Why Can't I Be THEM?

Successful people have no problem perpetuating whatever it is that makes them successful. Famous people don’t hesitate to create whatever they’re compelled to create. Geniuses, from what I’ve been able to conclude, have no choice but to indulge in obsessing on whatever it is they’re geniuses “at.”

I want to be either successful, famous, or a genius. I want to concern myself with only whatever my talents dictate I should be concerned – and nothing else.

Successful people would tell me that’s impossible – that I’d still have to make time for the gym, the diet, and all the other minutia that make up everyday life. Famous people would agree, but they'd probably be incapable of not reminding me that they no longer needed to tend to the minutia (they only need to focus - and I mean focus - on the gym and the diet). Only Geniuses would understand what I was trying to say, if only they were able to. But they’re too concerned with whatever they’re geniuses “at,” so they couldn’t possibly understand anything other than whatever it is they’re so busy understanding.

So what I’m presently blaming for my lack of achieving more, as a writer, is my bourgeois upbringing. I’ve been fighting it all my life. It’s probably less of a surprise to those of you who know me well than it is to me, because it shows so much on the outside while I continue to battle it on the inside. I’m addicted to comfort. I’m addicted to domestic stability. It’s a comfort and a stability the likes of which probably don’t even register on the “comfort/stability” scale compared to the sensibilities of the people I went to high school and college with, and it’s a comfort and stability that only requires a net monthly income of $2,500 (put THAT in your bourgeois hat and smoke it!), but it’s a requisite comfort/stability element nonetheless. And my biggest problem is that I will not allow myself to indulge in artistic endeavors until that utterly self-imposed level of “security” has been attained. (Thank you very fucking much, Dr. Maslow!) I’ve attained it before, but I lose it every time I move to a new town.

Some artists can live in other people’s homes. Some artists can remain with their parents. Some artists can move to a new city and immediately begin pursuing their art, because they don’t concern themselves with where or to what capacity they might be living. They surf from couch to couch or they land shares with one to several roommates and from that point on they stop worrying about their standard of living. They just live - apparently because they’re alive - and that’s all the attention they pay to the matter of living.

I’m not like that. I’m bourgeois as hell. I’ve gotta have a place that I can call my own. And that place has to look nice. It has to have style, even if that style is 20th Century American bohemian. And most importantly, that place has to be filled with intention. And by “intention,” I mean love.

When I spackle, sand and paint a corner – I’m making love to it. When I spend five hours at the paint store, staring at chips and matching color schemes, I’m deliberating my future. I’m sensitive to my environment. I notice my walls, my ceiling, and my floors every day. That, I suppose, is the bourgeois in me. (Or is it the artist in me? My personal jury is still “out.” But for the sake of this argument, that’s the bourgeois in me.) I was raised in a modest yet impeccable home, and to this day I strive to maintain a homefront – as modest as it might be – that is impeccable.

My obsessions are bi-polar. My obsessions are torn. My obsessions are at odds with each other – until they’ve had enough time to sort themselves out. This is my process. I know this because I’ve lived it four times (Portland [Maine], San Francisco, Los Angeles, and now New York). The bourgeois part of me will not set the artistic side of me free until the apartment has been obtained, the walls have been painted, and every last detail pertaining to the day-to-day living in that apartment has been established. This includes determining where the cleaning supplies go; where the pots and pans are stored; and where the monthly bills are received, paid, and subsequently filed. Once all these aspects of day-to-day living are secured, they are never changed. (One dear friend in LA commented that, during seven years of residence there, I never even moved the coasters on the coffee table once I’d determined where they were to be placed.) Such is the nature of my bourgeois side. I’m too fussy to tolerate surfing couches. I’m too middle-class to endure not having my own slice of middle-class life.

Regardless, I don’t ask for much. As middle-class as I am, I’m not desperate for a mortgage or an SUV. I only desire my own peculiar bohemian corner of the world. And I never fail to get it. But doing so, especially when it comes in the form of moving from one metropolitan area to another, costs. It costs money, time – and effort. The effort I put into putting myself up in a new town always detracts from my ability to crank out the art. That’s what makes me a bourgeois bohemian. That’s why I had to build a bed loft, a bar, and paint all my walls before I could start this blog.

Well, within the definitions I set forth when I began this psycho-babble, I suppose that would place me within the realm of the successful. It’s an eventual "successful," but I think I possess certain present elements of success nonetheless. Successful people are the ones who are concerned with the big picture as well as the minutia. I don’t have any problem "compelling myself into producing whatever it is I produce” – once my domicile has been adequately established.

So I’m probably not going to be famous, and I’m certainly no genius.

Hmm. "Successful?” Guess I’ll take it. In due (bourgeois) time. It’s not as if the famous and the geniuses don’t pay for their lots in life in their own, particular ways. Nobody escapes this life free of the requirements this life imposes on us – even if it’s as basic as wiping our asses. Find me a genius who doesn’t have to do that, and I’ll show you Stephen Hawking. You wanna be him?

I don’t.

(Sorry I even started this.)