Give a forty-six-year-old fellow a laptop and access to the internet and the desire to create great literature and the ability to place the chicken marks in the correct places between words and phrases and clauses and what do you get? A big steaming pile of bullshit! Ain’t it predictable? Or better yet: Isn’t Mag predictable? That guy, I’m telling you, spends way too much time breaking people down , telling them there’s no hope, ruining their dreams, destroying the last vestiges of their joyful outlook about Jesus and Mother Mary and Joseph the homeless guy who reads Roberto Bolano novels under the Fletcher Street Bridge. Mag should look at himself for once his in lousy life. Mag should look at the collective failure he represents. Then maybe he’d stop sticking the knitting needle of his regrets into our fucking eyeballs!
Look. I’m totally serious. If you give a person a basketball and the ability to dribble and to shoot and to run the court, this person might posses the skill set to rock the house at the YMCA lunchtime shirts-and-skins game, but that doesn’t mean this person can suit up tomorrow night and save the L.A. Clippers from certain disaster, right? Or if a person ice skates or plays guitar or sings karaoke or rides a bicycle or befouls perfectly stretched canvas with paint or – whoa, I gotta stop this meander before it cuts itself off from the main stream and turns into an oxbow. [Editor’s note: Mag’s Sentence will offer a special prize to the first person who can decipher the previous meander metaphor.]
So yeah. You’ve got the equipment. You’ve got Microsoft Word and Final Draft and a stack of hip novels that women like to read and a stack of hip screenplays that 25-year-old studio executive assistants like to read and don’t forget the Adidas sneakers: don’t leave your hovel without them on, hey, because ain’t nobody gonna take you seriously if you’re tramping around town with Jesus feet and all the unhustling, unschmoozing behaviors to go along with your Jesus feet. That’s right. You’ve got your shit together now. You’re a wise, scrubbed weenie on the way up. So what do you need to do, with all this stuff you have? Flip the coin, baby, and hope you know somebody who might help you catch it. Because that’s what the sauce reduces to: either you’re a true genius (rare but possible) and nobody’s going to deny you, or you’re going to have to be one lucky motherfucker.
So far in life, I’ve been a motherfucker but not too lucky.
Still, why give up hope?
Answer (and I can’t help quoting my old buddy Chainsaw from back in the day): “Because you’re hopeless, asshole.”
Ah, the artsy-fartsy life, it’s so uplifting.
Wishing you the best of luck in all your endeavors,
mag
My opine coming from a long not so successful would-be musician is keep shouting at the universe your content. The universe might care less but eventually someone or something is gonna hear you. That's a good thing.
ReplyDeleteWell I don't know if you're lucky, a mother-fucker, on the brink of stardom, failure, or lunacy, but I do know that I read your book last night - the one with your fat ass on the cover - and it inspired the living shit out of me. I stumbled upon it at Barnes and Noble yesterday while looking for something to make sense of my malaise, and the strange feeling that I will need to ride my way out of it. There wasn't a book in the store more perfect. My new life has begun - and my bike arrives Friday. You made a difference to this poor bastard.
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