I like this city, but it's small. People don't normally come here. Though Mark Oakley and Juliana Hatfield came within two months of each other. I even talked with Mark for a little while. He does a comic called Thieves and Kings that I got a letter printed in once. I've got this list in my head of people I'd put in a movie, even though I've never seen them act, and he's on it. I don't know if I'd give him the romantic lead, but he'd make a hell of a charismatic convenience store clerk, though that may not be much of a compliment. Maybe he'd be better in a spy movie. I wish I was rich, so I could make all these weird movies. It'd be great.

 I'd make one with Winona Ryder and Lukas Haas, too. Did you ever see that movie Boys? I guess everybody's got a favorite movie that isn't actually any good, and for me that's the one. There are scenes in that movie that just impress the hell out of me. But it's one of those movies I couldn't really recommend, because I can see how it could mean nothing to people. All of the things I love about life mean nothing to people. 

Ha! Do you know how easy that is, to sound like some kind of troubled poet? Crazy. I could make an entire career out of bullshitting people. I could puke in their throats and people would swallow it every time. Everyone who relies on others to buy their product must realize it at some point, that writing aimed at fools can make a lot of money. So there's the criteria : who, after learning this, walks straight in its direction, and who runs screaming the other way?
 

I sat on the back of a plastic chair while Juliana sang, alone on stage with her guitar. People were talking all around me, and Student Union staff kept buzzing around, trying to sell beer after beer to anyone and everyone. They'd pass me once in awhile but decide not to give me the sales pitch. I'd like to think it was because I was one of the few who was actually paying attention, but it was probably just that I wasn't wearing one of the "I'm old enough to get drunk" ID bracelets they passed out earlier.

 The fact that the chattering of these people never ceased is what really amazed me. I know she was only the opener, but I still couldn't believe how many people just weren't paying any attention at all. I was there with Brad, and I saw Eric who works at Backstreet Records, and there may have been a few other worthwhile minds in attendance, but those are the only two I can vouch for. Who knows about the rest? Who knows what they think? Who knows what they do with themselves when they don't have somebody else to hang around with? The eternal question of my life; who are these people and how did our paths cross? In my peripheral vision I began to imagine their silhouetted heads as little zeroes, dozens of little zeros everywhere. As time went on I found myself devoting more and more brainpower to the project of contemplating them. It's a depressing topic, and there'll have to be a day to leave all that bullshit behind, but some days it becomes clearly obvious that I haven't hit that day yet. 

I used to comfort myself with the fact that, regardless of my sometimes sullen mindset, I've always got that sincerity angle working for me. Lately, however, I've come to understand that sincerity is less elusive than people think. You don't have to be a starving artist to mean what you say. Turn on a commercial radio station and really listen, and you'll see that whoever's on is totally sincere about being a fucking whore. The Dj's are totally sincere about their satisfaction at being a lower-ranking whore, and every fan of that bullshit music is totally sincere about wanting to out-whore the entire top-40 monarchy, if they could only figure out how to do it. People don't really lie to themselves. I think most of them have made a distinct decision to be idiots for the rest of their lives, though they wouldn't use quite those words.
 

Eventually my mind became comfortable with the scene and I had an easier time forgetting about the people around me. "I'm going to play a song my friend wrote," Juliana said. "Maybe some of you know it. Maybe you don't." She started Ride With Me, and I wondered if anyone but me did know it. It seemed unlikely. Maybe I should move to a bigger town, but that would only mean bigger concert halls and more dead weight. I guess it's the way of the touring performer. If you're lucky, you've got a couple of real fans in the audience, while the rest is choked with pink hair and nose rings who can't seem to stop talking to each other.

She mentioned that it was her first time in New Brunswick and that she had liked it so far, just doing the standard crowd-banter thing, but it of course caused almost everyone to cheer loudly. Hey, she said New Brunswick! I'm in New Brunswick! Wow! We just reached the limit of my capacity for a mental connection!

So you live in New Brunswick. Big deal, it's a fucking province, same as all the rest. Same as all of North America, except with higher taxes and shittier money than the States. Can't you find something better to cheer about? Can't you? Why am I writing this when you'll never even read it? I think I'm writing this because they'll never read it. This is just a little goal post to remind certain people that they're alright, by inverted example. 

