Equations: Dialectic Form (2021)

#44
To be a young artist in the aughts in America— what could be a more
daunting task? It’s this Trish and I are escaping from; the sense that we
are both fighting a tremendously uphill battle. We cower behind our
years— we’re young, in our mid-twenties, and we’re not (necessarily)
supposed to have scaled any mountains yet. We cower behind our dreams,
our ideals; behind the inebriated joy of our bodies; and behind the
consonance we have with dead masters. We train ourselves not to look at
the odds, because the odds are against us. Yet we take for granted our
own genius and the eventual dispersion of the world’s riches at our feet.
How seriously are we taken? We dismiss commentary from unenlightened
sources which, if seriously considered, cuts off genius. How we separate is
over discipline. My work ethic demands daily performance and permanent
obeisance; Trish spaces things out so that many of her days are untouched
by the rigors of creation. I drive hard at certain goals; Trish wavers
between obeisance to her self-destructive impulses and her creative
instincts. The net result of this contradiction is that she often has less to
show for her efforts than I do. But we live in a time in which such
distinctions are often unapparent; and I am more invested in Trish’s
eventual success than she is in mine. Her selfishness assumes too much—
not just superior genius, but the laxity it can endow genius with. Assured
of her future glory, she can intoxicate herself without due restraint. The
darkness I sense in us manifests as an intuition that realities (especially
political) are being ignored— that we are living irresponsible lives.
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