[440] S.T.Y.L.E.

The theme is style. Fair warning, it’s from several disparate seemingly random instances of thought which have provoked the theme. Settle in for a bit of exploration.

Comedians come to mind initially. For the longest time I’ve flirted with the idea of wanting to do comedy, but don’t feel like I like my style. That is, I can crack a joke, but I never seem to be able to hold a room for a prolonged story. I don’t just want to be a smart-ass. I don’t just want to fill in the blanks mad-libs style of how many jokes are structured. Add to this that I already have outstanding comedians talking about the things I’d like to talk about. Much as I wouldn’t want to “flirt” at being something like a doctor, I feel it disrespectful and unrepresentative of the appreciation I have for comedy if I didn’t have a voice and deep seeded desire to express myself in that medium. As well, the market is oversaturated even with comedians I like.

Decisions are made in service to how you’ll approach comedy. George Carlin considered himself a writer more than comedian, so his sets are long diatribes if not speeches with maybe a joke tagging along here and there. Richard Pryor dug in deep and mined his personal crazy life. Bill Hicks was practically a radical preacher. It’s hard to think he sat down and had each of his screams or exasperations meticulously timed out like Norm Macdonald who stuck to a script for years. Perhaps it’s a runoff of a certain level of fame, but eventually people get referred to as “legendary” or “groundbreaking” or some status that escalates their quirks and style to somewhere almost unreachable.

I tend to enjoy comedians where they feel like they’re just in a conversation. They relate their life and perspective the same way on stage as they would around a dinner table. Some interview I watched, a comedian said something to the effect of “Sure, everyone wants to kill on stage. The real goal though is to be the funniest one in the parking lot after the show.” That person’s got something special. This is not to belittle preparation or rehearsal, but the idea of “being a comedian” versus “doing comedy” sticks out to me. I think when you hear stories of working for years, travelling, being lonely, being poor, then finally getting a break, you almost feel guilty if you genuinely care about comedy and didn’t put in your dues if you got famous from Youtube or Last Comic Standing. Like Dane Cook working the internet before it became cool.

I suppose I’m concerned about style because I’m concerned about identity. Speaking to my previous blog’s theme, how much of your identity is perhaps a meticulously laid out plan with certain benchmarks and goals, and when are shooting from the hip? I met an overly-enthusiastic gentleman who inserted himself into my crowd which decided to read at a Borders once. He was forcing it, having come off of being a fat introverted guy who found Buddhism and made himself choose differently. Eventually he seemed to mellow out a bit and it flowed more naturally. It’s that, what if he never mellowed? Or, what if the same forces that compelled him to be fat were the same ones that pushed him the other direction? How do you speak to the underlying identity when it’s wrapped too far in positive psychology or quasi-religious dogma?

An identity is a fragile thing to me. I can look at my own just to speak to that. For a long period I was an angsty awkward high school kid, more on the confident asshole side, but no less lacking much direction or perspective. I was THE person you could learn any aspect to the religion/science “debate” for years. All I cared about was learning every possible angle I could of that problem. When that died down and got boring I was in college, but I didn’t drink; a fairly loud statement of identity for that environment. I got into a relationship as something of an experiment, tired of being a loner in my dorm most of freshman year. Now I was the asshole with one of the only cute girls willing to exist around the computers and computing dorm crowd. The next year I start drinking and create a party house. I become someone random kids yell out to as I walk to class.

Year by year little decisions to shift between loner and popular, regularly laid or not, alcohol and drugs or sober. I remember when I couldn’t imagine getting a tattoo or pierced, had no idea why people would bother with such things. My only tattoo so far takes up a large portion of my back and my eyebrow is so subtle and fitting people I’ve known for years forget it’s there while they’re talking to me. Even this year of being boring is a kind of shift from the hyper-stressed and obsessive approach I take when doing things in business. It gets unbearably frustrating to run head first into walls over and over again so I veered off.

It’s important to me then to make sure I know what underwrites my behavior. Why I’m always popular and a loner. Why I always want to be shit faced or could stand to never drink again. What is it that’s going to allow me to be interesting again when I’m done watching every movie and tv show in existence? I think it’s an insistence on using a medium to relate verses hiding behind it as an identity. I’ll watch a thousand movies and not care about losing on trivia night. I need to crack jokes even if they’ll make you cry. “I” am only ever here when I’m acknowledging and manipulating the moment presumably impacting and seeking feedback from you.

