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| Male, 21 |
| United States |
| Linkage: No linkage |
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| Attachment: |
Single |
| Sexual preference: |
Straight |
| Occupation: |
Visual |
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Entheogenic |
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| Dear [Name Deleted By Moderateor],
It's nice to get back in touch with you. First I'd like to mention that I appreciate what you've done. Your work has had a positive impact on me. I'm also concerned that, slowly, you are losing sight of what CoSM is about, or what I thought it was about. Which is the art, above all other influences and goals is the art itself presented in it’s pure living form in an environment of immersion, instead of the spectacle mindset of the art gallery. Let's be clear, that I will not be apart of any sort of "Chapel" built around you or your work.
Let me put it this way, some people are born with the drive and talent to grow up to be multi millionaires. Some people live out their lives in a trailer park. Maybe they lack ability or simply drive. Either way, some of them stumble upon a few bucks, buy a lottery ticket and win big. Suddenly they're out of the trailer park and amongst the elite.
You and I are the damaged ones. We break the law, we function poorly in polite society. We could've spent our lives working manual labor at JCPenney or in an off-white cubical inside a Portland high-rise. But then we hit the mental lottery and now here we are. What some people work to achieve for years and years we were just given. Handed to us on a silver platter, was the spark of evolving cohesive nostalgia which grew and consumed us.
Now, sometimes a person wins the lottery and uses the newfound wealth to effect others around them, and they live happy lives. Some build mansions around themselves and their families, and hide from the curious and needy public.
You have a huge following. You've effected thousands over the course of your career, but slowly it seems that you are building a Chapel based solely around your initial "lottery win", even though you've gone to do so much more since then. With your fan base and influence you could easily create a religious mindset around CoSM. Making it, in my eyes, corrosive to the very message it was built on, and I'd have to oppose it from then on. In which case I might go on to [Name of Corporation deleted, but celebrated].
We are just humans. We aren’t martyrs, sages, preachers or holy men. We’re flawed, just like everyone else on the planet. Therefore, our idea’s and thoughts and beliefs and art is flawed. If this is a place where people can come and idea’s can grow and evolve and die away. Where thought can transform and the groundwork laid for people to go on and experience what we did, the thing that changed our outlook. Where beliefs can only be threatened and broken down, and new, evolved ideas can grow from the ashes, then great, I support you. But the world doesn’t need another place were people will be preached to, and ideas forced upon the attendees. We need CoSM to remain a place where people can be inspired to think for themselves, without being influenced by your ideas. Where they can come once and never come back again unless they feel like it.
The art must remain as the center. Doing what it was created to do, which is inspire thought. Where people can get away from the grey concrete, material reality of the city and form a new outlook.
Seriously and I am,
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| Gambling, Violence, Pornography, Photography, Calligraphy, Metallurgy, Hyperbole, Anti-semetism, Banner Advertising. |
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| Genres that create an extraordinary emotional tone or quality, usually quieter than other styles; music that describes three dimensional atmospheres with sound, often without a beat; Genres with distorted samples or beats; Heavy, distorted guitars with loud, brutal percussion; Dark and dehumanized instrumentals; Loud, insistent music with abusive, protestive lyrics attacking Conventional Society and expressing Social Alienation; Deep (Often containing many elements of Dub, Deep music is the furthest from the mainstream, with relaxed, smooth and romantic characteristics); electronic music without predefined genres; Illbient; 1135150151533011; Genres relating to hallucinations, distortions of perception, or altered states of awareness; Genres containing sweeping symphonic textures. |
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| The Mission of Art, The Fountainhead, Sacred Mirrors, '''FaLiLV''', The Philosophy of Andy Warhal, The Great Sharkhunt, Storming Heaven, Economy of Errors, A Brief History of Everything, Kingdom of Fear, The Tenacity of The Cockroach. |
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| Same as the people I would like to meet. |
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| Excert #1 |
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Excerpt #1 from an Untitled Story
By Jason Schuurmans
Robert was walking home from work, taking the usual path from the train station back to his house. He was the "PIC" at the Tasty Quick, an ice cream shop by the river in the next town over. "PIC" stood for "Person-In-Charge". It was a semi-bullshit position that delegated the more or less meaningless managerial jobs to one person. He was fairly detached in his manner, as usual.
It was late in August, and Joyce, one of Robert's older friends, did not have air conditioning in her house. So to keep cool, she sat on her porch.
Robert approached her house, which was halfway between the light rail station and his house. He was tired because he had an early shift. Every now and then he'll be given an early shift, which throws off his sleep pattern because he likes to stay up late. Usually he gets off at about 3:00. It was 11:00 AM.
"So how's your day going, Robert? No work?"
"I had work. But I quit."
The news didn't sink in at first. "What?" she asked, slowly turning her head toward Robert, "You quit? Just like that? Why?"
"I don't know. Well, I do know. . . I guess. I snapped. I'm not sure how it happened. . . I snapped."
