No one cares what you are doing.  And when I say that, I say that somewhat ironically as I’m probably the worst offender of such things.  I mean for fuck’s sake I’m sitting on my stoop writing a blog that starts off with that as the first sentence.  If there’s a first rule or secret to anything, its that you don’t ever have a guaranteed audience for anything you do.  

I used to have arguments with people I was entirely too close to about art and the creation therein.  There was always this idea that art had to be made to be consumed.  Its only validation was through the audience and achieving an audience required timeless energy and resources that were far removed from the act of making art.  If you were just ‘doing’ what you did for sheer enjoyment, it could be likened to the old couple painting at their summer home in Michigan.  Nothing serious or edgy to see here.  Nothing groundbreaking other than a Bob Ross landscape and some watercolors.

My dad once made a very poignant though pedestrian comment about  said work.  He had wondered if there was any joy whatsoever to be evoked from such a grueling process and subject matter.  Now my dad isn’t particularly desensitized to the dark side.  I’m sure his recent foray into my body of work on myspace freaked him out more than a bit.  But my dad is a thoughtful guy within his own reference point and all opinion and criticism shouldn’t be taken lightly.  

Why do we do what it is that we do when we all know in the end that it matters little or nothing in the great scheme of the void?  Why do we posture ourselves and hold up guards, flinching at every little bit of randomness that skirts across our path?  Why indeed?  Thats the million dollar question.  Why continue with whatever silly game you are playing when its pretty much set to self destruct?

I like to think of it as soul searching and to be fair, I had my metaphysical moment the other day riding down Cortland somewhat hungover.  It occurred to me quite mystically that I should go find where my soul went.  Because it sure as hell wasn’t there.  I was and have been quixotically lost.  And admitting that harkens back to the beginning of this diatribe.  Because truth be told, it will continue to be lost partially because it was never even there in the first place.

You see no one cares first and foremost and neither do I.  There is no magical barometer or blog counter that will measure just how much your words ring true.  There’s no score to be had and therefore no competition.  No amount of missed connections or late night whisky hookups that will define your existence any more than base value which is zero.  No way to save your soul from eternal damnation.  No way to fill up that void inside you.  Because there is no fucking void.

Simply put, there are no rules, dude.  What you or I do matters little as long as it matters to you.  Its not going to change at the end of the day how much a horrible person you and I both are on our own personal matrices.  No amount of do gooding or ill doing that will get done to bring us any further or farther towards what we think we want.  Born alone, die alone, no matter who your man or woman is.  Everything else is damage.

All I’ve learned from the creation of art in whatever forms it may be is that its powerful and it will draw things to you.  It does resonate with people.  Thats part of the magic of the virtual which by definition of such philosophers as Guattari and Deleuze is as follows:

“…defined in philosophy as “that which is not real” but may display the salient qualities of the real.^{[citation needed]} Colloquially, ‘virtual’ is used to mean almost, particularly when used in the adverbial form e.g., “That’s virtually [almost] impossible”.

The idea of the virtual being unreal but mattering almost or as much is very satiating.  The potentiality exists in the virtual to create alchemy.  To navigate beyond walls and structures that are meant to cage in.  To dream and think countless thoughts beyond disfunction going on around you.  And at the same time, the virtual is a cage to some who would rather live its potentiality rather than the ‘fake’ real therefore putting a higher meaning upon it.

All in all, it matters much the same.  Its mind numbing to think of it in a sort of zen state.  That you can look up at the sky and see as almost Disney-esque ceiling where the vents are painted over by cumulus.  Somewhere up there, someone will eventually climb up and out of and discover whatever it is that lies out there in the cold void and it still won’t matter that much to me, you or everyone we technically are connected to.  Or maybe it will in some god awfully ironic way, like if when we die that we find out that God was J.J. Abrams all along and that we all have to get the fuck back to the island, stat.

In the end, its all pretty much time to kill.  Yours to do with what you please.  Squander it all or make it fucking matter.  Its all the same side of the coin.  The more creative you are the more potential there is to completely make a simple life even more complicated.  Thats the whole Dostoevsky plight in a nutshell and the words incidentally that I’ve lived by for years.  The truly conscious man is the sick man.  If its all that heavy, it probably will continue to be.  Heavier than you can fucking imagine.  Dogs and cats being eaten for sport, senseless acts of violence towards women, and globo therm onuclear war on a scale that rivals any post wasteland vision.

So you go out there and try to make it in spite of this.  Try to have a family.  Try to make the music matter again.  Try to drape yourself in expensive clothes or clothes that are expensive but look like you just got them out of the dumpster behind your neighbors house.  You fall in love.  You party in the club and party in the bathroom and party on the sink and party in the face of the toilet.  You silently drift to sleep every night and say your prayers to whatever God you think is sexier.  Or you continue to bitch about it on the internet, reveling in the nihilism.  

And yet in the spite of all this, the sun still shines.  People in the park hulu hoop in circles in funny hats and recycled fabric.  The bums play chess with gutter punks while narcotics haunt the bloodstream.  And I sit on a park bench playing Nintendo or ride around on my bike or wander the streets or sit in a cafe reading Heidegger not quite parsing every sentence correctly.  And my arms fill up with funny drawings and my speech gets more erratic and crazed.  And you can watch just how far down the rabbit hole it goes in 140 characters or less.

And somewhere, someone squints in disgust and passes over it like a half eaten chicken thigh on the basketball court outside my shitty converted warehouse.  They give a ritualistic wave across their noise and look of disgust.  And two seconds later its over.  And I’m still there, baking in the fucking sun, skin all extra crispy and gnarly like.  And I’m still good enough to eat.  I’m still in a state.  I exist and thats what matters to me, not to you.

And you know what.  It makes me very happy to know that no one really cares.  Because it means I can continue to do what it is that really makes me happy.  To live my life my own way much like the people that weird me out in a public park on a sunday afternoon.  I want so bad to criticize it.  Believe me I do.  How fucking carefree it all is.  But thats just the way life is maybe.

Yes its just living out life in another prison.  As sure as I see the cameras pointing at the intersection across from me. Its meaningless and subject to whole litanies of journalistic voodoo in Adbusters.  It meets disgust from people who feel value actually has a finite set of unwavering standards.  The idea that new religions and ideologies will spring up from the ashes of the old much like the Greek Gods to the pagans in an attempt to keep things stagnant.  To make things matter again for a time.

That my friends, is what a fool believes.  And I’m as guilty as you are.  Because as fucked up as it is.  It both does and doesn’t matter at the same time.  Its real and not real at all.  Its complex and achingly simple.  And it makes for a damn near frustrating daily existence, as you know doubt witness if you are me sitting down at the computer to pour out a couple of words for the brothers and sisters who are not here and may have never even been.

Clearly one of the biggest advantages of believing that no one gives a fuck, is that its quite a surprise when someone actually does.  

Though to quote that lovable geezer Sean Connery, I’m still waiting to be impressed.

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