A co-worker of mine, on break from school for the winter, was wrestling with his impusles when I asked how he was enjoying the free time… He was desperate to maintain his pursuit of art and literature, from both sides of the canvas/page, while having no external pressure to do so… How do you stave off atrophy when there’s no grade?

Reminds me of my friend from Madison who’s always running herself ragged from job to job, project to project, pushing her way through each day with pies to bake and designs to screen, art to install and a book reading to attend… We would sit in the park drinking coffee or beer and she complained bitterly about this mid-western guilt, the requirement for maximun productivity squeezed from each day… Perpetually stressed out and tired but unable to relax– how do you decide how to choose to do one thing over another?

Somewhere floating around my head is a sensation that I should be doing something other than whatever it is I might be doing… Sitting and listening to a record is a waste of time and I should be playing guitar… Reading a book? Waste of time, should be writing one… Nothing could be more difficult than to attempt anything of the sort and I look around at people who spend their lives doing what they want to do… I can see the compulsion in my friend’s marathon painting sprees, days locked in his apartment filling the room with spent canvas, and I can see the results as worthwhile… Some need to create exists there and I scratch around inside my guts wondering where that need might be found… It takes me days to get around to shaving my head…

So the idea doesn’t carry itself, doesn’t manifest the will or desire… Walk around the block and there’s a dozen thoughts jostling for attention but once I stop walking they scatter like roaches greeted by the kitchen light at midnight… All that remains in the guilt of knowing that there’s something that wants out and I’m not facilitating this escape… Propulsion by guilt is hardly a satisfying method under which to function… Even when it results in my sitting down and trying to accomplish something, even when that results in something not horrible, it’s always laced with a bitterness feeling that the inspiration wasn’t pure…

So there’s stacks of paintings lined up against the wall of an apartment and a print arrives in the mail and a discussion about the merits of Sarte flows effortlessly above my head… My envy isn’t a reaction to the product but to the process, to the ability to start… How do you start?

-Q&D 4th floor Arts & Music, Main Branch

…and I’m not thrilled about this chum either…

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Travelling the world, dining with kings and queens, leading the free world; he cares not for these things:

Bush’s best moment in office? Reeling in big perch

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A new book called Hello, I’m Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity practices performs the trend that it isolates. Turning ideas on their heads by way of social critique and then slapping a seemingly paradoxical title on the corresponding book seems to be the norm these days. Writing a book of this nature carries the message, one hopes, that this is new and unique and you should read it, but the formula says otherwise. Often times book titles or concepts are dreamed up by a publishing company and then a stooge writer is found to fill it up with the hollow prose you would expect.

This book, however, at least brings up an interesting phenomenon that I think should be on everyone’s mind. Individualism is barely larger than an embryo in the scope of human history, an age disproportionate to the enormity of its implications. In some ways you could view our inability to properly organize around it as the source of most modern problems.

Sure it’s better than serfdom and it’s sparked cultural revolutions that brought about greater civil rights, but as far as I can tell, the lasting effects will be empowering ad campaigns all salivating to rent your sense of self to you for exorbitant sums.

Maybe I’m Special is a sign that yes, we get it, now we can move on. I don’t know about you, but it’s pretty lonely being so goddamned special all the time. There’s gotta be a juicy sweet spot between capitalist isolationism and fascistic anonymity.

What comes after the individual? Can we be unique snowflakes and part of something greater?

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