it on a mix tape--meaning they were or had dated one of the two DJs at school), but otherwise you were SOL, my friend.

Remember the time before the internet? Before computers. Before cell phones, CD players, and magazines?

I was lucky in Seattle, at least I knew the one place you could find a Thrasher skateboard magazine if they hadn't already sold out of the latest issue (in which case you probably bought an old one and read it anyway). When I moved to Chicago I couldn't find it anywhere.

Which led to a lot of lengthy searches.

And even waiting a month to find out if Danny Way had done another McTwist seemed like cruel and unusual punishment.

Cause no one had ever done anything even remotely like that before.

And just the simple act skateboarding could easily incur the wrath of otherwise god-fearing citizens.

But it was worth it. Who ever thought that you could do an activity that was a) fun, b) creative, c) had it's own music, and d) had its own style.

And the magazine that did come out was so much more delicious because of that hunger. Because there was nothing else. Because it was a Teenage Wasteland. And it was only teenage wasteland. (It was likely adult wasteland too, but that was their own fault--more on that later).

And when Devo hit--whoo-whee. How could it get any better? The excitement was palpable. From nothing to everything.

I spent my days drawing designs for the bottom of boards. I thought Ray "Bones" Rodriguez was the coolest, even though I had never seen him skate. (Twenty years later he showed up at a party at my house--how's that for making your own reality?)

In a sense, getting my first pop culture was like copping my first feel. Since my life had been, up to that point, almost exclusively defined by what it had lacked, when that thing showed up, it was like a flash flood, a snowstorm, hail, a drought, going broke and hitting the lottery all at once.

It was like everything.

And for a long time I just sat around wondering why we did all this other nonsense?

Why go to school? Why do sports? Why even wear clothes or move around? Why didn't we just do THAT!!??

All day every day.

Spoken like a true addict.

(And I was pretty clear about this at the time. I loved coffee so much when I was in college because I thought it was the drug you could be addicted to forever without getting messed up--ha!)

But I was a good boy and so I went to school, went and did sports, and reserved my fun for the weekends, which usually meant eating, a twelve pack, trying to get some and, if failing, running the streets with similarly positioned friends, going for hamburgers, sneaking into places and/or jumping off of bridges, boats and buildings into various bodies of water (called "jumping", as in "Hey, let's go jumping).

But that only lasted through college. After that I was burnt. I wanted to chuck it all and live. So while my then Republican girlfriend hit the career center, I plotted how to drop out.

Move to San Francisco and skateboard was #1, but I didn't have the guts. So I moved to Burlington, VT and worked menial jobs while living in a very artistically minded group house. And wore the wackest clothes I could find.

(Which was hard back then--as they weren't even making any yet. Usually it was ill-fitting thrift store chef's pants combined with some kind of paisley dress shirt mistake, either Cons or Patrick Ewing high-tops, and a thirty pound Swedish motorcycle cop leather jacket I had talked off a friend from NYC at school. [Warning: it did not look as glamorous as it may sound.]

And had scraggily long blonde hair. (Again, more Jenna Elfman than Fabio.)

It was all good fun until a roomate started dealing drugs out of the house. Oh, and another roommate invited a young woman I had called to ask out to come live with us--what a first date: her moving in.

And so the experiment in communal living ended. And I got the hell out like I had the chicken pox.

Returning to Seattle, what would later become the grunge thing was in full swing. I knew a bunch of the people from high school, and it was hands down the best thing going, so I signed up, lock, stock and barrel.

I was actually already following it all from school--and having friends secure availables like the first Mudhoney record on a trip to NYC, and through snagging mix-tapes on visits back home.

From there is was only a matter of throwing out the tie-dies and Dead tapes for a few "Ride the Fucking Six-Pack" Green River Ts with the bottom cut off--grunge was glam you'll remember until it split into the Mudhoney vs. Pearl Jam, underground vs. mainstream thing. (A split which was eventually overcome by Nirvana.)

After a brief stint as a waiter (and getting fired for having two earrings, long hair and wearing Doc Martens), I relocated to grunge ground zero: a Single's-like four plex just off Broadway that had not only housed hordes of musicians but also the man many called the Seattle Scene's mayor.

And took a job as a bike messenger.

Boy that sucked.

But the parties were good. And the drugs relatively plentiful. Rent was cheap and there was often free food, BBQs, and when people started getting bigger, lots of everything backstage at shows for free. All you had to do was get there. (Which usually involved walking).

But the tolls were getting louder.

