On Being A Liar
This has nothing to do with this post, but I really like the All-City Dropout and hope to get one when they are finally released. My old Volume Cutter is looking pretty beat up and the short cockpit makes bar spins and bunnyhops much more painful than they should be. Of course, some of that may be pilot incompetence...
He looked at the dark teak table on which his keyboard rested, then leaned back and rubbed his eyes… his lack of sleep hurt, his lack of sleep hurt the sockets of his eyes and he felt as if a weight hung over him and a weight, perhaps his hubris was an albatross round his neck.
“I am a writer!”
It was a mantra, a plea to the universe, where in lieu of a god or some type of super intelligence, he still found himself praying in times of need. He was sleeping in horrid cycles, horrid cycles of cold sweat and tossing and turning, the bedclothes bunching up and wrapping around and somehow, somehow falling off.
Sleep.
“Micah, I don’t know how to say this, but we need to talk. I… this is just too weird. Can you meet me in… shit… oh my god… can you… oh… this just gets worse. Meet me at the cafe two blocks from you in an hour.”
In his dazed state, he must have missed the telltale vibration in his pocket, the phone pressed against his left thigh which he often thought he felt ring, but did not and, as fate would have it, when it did actually ring he always missed it. He felt as if his nervous system was defective and neurons fired randomly in such a manner as to confuse his brain.
Maybe he shouldn’t have smoked so much weed when he was younger.
The call came in forty minutes ago, by the clock on his phone and he had scant time to make himself presentable. He was sitting in slightly torn purple boxer briefs and cut off jean shorts, drinking a flat and lukewarm energy drink, with socks and shoes on… his pale white gut spilling it’s soft, dimpled form over the waistband.
Shirt.
Pants.
Shoes… yes, he already had that covered, but that was… well, that was weird.
He stepped out and the brilliant white light hit his eyes at the same time the sweet smell of cherry blossoms and the tweet of song birds hit his nose and ears respectively. He squinted and mused out loud, as he pulled out a bent cigarette from a dented hard pack of Camels and started to light it.
“Fucking mornings, fuck off.”
His gait was irregular and he couldn’t quite feel comfortable with his strides, as if walking was a new sensation, or perhaps another sensation and what it actually was, was much more disappointing. Sort of like the anticipation a young man feels over a first sexual experience which is nowhere near the pinnacle of existence that he has imagined it to be. Sure, in time it’s fun, but at the moment people killing each other and starting wars over it seems… well, let’s just say that walking was somehow disappointing, moreso as he was caught reading a neon yellow flyer for a concert stapled to a phone poll which caused him to falter and nearly twist his ankle as he stepped off of the curb.
A car honked at him and he let his finger fly.
“Fuck you, I’m walking.”
As he approached the cafe he saw her, sitting out front: her normally combed and well kept hair was disheveled and frizzy strands shot off adding an odd halo to her form in the light. She had thick sunglasses on and her gray, form fitting t-shirt was visibly stained: dark sweet rings forming around her arm pits.
This also has nothing to do with this post... I'm just making it more aesthetically appealing and I'm okay with that.
“Hi, Carly, what…”
“Shut the fuck up and sit down.”
“Okay.”
He sat down and scooted the chair in to the table. She was nervously clutching an open book and he couldn’t help but think back to a trip they had gone on to Vancouver five years when she had similarly wrung her hands when she lost her luggage.
“Stop.”
“What? What is going on, Carly?”
“Tell me you weren’t just thinking about that time in Vancouver when I lost my luggage.”
“Uh no.”
“Shit, I knew you would say that, you’re fucking lying. Tell me you didn’t sit around this morning in your purple underwear and cut offs, drinking luke warm Red Bull and that you didn’t say ‘Fucking mornings, fuck off.’ when the general cheeriness of spring pissed you off.”
“What, no… it was… it was Rockstar, not Red Bull.”
“Whatever. Look at this!”
She handed him the book, her finger resting on a line and he followed her as she read out loud and guided her finger under the words.
“”What, no… it was… it was Rockstar, not Red Bull.’
‘Whatever. Look at this!’
She handed him the book, her finger resting on a line and he followed her as she read out loud and guided her finger under the words.”
“What the fuck?”
She paused and looked at him…
“It gets worse.”
“What is this?”
“Apprarantly, we are characters in a book and this is that book.”
“That’s insane.”
“Do you want me to read you this conversation verbatim? Because it’s there even what you’ll say next, which I will say exactly when you do.”
“Beatle fart magnet juice alabast-alabama sun tan cream ninja white boy!” They both shout at the same time, causing the waiter to drop his tray and reel in horror as Carly’s coffee fell, which Carly handily caught in her outstretched hand.
“Wow, I wasn’t sure that would work… but I read ahead and it had to.”
“Oh my god.” Micah grabs his head. This is too much for a Monday morning.
He looks up at her, “This is insane!”
People are up in arms over this and as much as I hate American Nazi's and racism (these folks think interracial marriages should be outlawed... along with homosexuality), I do believe that they have a right to free speech. So do I. You guys are fucking idiots.
This is the part of the story where we stop talking about the story and we start talking about reality and perception and who the fuck we actually are.
Identity is a funny thing, the popular notion is that identity, that is “who we are” is something ingrained in us, that the “us” of us or, rather the “me” of you is this spiritual, personality, experience thing that guides us to be who or what, rather, we are. Is that true, do we exist in a state defined by a “soul”?
