Excerpt from my third novel, 'Some People Who Were Naked'
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VI
An artist? An artist?! Get a fucking clue, kid! No one wants your shitty math class doodles hanging on their walls. Come on now, have some common sense. I raised you better than to say things like you want to be an
artiste.
Hey. Listen here. Stop trying to storm off like some kind of little priss. You’re a man now, act like one. Listen. Don’t be a little bitch. Let me talk some sense into you. I’m your dad, ain’t I? I’m trying to help you. Maybe you think it’s fun. Maybe you like having your head filled with flowers, but son, it’s just not realistic. It’s my God-given duty as your dad to set you straight, to give you a good healthy dose of reality when you drift off into the clouds like some kinda dandelion.
Just look at me. Do you think I go out there and bust my ass every day for chump change because I like it? No. I do it for you and your mom. That’s what living means when you’re an adult. You can’t just run around playing artist, because that’s all you’d be doing. Everyone gets ideas, everyone thinks they’re creative at some point, but nearly all the time that’s just youth and vanity. Once you get out there and do some real living you’ll understand; you’re not special. Sorry kid, but that’s just how it is. No one’s special. No one’s creative. No ones ‘art’ or ‘vision’ matters. Because you see, the world we live in is a dangerous, cold-hearted place. It’s no land of milk and honey. Shit and turpentine is more like it.
I don’t care if you think it’s your calling. Trust me, it’ll make you miserable in twelve different ways even if you luck out and end up making a living off it. That’s hell you’re walking into, son. I knew guys like that. Way too many of them. Many such cases. Sad.
Listen, I’m serious. The artist’s life is no life at all. Half of them die young and even the ones who don’t all go crazy at some point. Hell, maybe all those poor bastards were cracked from the moment they came out of their momma’s belly. But that’s not you. Son, you were mistaken. Look at all those degenerate white men on the street. They’re worthless. Not even just cause they don’t have a penny to their name or cause no one respects them or even because they’re cucks without knowing it, but because they have no idea what they actually want out of life, and so life has no idea what it wants out of them either.
See, a man has to be grounded in reality, in society, tied down to a family. He just has to or he’ll lose his grip on sanity and just drift off into la-la land. He’ll just turn into a stray dog. That’s all any artist really ever is; a stray dog roaming the streets, pissing every which way, wagging his tail for any table scraps some stranger might be kind enough to toss his way. That’s no life at all, boy. I love you too much to let you do that to yourself.
I don’t know. Just go to church or something instead. Art never made anyone happy. It never made anyone feel fulfilled. Go to church. Get a job. Marry a nice girl and have a bunch of kids. That’s living. Art is hell. Art is a void. It never ends. No matter how far you take your art, whether it’s recognized or not, none of it will ever be enough. You’ll always be hungry and thirsty for more. The next piece, the next review, the next rush. It’s just a temporary high, and whenever you come down you’ll feel a wreck. Just like any other kind of two-bit junky turning tricks on the corner and taking Steely Dans up the ass just to pay off your dealer. Yes I read. I’ve read Burroughs. No, it’s not hypocritical of me to enjoy whacked out books like that and then tell you off like this. Because, see, I know what an artist is. I can appreciate what they do on a personal level, but they’re only able to do it because they’re all so damn broken. They’re not suited to life—they’re adapted to death. All they all are is tin soldiers marching off to war with both themselves, everyone… hell, everything around them, society, family, life, death, the world, God and Man, just absolutely everything there is, they’re at odds with it. But they’re weak. They’re sad. They’re pathetic. They’re broken and they break all over again every damn minute of their lives. They bleed from their noses, they bleed from their wherever. Always. Always. Always. Rivers of blood. Oceans of blood. A universe drenched in blood. It never ends.
Yes, I’m Ok. But see, son, art is so dangerous that even talking about it for too long does this to a man. It’s like drinking. You can have a little wine for your stomach’s sake every now and again, but if you keep doing it all the time it’ll kill you. You’ll just die in the gutter of your mind like a worthless pathetic bum. Like some downtrodden fool who never graduated from middle school. Do you really want to live like that? Do you really want to make your mom and I go through the agony of watching you throw your life away for something so stupid?
I know you think you’re invincible because you’re young. No, even if you don’t think it, you can’t help feeling that way at your age. I understand that even if you don’t. I remember what being 16 was like. But it doesn’t last. What was it again?
That was Youth with its reckless exuberance when all things were possible pursued by Age where we are now, looking back at what we destroyed, what we tore away from that self who could do more, and its work that’s become my enemy because that’s what I can tell you about, that Youth who could do anything. Gaddis, he knew all about this stuff, boy. Wasted his whole life learning that one lesson. It’s all a delusion. We can all only do as much as is possible for us. That’s the wisdom of age. It teaches you how fallible you—all people—always Are and Were and Will Be. When you’re young you feel like the world is yours, like you can do or be absolutely anything if you just believe in it hard enough. But that’s wrong. Believing and shitting are two very different things. Mozart said that.
Son, no matter what kinds of ideas come into your head, that’s all they’ll ever amount to in the end. You know, entropy? The more complex a system of communication, the greater the entropy. Don’t quote me on that one, but it’s basically true. It just gets lost in the translation from concept to concrete Thing and those little lost parts kill you from the inside out. The things you try to convey and the things you can never convey. Space and Time. Mind and Body. Phenomenology and Spirit. What? Does this surprise you? That I know all these fancy words? That I have all these ideas? Is that it? Did you think I didn’t understand what you were going through? No son, I understand it all far too well. I may dig graves for a living but I’m no simpleton. I’m no Cletus with the corn chips and the two-toothed tap on the shoulder. I was Called just like you, and I eventually had the sense to turn back from that hell. To answer that Calling, that Invocation is to have no free will. It’s to be a slave to your occupation, to literally be occupied, Lebensraum, was it? That’s what Hitler would’ve called it. He tried his hand at art too, you know. Look at what happened there. There’s only misery, only vice and sin in such a life.
Your problem, the thing you’re lacking, son, is fellow-feeling; Love, Agapē. Get good with God, son. Get good with God and you’ll find your real calling. Not the vanity of time as translated by your heart’s idiot clock, for the Heart deceives us. It leads men astray and turns women into ashtrays. No, I’m not trying to be funny.
Listen, son. What you’re doing, is you’re standing at the edge of a cliff. I’m trying to pull you back, but you’re not making it easy.