It's the same phenomenon as people who have things signed by musicians. "Oh, oh, I love your music, could you sign this for me please?" Take a minute to jump into that mindset : "I'm never going to see you again, because your life is greater than mine can ever be, and I know it, so could you just sign this little memento to remind me of the time I met one of my superiors face to face?" Aaarrgh. In theory I could get a pile of signatures a mile high from all my favorite musicians, writers, artists, directors, whatever, but why would I want them? My aim is to get to know them, to talk with them, because I recognize the time and thought they've spent on their work and their ideas, and I know they'd recognize mine. All of the people I want to meet are at different levels in life, but I know I've mirrored them all for at least a moment, at one time or another. There may be differences between us, but I know we have common ground to build from. For me, that's saying a lot more than might be immediately apparent, because with most people I really can't find any common ground at all.

One reason I dislike most performers is the way they build a wall between themselves and their audience. They have this totalitarian idea that they are famous and you are not, and it can be no other way. Any connection to people would only be a rivalry, because they're lazy and semi-talented to begin with, and could easily be eclipsed by any one of their fans, with the right marketing. So they perpetuate this idea that they are unattainable, unknowable and untouchable, part of a world that no one else can know. You can see it in everything they say and do – they know that their careers are phony, that it could have been anyone instead of them, and that their futures are not in their own hands. As a result, the people who actually want to meet them end up being nothing more than a throng of mediocre fucks, which makes the need for distance even more important, because they could be mobbed by morons at any time. And still, almost none of these stars actually care who their fans are; they just want fans. So that's what they get. The idea of quality over quantity doesn't apply to their notion of fame.

The performers who impress me are the ones who remind me that we're all living together on this earth, and that we've done a good enough job that we can relax for a minute now and again and enjoy ourselves. We don't have to spend all day gathering berries, or running from wild animals, or walking ten miles for a bucket of water. You can poke a lot of holes in the half-assed, mixed capitalism that we have now, but take a look around you and think about what you see. Obviously, something is going right here. Ayn Rand wrote that it's easier to buy a car in North America than it is to feed yourself comfortably for one day in the jungle, and she's right. This system needs to be fixed, the holes need to be repaired, but we're still on the right track.

(Things are changing rapidly, however, with the government losing its position as servant of the people in exchange for a position of ruler of the people, which could leave us all wallowing in a huge dictatorship before long. Democracy is not a political system, it's a fact of nature : the majority rules. The reason that most people don't see this, the reason that most of the planet has been ruled by a select few throughout our entire history, is because the majority choose to be lazy and ignorant. The majority choose to be ruled. Just a fact of nature. The people have the numbers, the people can organize, the people can make things change, but they rarely do. I realize that virtually every human being ever born on this earth has grown up in one of the myriad of social systems which teach complaisance as its highest virtue, but it's not an automatic process. Each mind still needs to sanction an idea before it will work, and people are falling all over themselves to sanction anyone who wants to tell them what to do. It's easy to see why most people view humankind as shallow or flawed, 'cause we're off to a goddamn slow start.)

There are performers, though, who remain in the real world after reaching whatever level of fame they've sought out. You can still imagine them walking down the street with a guitar case on their way to a show. You could still meet them on the street and exchange a few words. They know their job, which is to try to strike a chord with people, to try to make other people happy, not just any people, but certain people, the people who can make them happy back. It's not a labor, it's a decision, a choice. They play songs, they write books, they draw comics, they've decided that that's what they want to do, and they're doing it. They're doing what they want to do with their lives.

There are no idols, there are no heroes, there are peers and there are not-peers. I say this from the perspective of a very carefully constructed ego. Obviously I've got some more foundation work to do, or I wouldn't be so bitter all the time, but it's still the truth. I work my mind ragged some days, and I would love to meet the people who have done the same. I don't see anyone as inaccessible. If I would want to meet them then I've seen something in their actions or in the things they've made which leads me to suspect that they might want to meet me too. If it doesn't work out I'll lose the desire to meet them again, and that's alright. If I never get the urge to talk with them then they've still got a ways to go. I won't expound any false modesty or phony humility on this point. I don't care to ever see or meet most people. They just aren't worth my time.

That's when a shocking fact hit me; looking out into the crowd, Juliana must have seen all zeros, unable to separate the individuals from the mass of mediocrity. And I don't mean to say that if she could have singled me out she would have noticed anything special, except perhaps that somebody was actually devoting some attention to her. That's when one of my periodic, super-strong urges to finish this book hit me. I have to get it done, because it's my only facet to approach these people. Instead of a fanboy with nothing to offer but an autograph request, I'll have a book, a book of ideas! What could possibly be better? Obviously there will be people who won't dig this at all, but there will be some who will. I could just walk up and say, "Hey, I've got all your CDs and I wrote this book. Here's a copy, tell me what you think." That makes sense to me. That's how it has to be done. Value for value. Greg Hyland, Evan Dorkin and Mark Oakley all have public email addresses, I could talk to them anytime I wanted, but why would I? How would they perceive me? Just as another badgering guy who likes their stuff, but hasn't done any of his own. What would make my opinion worth anything? I'm sure it's nice to get foundationless praise once in awhile, but it ultimately goes nowhere. At least when I finish this book they can say, "Hey, that guy with the book is badgering me again," which is a definite step up.