How “I” relate to comedy is in the moment. I could see my comment to a heckler being funnier than 5 crafted minutes. How “I” relate to alcohol is in getting peeks at who I think you’d like to be more of when you’re sober. “I” relate to communicating by attempting to speak as deliberately as possible despite knowing every second is someone’s opportunity to run my words into a different direction. I wanted to impress upon my friends to keep their “I” while they were going through grad school as or as all the problems of our current economic situation beared down on them. I worry about cliches and cultural tides. I worry about singular played-out boring identities taken up matter-of-factly as relationships to friends or nuance degrades.

It’s something that I think happens when you’re not paying attention as you get older. Things aren’t shocking anymore. You can get the gist. You’ve spent enough time rehearsing aspects of your personality they’re “well-enough,” independent of whether they are in fact well or enough. You’ve spent so much time getting so many impressions that every new one serves to whittle you down. I can feel it in my “acceptance,” wrong word, of watching daytime talk shows or being unable to throw a glass through the window at whatever crazy beckoning of a nuclear holocaust comment some Fox News asshole said today. The bullshit feels so normal or old-hat, it practically registers as “correct.”

And is that where I want myself to go? Do I want to accept the superficial and detrimental conversations from the brain-trusts on The View about police violence? Do I want the gleaming smiles and endless clapping of morons for the free blender they’re getting after the show? Do I want to accept the Lindsey Grahams and Ted Cruzes as “genuine opposition” or “the other side” as the natural course of American politics? Fuck no! Shit’s crazy! Shit should always piss you off. Shit should be thrown out and ridiculed and passionately debunked because when it’s not, the “normalcy” of that bullshit sends shockwaves through our lives.

But it’s not always as blatant as someone saying something tantamount to “fuck women, black people, or peace.” People roll their identity into hobbies, relationships, and jobs just as easily. The consequences even harder to follow because the minute to minute rationalization is supposed to speak to some goal down the line. I think we need to stop. I think we need reflection. I think we need to feel the pace of time more deeply. I think we should yearn for more of the unfamiliar and remind ourselves of who was around when we were crafting the best versions of ourselves. It’s the difference between survival and living, between being friendly and having friends, and whether you’re “doing comedy” or a comedian.

I see how easy it is to get trapped. I see the sadness creep up when you realize you literally have nothing else to talk about. You no longer are forming the shared memories. You’re not approaching things from any angle other than the one that takes your mind off your current stress inducing thought. The identity is handed to you by the fearful and comfortable that came before. It’s a false security. It’s a lonely island. It’s a black hole sucking all the interesting bits that used to hang off you. An identity is about awareness. It’s a fight to keep yourself right here working with all the forces trying to shape it. Keep working.

[439] Hand Me A Brush

I want to talk about painting yourself into a corner.

I think many of us think about our lives as a series of choices. The problem as far as I see it is that we only think of them as choices during “momentous” occasions. The decision to go for your first kiss. The decision to go to college or ask someone to marry you. Think of a paint roller. You make a decision to paint a room, but not one flick of the wrist at a time at random points on the wall until it’s covered.

The next thing to my mind is the religious person. From childhood socialized to not only believe a certain doctrine, but intertwine their life and relationships relative to it. It starts with someone else painting for them, but eventually the brush is handed down and it’s your job to finish the wall. It’s not simply learning enough or being honest with yourself about not hearing god’s voice or getting your prayers answered, saying “duh,” and changing. You might feel guilty over a religious group you sponsor. You might alienate and piss off your family. You may be completely ignorant of the emotional depths that culture has really instilled in you, and the pain of its loss could always feel like a hole. It’s not merely annoying like walking through wet paint.

I like to think I can recognize when I’ve painted myself into a corner. I mostly think this because I have over 10 years of writing to reflect on. When I thought I was dramatically in love, the blogs about all I was learning with regard to love and religion started to follow, after the rabid irrational animal rants got their due. When I was complaining about school, a corner I was painted into, I discussed what I envisioned as far as business I wanted to conduct. When I cracked and couldn’t keep thinking in “regular people” terms about how relationships are supposed to be conducted, friendly or otherwise, I found new rollers, new colors, and new rooms.