Turtles all the way down, my man. Turtles all the way down.
We can join Descartes in the oven and the claim that codito ergo sum, is enough to prove that we are not characters in some book, and then (of course) this could slide off through the realms of phenomenology and, subsequently, existentialism, bolstering this with a healthy aside into Calvinism… but we still have this fundamental problem of identity.
In Being and Nothingness Jean Paul Sartre lays down this idea that “nothingness” is the state we exist in and choice forces us to create a disconnection between who we really are and the characters that we chose to portray: the bakery, the feminist, the cyclist, the asshole, the Matt… these are not “who we are” but a choice we have made to escape nothingness. I’m handwaving here, because I can, but the gist of this is simple: we are not the roles we have in life, that is, you as “the reader” and I as “the writer” are conceits to achieve my end which is, entertaining you (because, despite all claims to the contrary this is entertainment more than it is education, enriching though it may be… no one is going to mistake this for a doctoral dissertation and that is perfectly fine).
(That’s sort of a heavy handed way of saying “don’t be fooled, blogs are nothing more than fun”, because it’s as true as a brand new Aerospoke… which is sort of a backhanded comment regarding the veracity of my own blog isn’t it?)
Right, okay, I’ll pull this back a few notches and somehow make this detritus of Sunday afternoon thoughts cohesive.
One of the grandly wonderful things about hipster Walmart (aka Urban Outfitters) is that often in a rush to change stock, they mark things down drastically. This explains why I can pick up a $70 flannel for $19 and why you too can purchase a fuzzy version (not hazy, fuzzy as in literally covered in fuzzy faux fur) of Dave Eggers novelization of “Where the Wild Things Are” called “The Wild Things” for less than ten dollars as some other book surely needs to take it’s place. To that end, I finally picked up a copy of the Merge Records book (for $4.50) and flipped through it (hey, I love music journalism and the history of independent music and I also enjoy reading such books because some of the bands involved, I was fortunate enough to be interested in during the time period of the book… so it’s a bit of reminiscing too, as I’m oft wont to do).
Literally, fuzzy. Rawr.
It was a funny thing, though… much of the book is interviews conducted more recently, with various indie music personas and retelling of stories well over a decade old and while I love the book, you have to wonder how accurate any of that is. Are the players involved (from Lou Barlow to Jeff Mangum) really going to be objective about events that happened so long ago? Duh… of course not. That doesn’t even matter, but my point is that they are re-telling their stories through the lens of time and that who they were, the identity of the people involved, may have changed such that the story now, as it is told, is biased in some unforeseen way.
Let’s merge back with my other line of bull shit.
Social media, from blogs to social networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, etc) allow you to project a version of yourself that you would like to be, not who you are. I know, I’ve said this before, but I am fascinated by this… this thing, where here I sit, typing this and I’m this version of myself that I’m not in real life. I am, though, a version of myself that I see myself as… sweet zombie Jesus, that is quite a few “myself”s in one sentence. Take it back…
A.
Step.
Who I am in print, on line, and such is not who I am in real life, but… But! But! It is a character I’m portraying and the question is, is this person “ezweave the writer” someone I want to be or is it just an act? What does that say about me?
I think it’s farcical to assume that you can be someone online that you really do not want to be in real life… method actors, the great ones, really have to submerse themselves in their characters, going as far as to staying in character all the time, adopting all of the character’s mannerisms, changing their physical appearance, and so on. Writers, even when portraying demons (like Judge Holden in Blood Meridian), can only write believable monsters because they too can be monsters. That sounds a bit ridiculous, but think of it this way: you as a human being relate to other human beings with an understanding of them that is internal to you. There is no way you can explain every last detail of how you relate to someone. It’s completely internal. I can’t really get you to view others through my eyes, but if I am any good at writing, I can create characters that do things that seem believable (in context) because I can imagine how to think that way and, for the most part, I must “get in the head” of these characters. So to be any good at it, I need to be good at relating to people. Otherwise, Micah (the writer) and Carly, are just caricatures and my writing is probably shitty (okay, it probably is “shitty”, but I’m going to pretend I’m on the verge of greatness, just to assuage my tremendous ego).
Who doesn't want to hug hipster cyclops? He knows who he is: not real. Or rather, he doesn't know anything because he fails at the old codito ergo sum. Suck on that, thing I drew!
Aside: the other day, I heard someone compare Dan Brown’s writing to a news ticker. I have not cracked one of those ubiquitous paperbacks, because I have indeed judged them by their covers (or maybe more by their audience) and decided that it is stupid shit I don’t want to waste time on. Not when there are so many other books that would actually make me look cool in coffee shops.
The end game here is that I think even when playing, even when you claim to be acting in jest, with the powers of disconnection afforded you by the Internet, you are still being you. Who you choose to be, when you are letting a web page or a book or even a movie represent you, says something about who you actually are. And of course, of course, you can just be someone who is not you: the nice guy who writes as an acerbic know-it-all, the forty year old insurance salesman posing as a fifteen year old girl… I mean Laura Albert pretended to be JT LeRoy (a Jim Carrol-esque character) and made “mad stacks” of cash before being figured out. But even then… even then, who you are willing to pretend to be says something about you (and about how you consider others).
I don’t think I’m trapped in someone else’s imagination, but I can never really know that. I can just rock back and forth, late into the night saying “codito ergo sum” and hoping… hoping I’m correct.