Dirty Bowl of Art (4:49)

So many people tell me they admire what I am doing. If only they had the courage to piss in the corner of their cubicle, laugh manically in the face of their over-bonused executives, and walk out on everything they have been brainwashed to believe since America's great education system began socializing and conditioning them at age five. I appreciate the praise. But it's easy to say from the comfort of a bi-weekly pay cheque. The truth of it is, life can be scary as hell when all the education in the world can't even get someone to call your name.

When I accepted the concept that I would begin writing a blog, I made myself two promises: 1) No matter what, all honesty all the time. 2) This will be my voice. Any temptation for fiction or caricature shall be avoided. This will be a window into the soul of man who has never stopped believing in the notion that the less sense something makes, the closer to the truth it must be.

So tonight, I write in fear. How is it that a man with a degree from one of the top school's in his country, a Master's degree from Columbia University, years spent traveling the globe on his own, and four years professional experience in finance cannot even warrant a response from anyone? No email, no phone call, no nothing. And I am talking your most basic employment. Is our economy really that bad? Or is it just a case-study proving that the old adage "it's all who you know" is more accurate than any Ivy League recruitment video could ever be?

It is not that I have any regrets about quitting my job in a bank to pursue my passion, because I don't. I also believe that if there was no fear, and this was all coming easy, there would be something false about the whole experience. Therefore I embrace nights like this, where I write another monstrous rent cheque and feel vomit climb its way up my digestive system when I think about how I am going to eat this weekend, let alone have a Memorial Day brew with the rest of them.

It is just like some of the nights I had when I was traveling. I can remember curling up for sleeps in bus stations in New Zealand or on the side of the road In Syria and thinking as scary as it is, these are the moments that will be most remembered when I get home. And there was no doubt that I ever would make it home, it was just a matter of how and when.

And so it is today. How and when will I be able to get out of this crushing pressure of no income and an ineligibility for unemployment? The truth is, I have no idea.

I guess I have my art. Since the theme of the last 60 days has been that "old sayings come true," I can put faith into the notion that artists produce their greatest work when they are left with no other choice. I march on, with no other choice but to look ahead. I am like Pedro in Lou Reed's "Dirty Blvd." I am like that man you read about at age sixty and wish you had the courage to do what he did, forgetting that on Memorial Day Weekends while you were golfing with your pals and hosting barbecues, he was spending days in the New York Public Library living off a health bar his mother bought him because he can't afford his lunch. Perhaps even more accurately, I am like that man you will never hear of. The one who puts all the effort and risk in but collapses exhausted at the end of an anonymous legacy.

The question is, how much is regret worth in a pension fund? Would you sell all your regrets for your financial legacy? Because at times like this, I think I would buy it.

But then I listen to Lou Reed and recall why I am doing all of this in the first place. Fuck debt, right? It's just a number. Especially in today's climate. I am Greece, I am Portugal and Iceland. I am Enron and Worldcom. I am the collapsing DOW. But at the end of the day I know I am left with my soul in tact. And to me, that is worth everything money can and can't buy.

I'm going out. I want to fly, fly away.