I had lost a few friends to drugs and alcohol in college but now it got amplified. This wasn't something that was being entertained to blow off steam on the weekends, but a way of life. If I drank twice a week in high school, by college it was three or four times.

During the rock years I don't even remember, not because I was blacked out but just because it wasn't anything distinct. The question wasn't if you wanted to it was did you have the $1.89 for a forty, another $2.10 for smokes and was anyone around?

And then everything blew up.

I thought Nirvana on Saturday Night Live was success. I thought Elliott Smith on the Grammies and gold records and the whole world coming to visit was us winning. (Plus, the foreign and out-of-town journalists were always good for drinks and meals--none of the actual stars wanted to see them so us hangers (on and out) were only too happy to oblige.)

Sure I thought that Ralph Lauren's line of flannels, and Sears' Doc Marten knock-offs were dumb, but more because you could get the real thing easily enough, not because I didn't think everyone shouldn't dress like that.

I was in it TO have everyone dress like that. I thought that's what winning was.

And I definitely wanted to win.

I had wanted to win since I was a pimple-faced high school kid.

I wasn't a punk rocker in high school, I was one of the popular kids. Voted class muncher and biggest preppy (a new fashion on the West Coast--similar to being "GQ" but more relaxed).

But I was short. And had horrible skin. And was skinny. And obnoxious. So I fell on the "aspirational" side of popular. It's not that I was ever not invited to a party, I was probably invited to most of them (or was throwing them, or securing the kegs and taps through some money-making schemula), it's more that I never quite felt like I was whatever I felt I should be.

And I'm not sure this isn't omnipresent among the "popular" classes. I hung out with basically East Coast landed gentry in college and they sure looked like they had it together, but I can't say I ever felt any of the sense of entitlement rub off.

I could SEE it everywhere. But scratch here or there and I'm not sure any of us weren't just running.

Which is why I ran back to punk rock in Seattle.

And there I tried my got-damnest to fit in as well--as hard as it was to shake the feeling that I wasn't "true". That I wasn't really down for the count. That I wasn't just slumming. (When I bought my chain wallet--probably in 1990 or so, I promised myself I would wear it forever.)

Plus I wasn't really feeling the women.

And that I took as my greatest failing as a human. I wasn't down, I wasn't real because I liked things, none the least my women, clean, beautiful, kind, relaxing--soft.

Which meant I was soft.

This was, of course, a blasphemy for which I had to pay. Surely I would paint no great paintings (which is what I ostensibly did back then) until I was hard, until I was one with the people.

And the people, of course, were unafraid of dirt, of life's callouses, of really living.

So I washed less. All my clothes were already thrift store (a movement pioneered in my life by my parents) but now even fit made you suspect.

I cut my own hair, lived in a condemned building, and drove a car that I had traded a six-pack for (that the guy I got it from was dating my ex didn't seem to phase me).

And then it started spitting me out.

None of the women I was trying hard to like because I should (even though I wasn't attracted to them) were working. (In fact one even wondered if I was gay after too many nights of me sleeping over and not doing enough. Hell--soon enough I was wondering if I was gay--after second guessing my natural inclinations for so long).

And the ones I was attracted to wouldn't sit still long enough for me to even get a fix. Too much drama.

And I didn't leave quickly. And I didn't leave willingly. I left kicking and screaming.

I had voluntarily left the "norms". They were all square, didn't know what was going on.

But at least then I had a place to go. It was easy--and felt natural--to leave because I was just following what I wanted. Even if what I wanted was to question what I wanted. And to question what others wanted.

To question everything.

But leaving that process of questioning, leaving my efforts to be "more sensitive" (interesting that that is what I was inwardly concentrating on while trying to protect myself with steel toed boots, be tough with nipple rings, and whatever else I was doing)--that was more like getting spit out.

Neutral Milk Hotel and Leonard Cohen were all I had. It's not like leaving Lawrence Welk for the first Pavement 10".

It's like leaving Pavement for nothing. No thing.

And of course, once I was alone with no thing, I was with myself.

And eventually I learned to just do the damn work. And eventually I passed the 50% mark, before which doing the right thing doesn't even seem to work very well. (After 50% the feelings build and multiply--using each other for reference).

This time in my life was a virtual hibernation. I lived in a tiny apartment across from a school, right by the corner of Summit and Union (fitting) and just thought (and felt).

I had already written The Love Artist and was working to promote it. And I had left my last roommate situation with the intent of getting a job while my book blew up.

