The Writer
by j.charles @ textproductions
Whats one day? A single day off to relax and drift in the wake of what turned out to be a terribly busy season. After all, wintertime is for relaxing, right? Turns out when you finally decide what you want to be when you grow up there is no day off. And the later in life you make this decision, the harder you have to work to fix your past fuck ups. Unfortunately for me, today there is no excused absence from sub conscious thought. You may rise early to achieve everything on your to do list, but if that satisfies you than you are beneath me. For on this day I rose and achieved all of my goals and found no fulfillment in the completion thereof; in fact it felt completely uncomfortable to be juggling leisure time.
A writer is, if he chooses to look at it as such, endowed with the proper hardwiring as soon as he chooses to do so. It just takes some longer to realize it than others. Longer to reach the desired audience. A good writer, it is fabled, will have the unfortunate pleasure of living life as a writer. A punishment, if you will, for the opportunity. Seeing everything that the masses miss. Seeing the details that make the moment what it is. From cradle to grave, the writer will see far beyond the simple artifice the masses understand as the gospel. They question authority, finite existence and public stance.
Which is the perfect reason to be malcontent with spare time; it takes a ridiculous amount of observation to generate enough evidence to support a viewpoint, and without human and social interaction there is no right to create such assumptions. All I want to do is watch. I want to watch people eating, walking to work or singing in their cars. I want to see the look on each and everyone’s face and meet them all without being remembered. To be the one that everyone mutters “oh he was there?” about. My wish is to sit at the end of the bar and listen to all that goes on around me, half interested in the conversation currently engaged in, half seeking the next. In fact, all I really want to do is what is required to be a social catalyst.
Inconspicuously set a chair on fire down the street just to see the masses ooh and aah at the fire trucks? Sold. Tote two turntables and a microphone into the depths of a house party, and defend them, just to crowd surf and sample the intensity of an en-mass hip hop movement? Fuck yes. Get drunk off jagermeister at a work party and pass out face down on the lawn, right beside a group of co workers? You know this. Anything that gives me the opportunity to write is a bridge worth its toll, as long as there’s somebody out there reading my shit.
Spare time is the reason I didn’t graduate high school. It’s also the reason I barely graduated from adult school, and the reason for the extra pounds i've gained in my twenties. It’s the reason I drive a Hyundai and not an Acura, the reason I drink and smoke. It’s not the time that kills me. Its what’s inside my head that makes me unstable, what makes all writers unstable. It’s being convinced that you know the truth, but being hung up on how to reveal it. Wondering if those that you seek to infect will believe it. Spare time is the voice in the back of your head trying to convince you that you should’ve picked door number three, girl number two and job one.
Fuck spare time. After all, if I had used it for its intended purpose, this piece wouldn’t exist, I would be depressed; and you would have three more free minutes to fill.