I’m struck by weeks when I think there isn’t anything to talk about. I know it’s a lie. For whatever reason this week or maybe month the global atrocities just don’t sting like they’re supposed to. The fights or arguments I may get into I’m just not that invested in. All I can sort of do is stare. I can sit. I can feel the space around whatever, often literal, corner I’m sitting in. Because right now I’m painting myself into the corner brought on by attempting to be an entrepreneur.

These drug studies, while lucrative, are certainly not ideal. But soon I’ll be sitting on more money than I’ve ever held at one time, with every intention of seeking more. I’m “winning” the security that keeps me away from a minimum wage job or wasting my time on things I don’t care about. But I actively chased this reality by talking myself away from the litany of things people subject themselves to during the course of a “normal respectable life.” I just wonder if people are as happy with what they are stuck with.

That seems to be one of the defining differences to me too. I can always seek out a job I anticipate hating. Or several jobs, like almost every technician at this study center, and driving hours to make a pittance. Spend time bogged down in conversations about landscaping and when I buy groceries. I’m just reporting what I hear. I can be in on the paycheck to paycheck joke and mortgage or credit myself into a hole. I’m just saying it’s an option. Am I lost on the options if you picked those first? Because that’s what concerns me. That’s where people find cliche sentiments and ruts about how life is or what you can expect.

I’d just say to examine where you’re painting. Make sure that when you get your proverbial spinal tap, you’re coming out a little sore, but with your time to appreciate what it got you. If I had to suffer every week for a few hundred bucks and no time, no inspiration, and no capacity to see a way out, I’d fucking kill something. I don’t want you to feel like you want to kill things.

[438] Crisis of Leadership

The word “leader” takes on many forms to me.

Broadly speaking, I consider everyone a leader. That is to say, you are an ambassador for your point of view and decision making. It’s why it matters if you’re an incidental or deliberate person. When I come into contact with something you do or say, I need to know if you actually put thought into it and consider yourself correct. Frequently, I find precisely the opposite case, which provokes me to find out who or what it is that has led you by the nose.

In my experience, people don’t consider themselves leaders. The only time you can complain about “the mass media” and have it make sense is because the ones watching it for their opinions aren’t digging up the facts for hours at a time independently. People think that fitting in with racial or regional ties is inherently dignified because the background has already been set. You’re not going to be quietly contemplating our country’s relationship to war this 4th of July. You’re going to emulate explosions and get drunk. At least, that’s my plan. It’s celebrating in service to the party, not in the name of responsible feelings for the country.

It’s interesting to hear statistics about website usage. You see how much content is driven to popularity by a relative handful of overly-enthusiastic people with pick-your-particular slant. Or think about poll numbers. With a very presumed “science” people tend to ignore that we’re getting answers from people predisposed to answering poll questions, perhaps not the brightest or most reliable bunch, and those numbers are reflecting a moment of feeling or memory.

The problem is that we use these metrics to try and better inform ourselves while leaving out the details. If you tell me a certain article is trending, you’re not telling me whether what it’s talking about is worthwhile. You don’t get to ask questions about what is or isn’t worthwhile because the content is flatly and superficially engaged with. When you cite a poll saying a certain percentage of people are familiar with Bernie Sanders, you’re not telling me what he advocates for. You’re not explaining why he’s not more mainstream. The dialogue swirls around “hopes and prayers” and “momentum” instead of substance.

If you read about politics, often big moves forward or back come from whether or not you had the leaders in place to barrel their agenda through. This is something in the “everyone has an opinion” era we’ve all but forsaken. How do you have debates about abortion, climate change, marriage equality, guns, or private prisons and schools in the modern era? The people who were leading the way, crafting the legislation, being unwilling to shake their hard fought convictions wrought from struggle and knowledge, are dying off or rendered impotent by money and dirty politics. We’re not told the story of 1 person finding 2 friends who called hundreds of organizations that finally built into the machine Elizabeth Warren is running to fight back against Wall Street. At least, not regularly told.

I remember as a kid first learning about astrology and reading about what it meant to be a leo. Around the same time I learned my name apparently means “victory of the people.” I found this compelling. Whether it was banding together the loner kids on the playground into a tag group, cobbling together the conditions for my party house, or what I’m blazing one matchstick at a time into the future in business, I lodged something in my brain about being in charge and setting an example. This is not my endorsement of astrology nor advocacy for reading too far into what your name allegedly means, but from the most innocuous places you can find yourself adopting ideas with longstanding consequences.