I applied for just about everything. Bus driver. Waiter. I even tried to go back to old graphic design clients and start something up.

No dice.

What I got was $38,000 in debt.

It didn't help (my finances, that is, my soul it essentially saved) --it didn't help that I wad figured out half the equation. That I had to lock myself to my desires material, emotional and spiritual. And do it quickly.

For a while I thought I could spend my way to salvation. That was fun. I bought a Rolex. I remember my thinking quite clearly: "If I am in control of my own destiny and I make my own reality, then I just have to show this world that I've got the balls to be a rich artist."

That the jeweler dropper their no-return policy when the date-just wasn't working I consider complete proof of divine power on this planet. The universe, god, love--whatever--wanted me to both go through the experience of dropping $8 grand on a watch when I had only $8200 in the bank AND it wanted me to have $8200 in the bank so I wouldn't starve.

Plus, I didn't have the guts to wear it anyway. And my mom had given me the money. Bless her heart.

But that's what I was prepared to do.

And not to just have a watch. I don't even really use one (I do want a platinum Daytona, though--that's what it was).

I bought it because that's how firmly I believe in the sanctity of a world where people 1) make the absolute best they can make doing what they want 2) buy the absolute best they can buy with no regard to fear and 3) follow their deepest desires to discern both what they want to make and what they want to consume.

That's on my life. To this day I believe the exact same thing. I might not think that I can make this world by myself--no that's not true, I can make this world by myself. I am making this world by myself. I have made this world by myself.

And will be as richly rewarded for financially as I have been already emotionally.

What I didn't realize at the time--and why I didn't get to keep the watch--was that I had more to learn. That I was still afraid to wear it in front of my friends and family. That I still relinquished to them the setting of taboos for me--at least in part.

Hell, I had a hard enough time wearing my cashmere Donna Karan sportcoat. And that was black--the hipster color par excellence. I would never wear a black sportcoat now.

I also got guff for wearing pink. Still do, but I see it as a badge of honor now.

True pink (as opposed to ironic or hipster pink) is as unacceptable today as those damn chef's pants were back then. I can say that being an adult is as punk as beink a punk was back then--that being completely responsible for who I'm with, what I'm doing, what I want and how I live is just as powerful and just as forbidden as being completely irresponsible was back then--but it's not an intellectual exercise so it doesn't really matter.

Just like writing college papers about punk rock's influence on blah, blah, blah doesn't matter.

What matters is to do it.

I had a dream the other day that helped me understand my relationship to money, and why it has taken what feels to me like an eternity to solve it to my liking. (And how it is that I can go from utter and complete poverty, debt and lack of stability to being rich beyond even my [significant] dreams).

In this dream Martha Stewart was running a day care. There were kids running everywhere. Playing in the back yard, wilding out--just nuts.

And she was calm, cool and collected.

She was organized.

And ready.

You don't learn organization--real organization--in an organized setting. The Container Store is for organizational posers.

Dabblers. And as well it should be. Who wants to devote that much of their life to labeling clear plastic buckets and rearranging drawers? I firmly believe in the specialization of labor. And capitalism.

Which means let those who want to the most--who will pay the most to be allowed to do it--do it. Do you want to re-shingle your own roof?

I though not.

Where you learn real organization is in the absolute depths of chaos.

Where even the chaos is chaotic. Where even chaos theory appears patterned when you try to apply it--just so nothing will work or stick together.

Just so you can't get a leg up, a foothold, a grasp of what's happening.

Just so you can't take a single breath.

And if you survive that, you, my friend, will know the value of organization instincutually--it will be fused into the very core of your being.

You will radiate order. Bring order to dirt roads, unmarked graves and abandoned garbage dumps with a glance.

To really know the intersection of money and love, I have lived there forever. I have experienced most, if not all permutations. It's been easy, it's been brutal. I've had it given to me, I've had it snatched from my hands.

It's been magic, it's defied the laws of physics and common sense.

And this doesn't make me an expert. Or perfect. But it does make a good story.

And I can tell you, with every fiber in my being, that my book, sold for $120, from now until whenever I raise the price, will do more for the advancement of American literature specifically and global culture generally than any other single book ever written.

Not because I wrote it, I didn't even want to write it. I didn't want to stop bitching. I didn't want to stop believing that the audience was ignorant, deluded, and ruining the world just by living.

I didn't even want to stop believing that I was ignorant, deluded and ruining the world just by living my life as a privileged white man.

I just didn't have anything else to do.