Читать книгу Maggot Brain Dreams - Cameron C. Duncan - Страница 3

“Free your mind and your ass will follow.”-George Clinton

John Michael Robe, “You ain’t shit,”

The phrase weighed on my mind like each word was a ton.

“You ain’t ever gonna be shit, you’re 29, highly educated, dedicated, and some kind of talented. Yet, you’re 100,000 dollars in debt, working a dead end job. You’re single, you’re lonely and no one gives a shit about you. If you died tomorrow nobody would care and I might even piss on your grave.”

These were the words of my worst enemy, these were the words of my best friend, me.

And the allegations were true. I was alone, but not lonely, I wasn’t poor, just broke, I wasn’t miserable but I wasn’t happy, I was an accomplished failure. I was a kiss without lips perfectly flawed and amazingly awful. It was like having an amazing ten-minute conversation with the person of your dreams only to find when you got home that they gave you the wrong telephone number. How could I have been so successful without being a success? Success is really what you make it, not to be defined for you by the constructs of your peers. Some measure it with money, some measure it with a sense of purpose like parenthood; others measure it as living each day to the fullest, for some it’s just surviving. For others it’s none of the above. For us, success is forever elusive; we have the desire to conquer continents. It drives us to win at all cost because losing is worse than dying. I was complicated, but my intentions were simple and my passion was true. I wanted to be remembered. I wanted to be the best or anything but a plain Joe. I had no desire for my own family, or a house in the suburbs with 2.5 kids and a mortgage. I did not want to waste my life building others wealth while counting my own pennies. I was consumed by tantalizing dreams of greatness. Goals for greatness always come with criticism, people tell you it’s impossible, that you can’t do it, that you should just give up your big dreams and get a real job. So instead of persevering through the struggles in pursuit of what is truly worth the pain, people endure the same struggle striving for things that don’t justify their pain. I heard so much negativity about how my goals were pipe dreams and odds were against me, meanwhile I had to submit 1500 applications to get one interview for a $50,000 a year job that I couldn’t wait to quit. Life is often a marathon and all I wanted to do was sprint. But the track was rocky, my shoes were unlaced and the hurdles stood before me as if they were confident I would crash.

My life was a hell of available nothing; I lived my mid-twenties like they were my mid-sixties. I went to work I worked out, and I wrote. The three w’s I called them and every time someone asked me what I had been up to it was the same answer “The W’s” The older I’d get, I’d see the people around me who I went to school with and so on, moving on with their lives, becoming doctors, lawyers, athletes, models, they had careers and families or whatever else they wanted out of life and I was stuck in the same place doing the same shit in the same toilet. I knew that in the back of my friends minds they thought; “Damn, he’s really not gonna let it go.” I didn’t date, I didn’t spend a lot of time with friends, I was often a recluse, sometimes even borderline depressed. I was trying too hard to be stuck in neutral if not reverse. I believed I was cursed. As the pain grew my mind became manic with ideas, sounds, and words. Voices in my head would ramble like the sounds of afternoon hallways in an Asylum. All that I am is this lyric, all that I ever will be is this harmony. I am not a man. I am not among the living. I’m dead and I don’t even know it yet. The answer was not simple for me. I was not an M.C like Eminem that could dominate local rap battles to pave my way, though I stood as a stranger to his right. I was no dancer so Beyonce didn’t notice me in the hallways. Kid Rock borrowed my pen to sign autographs and Ben Wallace was blocking me out of the picture in Sports Illustrated. I was always close to something that mattered, yet struggling to become more than just matter. You see there is the closeness of being two pieces away from finishing the world’s most complex puzzle, and there is the closeness of the game winning catch falling tantalizingly out of your reach. One is full of hope, and excitement the other is frustrating, and regretful, it plays over and over in your mind, what could you have done differently? Will you get another chance? To face the facts there are millions of talented people with the same aspirations that I have, so what makes me any different? What makes me so deserving? What makes me so special? All talent and all hard work needs opportunity and many never get it and just give up. Most people can live with themselves, why else would people work jobs they hate for years? I once read a story about an old man and a dog. An old man was sitting on a porch with his dog when a young man came to speak with the old man. During the conversation the young man periodically heard the dog whimper in pain, finally the young man grew curious enough to ask the old man why the dog whimpered. The old man replied,

“Well he is lying on a rusty nail.”

The puzzled young man asked, “Why doesn’t he just move?”

To which the old man answered, “It doesn’t hurt badly enough.”

Well I was hurting, I was in agony, I was out of my damn mind, wavering between meaningful creation and utter destruction.

I loved music. It was my true love, my lifelong companion. Music did not judge me, it would not abandon me, and each day I lived seemed to have a new theme song. Oh the sounds were so beautiful, the sounds were so maddening. Each harmony was like a newborn child, so full of potential. Writing is like a birth, without bounds it can only be limited to your imagination and vocabulary, the possibilities are immense. So even when I felt physically trapped in an unfulfilling existence, it gave me hope for better days. It allowed me to get through the hard times because I had reason to hope that I was only writing a story, and I just hadn’t gotten to the good part yet. Sometimes I hoped this life was just a bad dream but unfortunately I felt every pinch. Everything would be just fine if I could make it out of here. I was questioning all the choices I had made up to this point; I mean I did everything I was told to do growing up. Get good grades, get into a good college, and get your degree, check, check, check but my $70,000 education made me exactly 0.00 in life. I should’ve been a doctor or an athlete. What am I really? Oh yeah an author! How many best sellers do I have? A poet! Who can recite anything I’ve written? A lyrical genius! Well how come I can’t figure out on how to get a song on the radio? Damn! Am I going to be a failure? I could not settle on ordinary, I could not rest on mediocre; I could not walk with pride and be average. Does that make me special? No, but it gave me the hunger of a starving lion and the attitude of the hyena willing to take his meal.

