So I think what I've been trying to say in the last few posts, less than eloquently, is my dismay with the erosion of my grand dreams and ambitions into the yuppie's package.
I had an interview this morning, and swaying in the subway in my newly pressed suit, I looked into the face of each of the commuters. They were all more established than I, obviously, displaying expensive threads, flashing shiny PDAs. I tried to imagine living my life as they do - commuting to the loop every morning, five days a week in the office - for the next forty years. Delving their tight and tired faces, the only thought that ran through my head was: the world is a terrible, horrible place.
The world is a terrible, horrible place if the highlight of my day were the lunch hour spent wolfing down a Chipotle burrito, or if I spend all week yearning for that Friday retail therapy at Banana Republic. The yuppie lifestyle seems to be long grey lulling cog-work, mediated by moments of unadulterated, irresponsible pleasure. If I worked in a flourescent cubicle all day, I, too, would heavily medicate with booze, retail, and gluttony, just so that I can feel, eh, mediocre, just so I can get out of bed in the morning.
I don't want to live my life in this exchange - I don't want a spoonful of sugar (or coke, whatever) to make this medicine go down. That's how you manipulate children, and yet, everyday, this is how millions of adults live.
Maybe some of them enjoy their jobs - maybe they enjoy spreadsheets, maybe the sense of power from ordering around the interns. And its true, they, collectively, are doing the important work of making our society run.
I just can't imagine it for myself; even if I get past the self-hate and depression, and I find an industry I can tolerate, and work damn hard, under the very best circumstances I'll end up - what? - a company President? a CEO? Forty years of my life and shattered childhood dreams in exchange for a corner office? The chance to hobnob with the other CEOs? The honor of self-aggrandizing at bars and parties?
There was a short time in my life - about a year? - when I felt excitement in waking up every morning because I was learning and thinking and saw beauty everywhere - in a cluster of jaunty rooftops, or the sinewy ripples of Lake Michigan.
Sadly, it was a intermediary year - that kind of passion requires leisure and youth; it is easily slain by routine and corporate slavery. I tried to cling onto it, shunning convention and seeking routes such as dancing for cash. It surprised no one but me that it was in that cauldron of lust (for flesh, for money) that the idealism and passion finally died a slow suffocating death.
We can't escape the world in which we live; to do so would be horribly ignorant and selfish. But I've never coveted money and power. What I truly want is the respect of my family, the love of my friends, and the chance to learn something profound, leave a legacy. Though this misdirected world prices talent and peddles it like a hooker's ass, I know that people still recognize and appreciate talent. The true advocateurs of capitalism would argue that we are a country caught up in the process, wringing ourselves through the gears of the clock rather than glancing at its face.
Since I was young, conventional success never seemed satiating to me. So somehow, again, I've come full circle; though it may seem like a waste of two years, I know the sharp ideological turn and ensuing disorientation was necessary.
The time has come for me to pluck down these lofty ambitions of mine, shape some so-called talent into something marketable, and slap a ten year plan on it. I still have to eat, I still have 30k of student loans, but I also have to move imperceptibly, bittersweetly toward that magnum opus.
Sadly, what it is, I do not know. It seems as if, art is the antithesis of corporate dronery, but there is something hollow and self-indulgent and obsolete about the traditional art forms. Take painting for example - it moved from reproduction and representation, into an esoteric and pointless dialogue about the limits of the medium and futility of its goal.
Hm - I've been spilling words and gesticulating wildly about some loftier, higher goal, and I have no idea what it is, I only know what it is not.
...TO BE CONTINUED
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