Christian Doyle is from Staten Island. He recently obtained his Master's in Irish Literature at University College Dublin. Points of AnxietyKarl: what is up my tomed companion
how was your aunts Carter: dude we NEED to start doing something with our lives Karl: yeah I napped all fucking day it sucked Carter: as soon as she saw me she started talking about her high school and college years I think I was smiling too much and it confused her and made her think when you’re in your twenties you’re happy all the time but how happy could I have looked in my emotionless fucking outfit grey tshirt dark grey hoodie dark jeans Karl: overall, between my twenties and my teens, I’d say my twenties definitely have a higher happiness quotient if I graphed it you would see that there’s a positive correlation between drug-use, socializing, and happiness my teens have a way higher academic success but that’s been steadily on the decline since my freshman year of high school tbh Carter: but yeah man I pretty much just spent all day listening to her reminisce and tell me all her theories about life she talked about good and bad memories it was pretty bipolar man like she’d be talking about something nostalgic from her childhood and get all teary eyed but then like five minutes later she’d be grinding her teeth in anger talking about this asshole guy acting like a cunt it sounds kind of fucked to say but it was >entertaining Karl: no dude she sounds cool tfw no interesting bipolar relatives to amuse me with personal anecdotes I feel like my family is incapable of engaging with their past retroactively like that which I mean I don’t know how useful that really is I think we applaud it because it’s something we do regularly so we think that anyone who thinks that way is in our league but yeah I’m the most schizo person in my family so I guess I’m the talkative winey aunt of my family >h-haha only instead of talking about how fulfilling my formative years were Carter: when she was our age she was definitely like a loose, artsy girl Karl: I talk about how I wasted the most constructive years of my life Carter: the type of girl that would wear overalls, smoke cigs, and listen to Courtney Barnett Karl: dude your aunt sounds like my ideal gf Carter: and then would go to concerts seem disinterested the whole time she made me feel like such a pleb Karl: >Courtney Barnett I USED TO HATE MYSELF BUT NOW I THINK Carter: because I kind of thought people had to fall into certain cliques and I put myself in the “smart kid with no social life” bracket which I was okay with Karl: I’M ALRIGHT dude I used to listen to that song Carter: because I literally remember justifying it to myself >this will be worth it because I’m going to get into a really good college Karl: and when she said that I used to think ME TOO but now it’s more like Carter: but it turns out the actually smart kids were maxing out on grades while maintaining a healthy social life Karl: >I used to think I’m alright but now I hate myself which is way less melodic tbh yeah man why did I think being totally void of personality was a good social move Carter: yeah that’s more accurate than the actual lyric lmao dude my aunt called me “demure” which is just a polite way of saying “bland as fuck” Karl: our aversion to people whose entire personality was built entirely on trends conditioned us to avoid people who were outgoing Carter: “you leave no impression on anyone” Karl: and that resulted in us becoming socially incompetent losers like I’m physically six foot but socially I’m 5’2 because I act today the same way I did in 7th grade for us, interacting with people is just a hurdle we have to jump so we can get back to our rooms, sit at our desks, and jerk off Carter: why is it that whenever we’re in a public forum we huddle in the corner and pretend we’re invisible but if it’s a just like four or five people Karl: dude when we get intimidated, we just shut-off it’s a huge mental block Carter: we’re super talkative like it doesn’t matter who they are they could be strangers and you and me would still dominate the conversation Karl: yeah but that’s bad dude we’re way to punchy and spastic, we need to chill out Carter: yeah and we talk about ourselves way too much Karl: it’s impossible for us to be civil and just have just a normal conversation with people dude I KNOW and dude I talk to everyone with the same dismissive, casual tone it’s awful I’m never gonna get a JOB Carter: yeah having that jaded tone while talking to people gives off that “I don’t give a fuck” persona but we’re not actually like that Karl: and the problem is I got so much positive reinforcement for treating other people like they’re not special at all dude all the time my friend will introduce me to a girl and then he’ll walk away and it’ll just be me and her talking and she’ll say >“I love how you talk to me the same way you talk to your friends” and dude people like it because they think we’re not ashamed of being ourselves, that no matter the circumstances we’re not gonna change who we are and if you don’t like it I don’t care but that’s not it at all eventually you realize “oh it’s not that he’s unapologetically himself all the time, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to express affection or any other emotions organically” and the novelty wears off Carter: jesus lmao I hate how accurate that is dude in high school your voice was so deep and the only other kids that sounded like that were the kids the smoked weed Karl: yeah I know everyone thought I smoked weed Carter: and you were like laid back and into music Karl: dude this is how retarded I was I didn’t even realize that everyone