kjpepper | Something that made me smile (Reply)

I was pawing though my old computer files today looking for some stuff. Ran across this, which I had meant to post months ago. I still find it amusing that I had the patience to copy out this entire monologue, but that's how great this particular thing is.

The Artist
Hugh Brown Shü (Hugh Gallagher)
Bomb the Womb 1992

I'm at the counter, drinking a cup of joe, when an artist walks in. He's wearing a ragged sweater, shoes with paint splotches on them, a beret. He sits down a couple of seats from me at the counter.

"Coffeesir?"

"Yes. I'd like coffee."

"Howyoulikesir?"

"Black. Like my thoughts."

He pulls out a pad of paper and stars jotting something down very intensely. Down the page he's writing, flips the page, back of the page, flips the page, another page - I am watching the act of creation two seats down from me. Inspiration is striking.

He pauses for a moment, takes a breath. Goes back to the beginning, reads it. No. Doesn't work. Scribbles it out. Another line. Scribbles that out too. Writes something else that doesn't work, scribbles it out. Down the page, scribbles it all up, rips it out of the paper, just throws it on the floor, it doesn't work, it's - ugh!

He jams his hands through his greasy hair and sits silent. Quiet. Hardly breathing. And he turns to me and says, "Do you know... what it's like... to be me?"

"Check, please."

But he doesn't let me go. "I am an artist. I'm sensitive. I am so fucking sensitive. I care about the things that other people don't have time to deal with. I care about things you've never even thought of. I care about the things Gandhi didn't give a flying fuck about When I was seven I dislocated my own jaw.

"I create. I walk the line of abandonment, feel the sabre of despair, pierce my guts so my breath, when it arrives, flows through in bloody sprays of artistic struggle, I turn up the TV so Charles in Charge drowns out my screams of creative torment so as not to upset the neighbors! Until finally, I emerge from my lair with art... and it always sucks!

"I'm a failure! I've written poetry, I've sketched, I've worked with clay, ceramics, watercolors, I wrote monologues, novellas, children's stories, limericks, I produced films, when they failed, video, I've tried my hand at puppet shows, kabuki theater, I sang scat, I choreographed movement pieces, I tried the guitar, the piano, the harp, the trumpet, the French horn, the Alpinhorn, the tuba, I auditioned for the handbell choir and was cut! 'Failure! Failure! Rejection! Rejection! You stink!' Everyone expects me to quit!"

"Now, come on. It's not working out. You're banging your head against a wall. Just get a job. Make it easy on yourself."

"But they don't get it! I can't quit! I've got a sadomasochistic relationship with my muse! She seduces me, she lures me to come over and produce, then she whips me to pieces and humiliates me! I try to stop, but when I stop I feel terrible for not producing. I loathe the fact that I cannot enjoy what is around me without having to constantly think of doing something. Everyone is running to the post office, making their little vacation plans, enjoying a bowl of cereal perhaps, and I'm forced to think about my next endeavor!

"But without me there would be you.

"Yes, I know that you're a writer. I can tell. Just know that you would be nothing without me, because there is bad art out there for your work to be better than! It's all a comparison, my friend, and if I wasn't so fucking bad, you wouldn't be so fucking good. You...owe...me. Now if you'll excuse me...I have to get back to my next failure!"