I like to think I’m a person of consequence. I like to think that whether I get zero recognition or likes that I’ve embedded myself in people’s heads. Another reason I like to get you drunk, because then you get all heartfelt and tell me you read these things and had something stick. It bugs me to no end to see problems and not even put a voice to them. If I complain about communication, I’m bound by a form of morality or honor to attempt to communicate better. If I see the consequences of terrible lies, to yourself or otherwise, I need to find a way to relate the message in a way that feels more truthful. I don’t tell you what I believe, I act like it.

And it’s at this point I see people not empathizing and giving enough credit to their fellow man. People act like it. When you feel compelled to defend a racist flag, you’re leading something of a pro-racist charge. Your words “I’m not a racist, but” is the moment where we need to unpack and dig out where your view really came from. This is what normalized or institutionalized blindness to someone else’s problems is and where horrible behavior comes from. The idea had leaders, and it virally infected because not enough people took up the charge to shit on the idea by leading with something smarter.

That is, you can’t be lazy. You can’t say things like “set in their ways,” “it’s just one person,” “most people aren’t this or that.” If most people aren’t racist, why does it feel like they are? What better conversations could we be having about race after we accept our evolutionarily conditioned “in group out group” fear? Let the blowhard ideologue stare at your simple questions about where their feelings are coming from so onlookers reduce their words to the level of stark ignorance they deserve.

This is also why I speak against religion. Every extra layer you add to “be a good person” is one that confuses and obscures the reasons for being a good person. You know, for example, that I don’t believe in heaven, hell, or magic. When I do something nice for you, I get no eternal reward. That’s important to me. When I stick up for the oppressed, Jesus didn’t tell me to. It’s because they’re people, like I’m people, and if I take ten seconds to pretend like I’m in their shoes, I can understand what they may be feeling. I don’t have to do that exercise when I’m deferring my opinion and rationale to, often arbitrary and ignorant, institutionalized ethics.

Changing pace just a little bit. Consider vegetarianism. Health claims aside, I think the first vegetarians are the super feelers. The ones who cried the first time they stepped on an ant perhaps. There are moral claims that make some of these people way more compelling by virtue of them leading with their feelings than any claims about industrialized farming or the environment. If one were to lead me away from meat consumption, it’s stories of chickens with best friends or cows being lovey and friendly that’ll do it. If I had lab grown equal alternatives next to the animals I enjoy on the shelf, I’d switch tomorrow.

It’s at the same time that I don’t want to be overtly complicit in undue suffering and pollution that I’m also aware we’re all gonna die, and I’m not crying about my cheeseburger. The important distinction and line is about that preparedness to change. It’s knowing why I’m a meat eater after considering the feelings, considering the consequences, complicity, etc. and developing a position I feel worthy of defending. A bill pops up about conditions on a farm, I want the animals treated better. A new product to replicate meat appears, I’m not wasting time discussing the “morals” of science advancing enough to reduce suffering and destruction. I feel there is a depth and weight to my position that you can’t adopt by merely claiming “it’s my culture!”

I’ve spoken to the idea of even when I’m doing nothing, I want to be the “best” at it. I want to own it. I don’t want to feel stuck because “well, ya know, millennials are suffering.” I added a hashtag #yearofbeingboring so you know what I qualify and stand for when I refer to boring. I attempt to distinguish myself from spinning my wheels or being a modern psuedo-survivalist-entrepreneur-fanboy by distancing myself from having my identity wrapped too far up in cliches and the superficial. Yes, I’ve read hundreds of comics, watched 550 days worth of tv and movies, play several instruments, and have read plenty of books on history or religion. The lazy thing is to just absolve yourself of the larger picture and throw yourself under a “nerd” title. Do you really love music and have something to say? Are you fashioning yourself as an expert on what can be achieved in a democracy? Or are you just another lazy “libertarian” or “youtube cover musician?” Can you deconstruct a religious argument and deftly describe the influence on culture and psychology religions have? Or are you just another boring “atheist,” happy with your own brand of “enlightened” cliches to write off the whole endeavor?

But this isn’t a diatribe berating the utility of colloquialisms. It’s a call to identify and distinguish leaders. If you can’t, learn that you are one. Learn to be clear if you can’t be consistent. Actually pick the battle in service to a larger war. Just because it’s normal for a small “specially select” group of people to be responsible for change doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. And you’ll never see it change until you encourage in yourself the kinds of things you want to see in others. And besides, it’s not like I’m asking you to lead the revolution, just to speak up in favor of it.