Socially, I was awkward, even strange. I was an intellectual with the spirit of a gladiator. Academically I performed well, but was rejected from a gifted program due to my erratic behavior. I don’t know what made me so uncomfortable around people. I always felt different, and often viewed subtle situations as blatant attacks. My upbringing was strict but loving. My mother was a single parent. She was strong, glamorous, intelligent, beautiful and street smart. She did not believe in raising a dummy or a soft man. She was an icon to me, the county’s first minority female coroner. At a young age I had an advanced realization of mortality. Doing your homework next to dead people seems to have that effect. The scariest thing that ever happened to me was a dead person farting while I was practicing long division. A “C” on a report card was unacceptable, and carried maximum punishment.

“Do you want to be average?” she spoke angrily.

“You will need to work harder and be better than everyone else to be successful.” Though at the time I didn’t quite understand why, I soon learned. I remember her once pointing out a kid walking down the street with his pants hanging on his knees.

“You see him?” she asked.

“He may be a bright a young man, but looking at him I would think he’s a hoodlum.” It was a lesson in respect, it’s not easy to earn, but it’s easy to lose. My father always thought she was too hard on me. In fact so did I. but the older I get the more I realized she was right, every great man needs an edge, an undying passion for something and the pursuit for it must be relentless or it will wither and die, like roses sent to symbolize love on a holiday, or after an affair.

My father was a traveling businessman a spokesman for a major soap manufacturer and notorious playboy. I was three when my mother discovered that he had a separate family. But he was always in my life and I admired him because he was on TV and everyone seemed to recognize him. He was charming, outgoing and handsome and I wanted to be just like, but nothing like him. I remember that the only times my mother cried was when she was hurt by the men she loved, abused emotionally, cheated on, you name it. A woman who I thought was impregnable was actually vulnerable. Love held onto her for years like sandbags tied to the talons of an Eagle, restraining her flight, holding her talents and desires captive on the side of a moderately elevated mountain, I needed to be the wolf to help set her free.

Why would you ever hurt someone you love? I vowed I’d never do the same to anyone, I took it a step further because I lamented getting too close to anyone that they could make me feel so weak and vulnerable. I could never be vulnerable! So I would go through life a sucker for the gorgeous women with long hair, and bad attitudes because they were unavailable and had no expectations of me. In the film “Heat” Robert DeNiro said,

“Never get so attached to someone that you can’t leave in five seconds flat when you see the heat coming around the corner” and Sean Carter said “I got 99 problems but a bitch aint one” perhaps I took both statements too literally.

I never believed my writing journals would lead anywhere past my notebook. Words continued to blossom from “will you go with me?” notes to short stories, and poems. It wasn’t until 5^th grade that I realized I was any good. On Fridays, I’d read a story I wrote during the week aloud for the class, after tolerating most readers, normally inattentive kids became excited. Eyes would light up as if the ice cream man had walked into the room. My classmates would stop doodling and it was all eyes on me, like the epic 1996 2pac album. It got to the point where I looked forward to it and added a new song at the end of my story every week for everyone to jump in and sing. Every Friday my classmates would plead for Mrs. Messier to let me go first but she always made go last. Those four minutes a week always gave the cute girls in class a reason to talk to me. The fame lasted for maybe 10 minutes, but it felt good to be recognized; to be seen as the best, anything less from that point would be considered failure.

Exit my childhood and Fast Forward to the harsh reality of young adulthood. I still had the dreams of a child but I was old enough to realize that they all would not come true. I wasn’t a Ninja or superhero I was a guy with an ordinarily unimpressive job. It was one of the worst feelings in the world to me, being dragged out of bed every morning to go build someone else’s dream at a minute fraction of your value. Yet, still I showed up every morning on time, willingly offering my sweat and dignity because hope had yet to deliver me a dollar. It wasn’t a bad job, I didn’t hate it, and it kept me motivated. Every day I would rub shoulders with millionaires and celebrities, and I knew that someday I would look back and laugh at today no matter how terrible today was. I would not allow myself to be too proud to work hard for every cent I made, because I had the attitude that whatever I did, I had to do it better than others. If I were a window washer I would have made every window spotless, if I were a serial killer, I would have made every morning headline. To be honest there were times I felt like if I couldn’t do something good with my life, I may as well as be something historically bad. I mean would you rather be ordinary or extraordinarily awful? John Doe, or Genghis Khan? I’d take Genghis Khan. It is difficult to find solace in being good at things that don’t really matter. Is it really self-gratifying to hear;

“Good job you really flipped the hell out of those burgers, or hey great job picking up that table or moving that couch six inches? Actually you were so good at picking up those chairs that I’m going to let you go duct tape those wires down because I bet you’d be good at that too”.

You still have to do your best because it is your character, it is the drive that will get you away from here but right now it’s just a reminder that you may be wasting your talents. Perhaps you’ve been there before or even still there. Whether it’s mowing someone’s lawn in 100 degrees heat and they don’t even offer you a glass of water, or listening to someone belittle you because their coffee wasn’t sweet enough. You can’t let your current situation define you. Success is an attitude and you cannot be a master without being a great student first, you won’t be a successful President of the United States, if you can’t conquer being a fry cook and you learn to love while getting your heart broken.