People exhaust me. The more I hear from someone I haven’t heard from in a long time, the more I want to never talk to anyone again. And usually, they need something from you: an answer, a presence in some event to show others they know people, some favour or some money. As much of a believer I am in always using my words, the less I say here, the better.
One of the most artistically tone-deaf people I know asked me if I ever lose inspiration in this city, of how the life here is not as fast as one of the metropolitans where if the air gets slightly worse, they will choke on their breath. I asked them if they had ever watched clouds move over the sky in July. They said they don’t recall it. I stopped my inquiry there and let the conversation trickle into another topic.
It always amuses me how people with no acumen for anything artistic about life have the most inane questions to ask people like me. The malicious ignorance, the intentional incompetence of their very being, oozes out when they open their mouth to comment on art, the process, or whatever lies in between, making the whole world weep.
Now, some student writing a dissertation in college will want to raise their pitchfork, claiming that this gatekeeping of art is why the world has disintegrated into blocks of concrete where pencil pushers live their lives thinking they contribute to the world. When they make their accusation, I will agree with them so they shut up. I do not have the time for it. There is work to do, for I need to eat, and at some point in my life, I would want to stop paying rent, and when the work is done, and the dishes are done, too, there are words to write.
This is not a heroic tale. It is a life, and I am living mine. All people go through things, but when other people go through things, I’ve noticed they tell a heroic tale. I will make no such mistake. But it still makes me wonder: how would the world change if everyone said, “I am a person, like all of us, and things have happened to me”? What would happen if the world were as earnest? Would I be able to tolerate it, then? Would I not have to feign interest anymore?
A world existing only at face value—a thing like that!