Consider the following. I have a potentially livable source of income with my techie skills and political connections, and if I can make myself enough of a commodity I think I can keep from having to work for anything i really don't dig, at least in anything exceeding the capacity of a pure technician.
This isn't really what I want to do with my life in the long run, but it works and I enjoy helping good people and causes get a lot out of this old internet.
So that's a way to live which will give me time and space to do other things if I want, or if I want to work more I can probably even save up some money. Let's call that idling. Idling isn't going to cut it, but it's there. Bracket that for now, and let's assume that questions of survival are academic.
What I want -- apart from what I know is possible -- is a much more interesting (difficult) question. (1000 words total)
When I really think about this sort of stuff I always get extremely meta. The pressing questions are really on the level of "how do you want to be?" I'm thinking of Staruday's conversation when Christine asked me if I still considered myself an artist. It reminds me of another time, and it makes me want to be able to say yes to that question, because it has always felt good what I have done that.
I wanna be an artist. I'm not entirely sure of this, but it feels kindof right. To cut to the quick, this is a moral issue. On my friendter profile I've listed my occupation as "Velvet Revolutionary," and if you want to talk about artistic/political crossovers you can't get much better than Vaclav Havel. Without getting egomaniacal, those are huge shoes to fill, but the general model of establishing social, cutural and ethical capital through artistic endeavors and then turning that towards actionable political ends seems generally appealing.
Accepting the moral challenge of "being an artist" is a risk. Nothing ventured nothing gained, this is true, but I'm not sure if this risk is really the one I'm looking for. The world of "art" as currently concieved is a raging maelstrom of insignificace. It is not socially or culturally material. It exists chiefly through largess of the upper-upper class. I am not inclined to climb that ladder.
But then again I'm not inclined towards shimmying up anyone's ladder. It's not in my nature. I've yet to encounter an institution or arena of human endeavor that's much bigger than a few hundred people which I can really admire and respect. Perhaps my standards are unrealistically high, but I'm sick of situations overrun with dumb rich kids and people who get off on ascending one hierarchy or another. I'm sick of wannabe revolutionaries who haven't thought it through, of greedy pirate utopians and associated attention whores.
Maybe this is why I haven't yet gotten much traction here in NYC. I just don't know where it's at, and my attitude is generally pretty poor. But it's fucking depressing. To the best of my knowledge, I've been bouncing around some of the better enclaves of this country for the sorts of things I'm interested in, and I've yet to really find anywhere I feel I fit, or anyone I really think I can follow.
This is hard. I can't do it alone, yet I don't have any contemporary models from which to draw strength, no footsteps to tread in which don't seem antiquated. There's great hope in Robert Owen's example, but that's 200 years old and no one's really picked up on it since then. There's great wisdom in some of the old hippy screeds like, "Enlightenment is getting off your tail and doing something," and "We are this season's people, and if we don't do it, it won't get done," but those are more motivational than directional. "In all fairness there is more than enough to go around," is a pretty cool general ethic, but the devil is still in the details.
It occurs to me that I've given relatively little time and energy to introspection lately, and that I've got to figure out how to make myself happy if I want to have any kind of shot at a good life. I guess that's what I'm trying to chew through here. I'm also lonely. That doesn't help any of this out. I'm in a desparately precarious position, personally. That's another big wordy piece, so I'll leave it at that for the moment.
To sum up, I like telling people I'm an artist, but I don't like the position which art currently occupies in the world. I want to influence the political process, but I don't want to call myself a politician or have to put up with the BS of working through those systems myself. I want to make use of the still breaking tech reformation, but I don't want to be tied into the role of technician.
Where that leaves me, I'm not sure. Still stuck in the middle. I'm not-so-secretly hoping that The Road Trip will shake some things loose, but I'm not counting on it.
Well, there's not much for it but to keep breathing and living and striving and sweating. Life is holy and every moment precious. Time to get vested.