He began to tell the story: He walked into work, and as he approached the counter, he looked up, and felt nothing but blinding fury. His face turned red, and his vision blurred. A sharp ache welled in his stomach; painful like a severe burning that has been there for a very long time, eating away, but unnoticed until now. He didn't know why at first; there wasn't enough time to understand it. A glass fruit juice bottle smashed against the wall in front of him. There was a scream. It was deep and angry. Then silence. Quieter than the usual silence that accompanies early morning shifts. He found himself standing there, staring at a picture on the wall. He knew what it was and he was furious that it was there. It was an employee of the month plaque. With a picture and a name inscribed below it. Everyone was staring at him. Red juice was running down the wall and forming a puddle at his feet. "No, that didn't happen", he thought. It was undeniable. The bottle was his. The shout - dire and painful - was his own. The picture on the plaque was of him. It was the third time in a year they had awarded him an employee of the month plaque. The first was embarrassing. The second was frustrating. Then somehow, the third pushed him over.
It wasn't the plaque itself. Somewhere he knew this incident was in the making. A volatile mixture had pushed him to the edge. On this particular morning, the plaque was too much. When he saw it, there was no reason, only reaction. His brain shut down, except for his reptilian brain stem. Which could only say, "Fuck you!" Only a glass bottle flying from his hand. A terrible shout.
He knew that they'd fire him on the spot. He tore the plaque off the wall and headed for the door.
Someone behind him shouted, "Robert!? What the hell's gotten into you?"
"I Quit!" he left the store. Walking toward the bridge just below a running pace, he clutched the plaque under his arm. He tried to think about the future. "What will I do next?"
"So I stood on the bridge," He explained to Joyce, "I guess I stood there for an hour or so, it's hard to tell. I was trying to erase Tasty Quick from my consciousness. I was so uncertain. Do you understand? Does that make sense?"
"Yes Rob. You need to calm down."
"How? I can't, but I hate being afraid. . . . I have to. . . I don't know what happened. I could not understand it. . . I still don't. I threw the damn plaque in the river. I don't . . . I can't go home. I still have two of those things in my closet. I don't know why. I wish I didn't. . . I have to go home. . . No more fear. I'm sorry Joyce, I'm not making sense, am I?"
"It's okay."
Joyce was trying to wrap her head around the information that he was giving to her. She stared into Robert's eyes. He wasn't looking at her. He was just staring a thousand miles into the distance. "Was it that bad? Did you hate it that much? I don't understand why. You couldn't be happy just being a good employee? Was that not good enough? They loved you there. You were great. What's wrong with being a great employee?
"It's wrong because I never wanted it. I never wanted to be a great Tasty Quick employee. I didn't want to grow up from that. That's not where I'm going to start my life." His voice cracked a little on that last word.
"Robert, what does it matter what job you have as a teenager? No one will think less of you for working there, or anywhere. You have so much potential to-"
"Don't you talk to me about my potential!" He interrupted, "I'm sick of people talking about my potential! That's all I have and that's not what I want. I want to live my life and really make something of it, not have the potential to make something of it. Okay, I'm valuable to the store. What good is that in the end? They have no idea who I am as a person and they don't care. 'I have potential'. Potential to do what? To run the second location when they open a store downtown? To shoot up the goddamn place when I don't get a promotion?"
Robert took a pause to breathe. Joyce opened her mouth to say something but Robert interrupted, he spoke softly now. "I know I have potential. I can do a lot of things with my life. I know I can be successful; that's my problem, I'm not a success. Because I'm seventeen and seventeen year olds can't start careers, they don't write successful plays, they don't-"
"Rob," Said Joyce, "You have enough money to go to college. You have your GED. We've talked about this, you'll probably need a student loan but you can pay that off later. Why don't you just go?"
"Because no college offers me what I want. I want a real life to live. I'm sick of this pathetic adolescent learning bullshit. I know I need to go to collage, but I hate them all. At least all the ones I can afford. I just want to live my life and do what I want to do. I want people to look at me and see a successful. . . A successful Whatever-the-fuck! I don't know what I'll be. I do have some ideas, I just haven't decided what to do first and what I can pursue later in life. In any case, I had to get out of there soon. Because if I got too comfortable there, or the pay got too good, or I became too attached to my co-workers, then I might never have left. I had to get out now, while it was easy."
Robert again stared into the distance. He held in a deep breath, shut his eyes tight and then exhaled. It was clear to Joyce he was done talking. They sat in silence for several minutes, until Joyce's mother called to her. She reminded Joyce that she needed to drive her little sister to swim practice. Her mother reminded Joyce: "I've already spent three hundred dollars on private swim lessons; the least you could do is drive her there for me." Joyce promised Robert she'd call later, and stepped back inside. Robert stepped down from the porch and headed in the direction of his house. Not sure if he should actually go in. If he came home so early, he would have to explain to his mother what happened. He kept walking anyway, but the closer he came the more anxious he grew. He couldn't talk about it anymore.
Five blocks from his downtown apartment he decided to hop the first bus that came by. He spent the next several hours wandering aimlessly. "Human contact", that's all he wanted. He thought it would help to be around people who had no idea who he was, or what he was feeling. He knew it was only going to divert his mind temporarily, and wouldn't help to solve any of his problems. He didn't care. He needed to disappear in an urban sea of unfamiliar faces. |
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| The Political Agnostics | Clubs > political |
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Our current political system thrives on division, aggression towards people who disagree, and the extreme polarization of every issue. This club is for anyone who wants question what they think they know about America and politics. It's for people who are willing to listen to other opinions and critically think about them. If this is you, please join this club and start an open dialogue about something. You won't be judged or attacked by me for any honest opinions/beliefs you hold. I only ask the same from you.
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