First Off

If I go for a walk will you all be here when I get back?

Could I be the person behind you on the bus? Could I be the guy you see on TV every day? Could I be that one person you would never expect? Could I be the man you're looking for? (This is not the man you are looking for.) . Could I be the secret cause of your epilepsy? Could I be the hypnotist who makes you cluck every time you see or hear the word 'discombobulated'? (Clucking yet?) Could I be the guy who's always asking pointless questions? Could I be brainstorming in order to come up with something to write? (Quite possibly.) Could I possibly be the one who makes you think for half a second and do something? (I can only hope...) Could I be rich? Could I be handsome? Could I be famous? Could I be a giant? (They might be giants...) Could I be your mother? (No.) Could I be a Buddha? (Nope again.) Could I be the second coming? (I don't think so. I could be wrong.) Could there be anyone reading this? Could I be any more self-deprecating? Could I be facetious? (Just maybe.) Could I keep going like this for hours without saying anything relevant? (Maybe.) Could I be doing something better with my time? (Quite possibly.) Is this productive in the least? (Not sure.) Am I going to stop any time soon? (Yes)

a story Stream of consciousness writing was Jacob's strong suit. He could whip out a few pages of gibberish that imparted not a goddamn thing to the reader in record time and sell it off to a literary magazine for a few hundred bucks, no problem.
Jacob had no problem pretending that his one-off exercises in free form bullshit were actually art. His art, actually, was being an artist. Being an artist required very little hard work, and was something that came to him naturally. Naturally, he took advantage of being a fabulous bullshit artist by making what he considered absolute shit and passing it off as gold. His gold often won him awards, and at the very least paid his bills and kept up his booze and nicotine supply. Nicotine and booze gathering was, of course, something he left to his handlers. His handlers had no end of a hard time acquiring his precious Jameson whiskey and Gitane cigarettes, tastes he had manufactured to keep up the persona of artist. His artist's persona was crafted meticulously from his observations of what people wanted to see in him. What he wanted to see in himself, of course, was left by the wayside. Jacob couldn't stomach most of the bullshit he did on a daily basis just to stay the darling of his crowd. But he was very good at pretending that he loved it. Even his egomania was a front, put up because he saw that that was what people wanted. If he were humble, then no one would pay attention to him. So he lived, day in day out, as the artist Jacob.
Selah
--Ian

posted by Ian Quinn  : 8/18/2001 07:50:00 AM