Push Things Forward, the Trouble with Naming, and Depressing Ass Kids

Well, I have been trying to push things forward. Push myself forward. I have a lot undone. The OEM redesign, the low line poetry space. The lagging artwork. The dream transmission. There is no love lost for any of these things. It's not a lack of discipline as much as it is the trouble with naming things. Putting faces together is no small task. The difference between a great drawing and a forgettable one is in the details or the intentional removal of details. I know I can be painfully impressionistic so maybe you can understand the difficulty. I spent two hours today trying to name the damn low line space. Give it a name I could look at and say to myself and tongue over every day without feeling like a hack putz.

Some of the time was spent rereading things and looking for a glimmer of something that stood out against the rest that captured what it is supposed to be because the obvious name choices are largely taken. Doing so afforded me some options and I know I eventually have to jump. At some point I'm going to have to cross over. Ships not getting any closer. And I know I don't know how to swim so knowing that I have to stick the landing helps and hurts by turns. The point is I found some things. And I have to soup them up into something respectable or at least identifiable. But maybe those two things are one and the same.

I mean, even the most deplorable people. The skanks. The kings and queens of skankification are identifiable because they are such. And there is something respectable about that. So, what I'm saying is, all I'm saying is, that the two are not as independent of each other as people who are identifiable, respectable, or unique would like you to believe if they only possess, overtly, one of the characteristics. They're all in common. Kind of. More in common than any one occupant, formerly ascribing themselves to one category and none of the others, might be inclined to admit.

There is this kid where I work. There is a kid where everyone works. I swear to the lord baby barbecue sauce jesus that this kid is the most depressing human being I have ever met. And sometimes you meet people and you try to cheer them up. Hell, people have tried to cheer me up, and I realize it halfway through and I let myself feel some cheer, because sometimes the only thing making you miserable, really, is you and I am guilty of that sometimes. Life sucks for everyone but the difference is the things that would grant you bliss are the things other people have and experience, but the same goes for them in a kind of ridiculous tail eating Oroboros. It's not that the grass is always greener. Because it actually is. Except that the thing about the lawns is that as soon as you jump the fence, the lawn you left swaps places through an interdimensional doorway so you can't land on the same lawn twice so yes. It actually is greener so keep jumping, but what I'm trying to say is this kid is the most depressing human being I have met, possibly ever.

He's short. He's got a beard like mine except I'm pretty sure I am at least twenty years his senior in general life experience. He's fat. He lives in a rich neighborhood. He goes to rich kid school. And everything he says is drenched in this weird kind of "my life is terrible so go kill yourself" tint. I don't even know how he started hanging on to me. I think it was because I talked to him once in the breakroom while trying to figure out what to do with my last ten minutes since I mowed down my chicken fingers like gun range silhouettes.

He comes up to me and starts talking, because his job is pretty cush and I actually do not have time to talk. Like I literally have to be moving things and boxes around from point A to points B through Z for the next four hours or I won't get done, but he moseys in and starts talking and I feel compelled to at least listen because a lot of people only want to be listened to now and then. He starts complaining. About everything. Everything. His job, his living with his parents, classes (god damn I would kill to get back into class if killing someone did not automatically rule me out of scholastics and enroll me in the penal system), walking to work, his bike that is rusted because he didn't take care of it, his sleeping situation because his bed broke and he did not bother to fix it himself, sleeping on couches, and through it all I am bleeding out of my eyes trying not to set him straight about what the score really is.

Eventually I chime in that maybe he should not even try to look on the bright side. Sometime's there isn't one. This is true. Polyannism only gets you so far before you go crazy, push open ended IVs into your forearms, and go to sleep in a bath tub filled with hot water after downing a handle of Old Grand Dad. I follow it up though. I tell him that though there may not be a bright side that he can see there is definitely something to get up and get out for. I tell him he's in the best school district in Pittsburgh. I tell him his job offers him time to wander around and bullshit way more often (it's not the first time he has complained about free time) than mine does and that I would gladly swap with him as soon as possible (too which he wilted visibly), and that walking is by far not the worst way to get anywhere, and that a lot of people just don't have places to be and people should be happy just to have somewhere to go sometimes. I told him he should be happy to land a paycheck and have adventure in walking a two lane road with no sidewalks and no shoulder at night.

It all rolls off him like water on a greased duck. I cried a little inside. And got horny. And angry. For various reasons. But mostly I just wanted him to shut up. Not just shut up, but realize he still has a stupidly diverse number of options open to him and that all he has to do is man up, go to home depot, buy some one by four planks, and his bed is good as new and he won't have to bitch about it ever again. I think that's what grates me the most about this kid. There is no creativity. No compulsion to create. For me, when I see desolation, when I see desiccation, when I see absence and wanting in my own life, I begin to envision the ways to start over. Not always start over, but ways to modify. Sometimes the best solution is to burn it to the ground and pretend it never it happened.

However even that. The act of the torching, takes a hell of a lot of guts. It is never routine. It can never be a routine thing. The burning down. But how can this kid have no moxy and still be so inclined to lament. It's different when you've burned it all down to the foundation and the foundation itself refuses to yield to new constructions. That's a whole different box when you have to explode the foundation itself. It just. I don't know. I cried a little in the bathroom after he left. I did. Cock out at the urinal, I couldn't hold it back. It broke my heart some.

Knowing that he's not going to miss meals for a week because he can't pay for them. Knowing the worst day of his life will be the day he forgets to charge his music player. Knowing that he doesn't understand that his parents have pretty much kept him from the bonfire of life and he doesn't know it. Knowing that he's fat because he indulges in crappy food on his own. Knowing that he could fix his bed any time he wanted to if he just had an ounce of gumption and that he'll probably never know what it's like to sleep at bus stops because he didn't have the fare to get home or the energy because he walked ten miles in 15 mile an hour darkness just to get there and was too punch drunk with the thought of riding a bus home to check his pocket before he got there.

Kid is just depressing. The worst thing about it is the refusal. The active refusal to be cheered. Not even cheered, but pointed in the right direction. So I got stuck, by my own fault of planning, riding my bike home in the snow. All he did was complain about how it was snowing and his walk would be terrible. And I'm thinking to myself, jesus christos. Walking in snow equates to the worst day of your life? Buck up champ. Be glad your father didn't abuse you until you were nearly 25 years of age. I don't know. I don't know how deep the rabbit hole goes, but I do know that at least as little as I know, he knows even less.


But anyway, trying to wrap this up before I get too late and I'm late for work again. The redesign is coming. The winter design is coming too. I am pushing things forward because If i don't push nothing will pull and where does that leave us. So even if it is all psychological work. Even if none of it shows until it shows, let us push. The factory is hard at work b da and by night. And we will be there. We will always be there for you. No matter how ridiculously depressed you are.


///Daft Punk - "Solar Sailer" drift on