I also don't mean to single people out so specifically, I only mentioned the comic book guys because they're so accessible, and Juliana Hatfield because I just saw her today. But I see definite connections with these people. I take a sort of pride in being able to explain everything that I do: why I watch certain tv shows, why I bought certain albums, why I read certain comics. I could explain it all, if anyone who I cared to explain it to happened to ask. But this isn't about explaining to other people, it's about keeping on top of the ball, of keeping life in perspective, of never letting yourself slide into the dull grey of just doing things without real cause. 

As I mentioned, I met Mark Oakley just a couple of months ago. He did a talk for a comic show at the University and spent most of the following Saturday at the comic shop where I work (at which I was conveniently working), doing sketches and signing books, and all I can say about the guy is he was great. This is a guy who worked his ass off and now has a dream job. Make no bones about it, a dream job, and he's not lucky or fortunate or any of that crap. He worked for it, now he's got it, and he has to keep working every single day to keep it. It's like taking my whole philosophy of how the world should work and putting it into one guy's skin. It was great to see this happy, relaxed, fulfilled guy just talk about things, because his contentment was so obvious. That is a rare event, and while I really like Thieves and Kings, I can honestly say that I'm a bigger fan of Mark Oakley himself. 

Now make sure you don't take this the wrong way. This is not some kind of hero-worship. He hasn't had a profound effect on my life, I just read his comic, but he has achieved the exact thing that I've wanted to do since I was in the 9th grade. He does his own comic book, and not a shitty comic book either, but a damn good one. Every time I read the little piece he writes on the inside front cover I find myself relating to whatever he has to say, because it's obvious that he is a man who thinks. I can imagine what it's like to be him, and I like it, because it reminds me of what's it like to be me when I keep everything in check. That's the important distinction; it's not an admiration of someone who has outshone me, but a respect for someone who also has his life figured out. I'd be awfully surprised if he agreed with everything I've written in this book, but overall I think it will stick with him, because he knows how amazing it is to be alive, and few do. He actually mentioned to me and Brad, in a weirdly offhanded manner on the night of the University show, that if Thieves and Kings had failed he had actually decided to kill himself, and I couldn't stop thinking of how absolutely full of shit he was. I won't even try going into the psychology of why he chose to mention it, but it struck me as being absolutely ridiculous. The idea of Mark Oakley trying to kill himself is totally silly. I could write a comedy routine about it, because he could never do it in a million years, and I know that he knows it. I'm putting words in his mouth here, but it's not exactly slander. I'm sure he gets depressed, I'm sure he gets pissed off, I'm sure he has bad ideas, I'm sure he makes mistakes, I know about all of these things, but I also know that he understands the greatness of life, and in the end that's all that counts. I can't think of a higher respect to pay anyone. He's a man who I could become friends with, as an equal. Maybe our ideologies are more different than I suspect, and maybe this book won't impress him terribly, but maybe it will. 

That's really the whole point behind this book, besides being a good project to keep my mind exercised. It's so I can send copies to all the people I've always wanted to get in contact with, value for value, as a potential peer. I certainly won't make any money from this thing, it's not my attempt to escape from the idea of having a normal job. It's a foundation, so that my name will be known in certain circles, and the idea is to expand those circles until I am the uncontested master of the universe. Ha ha, no really, the idea is to build a fan base not by giving people what they already have, but by offering them what I've learned from my life, and if I can build enough interest in that concept then maybe someday I can do this as my sole career. Nice and level headed. No aimless objects of art that I can't seem to sell, no government grants to help a young canadian hopeful, none of that shit. I really don't care how I'm pigeon-holed after I'm dead, because celebrity after death is totally pointless, but at the very least, no one will be able to stick me with any crutches other than that I was somewhat reluctant to move out of my parents' house. My sole regret is that I didn't drop out of high school in the twelth grade and get a job, and I aim to make sure that it remains the only one.

Juliana finished her last song, thanked the audience and walked off stage, out a side door and through the small lobby. I thought of how neat it would have been to be in that lobby and to watch her walk by, just to know that there she is, the person who wrote all those songs I'm always listening to, one of my potential equals. That kind of knowledge tends to make little things like a person's walk infinitely more interesting.