"When I'm 77..."
Trying to vent my artistic frustrations in an overly PG manner.
Like the subtitle states, I'm going to continue avoiding obscenities in any of my posts right now. Maybe I'm just too afraid of the PC police, whether internally or externally, especially since I'm about to start a new career as a nursing assistant that relies on professionalism, patience and compassion. But does my new approach to self-censorship also equate to me being artistically castrated? _________ (I now have a reoccurring image of Bob Barker - RIP - stating in a new PSA from heaven - "Make sure to have your artists spayed or neutered.") _________ If this is the case, then it might be time to just throw in the artistic towel, like so many others have done before me when they decided to put down the six string or paintbrush and start a family or embark on a new business venture that actually provides some much-needed stability and profitability. Is there where I also currently find myself as a 44 year-old who owns absolutely nothing in terms of material possessions? And if this is "society's" diagnosis for me, then why is our culture set up to crush the spirit of creative people who just want to be left alone and explore the human condition through art in their own introverted fashion? Like always, I don't have any of these answers, as creative pursuits have likely always involved some sort of gate-keeped industry full of political nonsense and delusional forcefields that lead many artists towards utter insanity or attempts to starve themself, which is probably even more miserably manic and absurd. I also won't be sharing the 40 minute recording of the self-therapy session I had last night after leaving my township library, which found me dropping numerous f-bombs regarding why I'm still unable to build my artistic utopia somewhere in the desert. I decided it's ultimately better to keep some of these conversations with myself confidential because nobody wants to hear my nasally voice rant anymore about lack of opportunities or how I'm going to look at my disgustingly-wrinkled, liver-spotted face in a mirror when I'm 77 and shout various obscene phrases about how I was too cowardly to realize the artistic dreams I planned for my life. So, instead of listening to me scream various f-bombs while calling myself a female dog for 40 minutes straight, I chose to morph my latest wild diatribe into a short free-verse concoction comprised of more of those pesky words again, which hopefully will have other artists siding with my genuine feelings of frustration rather than wanting to grab me by the !×!@# and shout that they've also been trying to build an artistic empire for the last twenty years with not even a modicum of financial success, so just shut your yap and deal with the reality of dedicating your life to a passion that provides nothing but constant pain and humiliation!!! On a lighter note, I also kind of view this latest poem as my somewhat nihilistic tribute to the classic song, "When I'm Sixty-Four," by the Beatles, so just approach this free flow in that odd context and it might seem more comical than depressing.
"When I'm 77..." When I'm 77, I'm afraid I'll look at my wrinkled face in the mirror and scream at my reflection that "you are such a wimpy waste of breath for not following ANY of your gosh-darn dreams!!!" I'm keeping the linguistics clean now because I guess I still have some societal relevance left, but when I'm 77, I'm sure I'll be spitting plenty of obscene phrases at myself during all of my self-berating, as I doubt anyone will care anymore about allegedly offensive language after about 33 more of these ignorantly informed and infirmed trips around the sun Out of my mental tourniquet when I'm 77 With my dementiaed thoughts freed to splatter those lifelong bland walls with all of my deeply-rooted geriatric angst When I'm 77, I'll finally start that punk band I dreamt about throughout my life, and fill that whatever lettered blank generation of the future with hope that they'll be able to reach their own dreams before they also begin to fade away, as Neil's general philosophy about dying young, burning out, and keeping your regrets at least six feet away will be the primal code to hold sacred within one's hopefully upgraded psychological DNA When I'm 77, using the band name Wild Serpico, I'd tour the world and infect both young and old with an omnipotent spirit that allows them to forget about their age, race, gender, social status, social limit or social illness and just do whatever it is they truly want to do, like that old-time bad religion instructed me to strive towards when I was a pimply, arrogant teen, but sadly, I was too weak to follow the true punk path and go to hell with Superman When I'm 77, I'll finally build my shipping container music studio in some off-grid region of New Mexico, where I'll compost my own poop and terraform arid sand into a fertile paradise and record songs all day and night in between washing my dentures and taking my metamucil, while my musical metamorphosis finally mestatasizes throughout the metaverse, which might be the only universe that still matters by then In between tours, I'll also finally get to binge watch all the movies and series based on my short stories and screenplays, and complain to myself that they were mostly ok but lacked the ballsy ignorance and outright idiocy of my original musings When I'm 77 - and this specific pioneering vision might hit the mark of idealism more than anything else, in order to foster a more sane and humane approach to the harmonious membrane we often globally scorch, and I truly mean what I truly mean to mean, at least within my dreams that often appear too real to redeem - there will be no more of those obnoxious pharmaceutical ads polluting the whatever numbered-G wireless networks that we're addicted to at that point, which shout repulsive diseases and side-effects alike directly at my line of sight, in between reruns of The Price is Right, reminding me every few minutes about which malady I'm most likely to catch with every year passed, taxed and jammed in the books At least give me the strength to laugh more at the narcissistic pokes sponsored by the most humble of those salt-of-the-earth folks Whether I'm lounging with Superman in hell or crafting new fashion trends with RuPaul in heaven When I'm 77...