around me was baked all the time like dude it wasn’t until like my fucking senior year that Rayan invited me to go smoke with them before band practice and they told me that they’ve been doing this like every week for four years and I didn’t even smoke with them then because I was an anxious and neurotic melvin four eyes Carter: even if I could go back in time and talk to my high school self and be like >“dude listen, when you get older you’re really going to regret that your whole high school experience was nothing about worrying about grades and jerking off” Karl: dude honestly our biggest mistake was not smoking weed in high school Carter: he wouldn’t even take it seriously he would just be like “yeah I know lmao” there was no saving me Karl: like I don’t wanna say that smoking weed makes you cool but honestly it does Carter: if I ever write an autobiography I’m gonna skip the first eighteen years of my life Karl: the only thing I’m proud of from high school is my yearbook quote it was literally “I’m ready” attributed to Spongebob Carter: nothing notable happened during then and the person I was then has nothing to do with the person I am now lel god I wish I had done something funny like that my yearbook quote was a fucking John Green quote I thought I was smart so I thought my yearbook quote had to be something like serious and meaningful Karl: tbh I’ve kind of just always thought I sucked Carter: which honestly just makes it way cringier because I used a John Green quote as if John Green was some venerated sage whose writings are dense with wisdom no he writes shitty YA lit Karl: we’re just contrarians man the last thing you or me wants to do is be reduced to simple pleasures like reading on the train or sipping hot coffee at our desk we just don’t ever want to enjoy wagie life too much because that feels so much like giving in to everything Carter: 99% of my life could probably be edited out and then the story of my life would just be a six minute video essay on youtube about getting tomed and listening to music that gets demonetized because it mentions kratom Karl: and it means fully admitting to ourselves that our dreams of being any type of artist will never actually happen we’d rather get tomed and cycle through King Gizz’s entire oeuvre than go to some normie bar with our coworkers and spend thirty dollars on two vodka sodas Carter: dude Tao Lin published his first book of poetry when he was 24 I need to at least stay on pace with Tao Lin Karl: our ideal lives would be us just mooching off our rich friends where they support us financially and all we do is fiddle around all day toming and smoking and trying to be creative Mac Demarco was 24 when he released salad days Carter: if I cant even do that Karl: which means he did all od that OTHER shit BEFORE that Carter: kms yeah that would be perfect because their autism makes them really proficient at building robots but it also makes them socially inept so maybe they’d be so starving for human interaction they wouldn’t even mind paying for everything for us dude listen to a clear distinction between my aunt’s power level and mine Karl: dude it’s so fucked how we feel a kinship with actual creative types just because we’re into unpopular shit and australian prog rock Carter: she started talking about Richard Yates and when she says Richard Yates she thinks about the acclaimed American author of Revolutionary Road but when I hear Richard Yates the first thing I think of is a Tao Lin novel yeah I know Karl: tfw Tao Lin is for people like us who wear the same hoodie every day Carter: I like to pretend that within the heavily distracted mind of a kratom addicted esthete is an embryo of genius but in reality I’m just a substandard fuck-up Karl: yeah man fuck you lel our whole lives have just revolved around grades and classes and not getting in trouble we never actually explored our interests until NOW and we’re like 23 and it’s honestly too late for us to even start we’re OLD Carter: dude it actually makes me feel bad when my mom or someone tells me I’m smart or capable or something like my aunt said a bunch of stuff like that today >“you have a good head on your shoulders” like I’m sensible and have good judgment but it’s like in college man I made so many bad decisions and got in so much trouble for just doing dumb shit without thinking when she said that I couldn’t help but like roll my eyes because she really has no idea what she’s talking about she’s just projecting because she really wants to believe that I’m gifted and prudent but it’s like >lmao >no Karl: my family doesn’t really dump compliments on me like that but I know they think I’m the one who should be the most successful because I got a high SAT score and got a scholarship to high school but they’re just setting themselves up for disappointment like I lost that scholarship lmao and a high SAT grade doesn’t translate into anything in real life all it is is for bragging if you do well Carter: but that’s the kind of thing any sensible person would like to hear but I do NOT it makes me feel BAD Karl: god dude every cool or proud memory I have is punctuated by anxiety or shame that even going through all the highlights of my life just makes me wish I was a different person Carter: that pathetic feel man I can’t wait to just get home and get tomed I’m going to read the sound and the fury because my aunt was talking about it and I said I read it but all I did was cram the sparknotes before class so I feel guilty Karl: based Faulkner Carter: because she definitely read the whole thing probably more than once the way she was talking about it like she definitely hasn’t touched it in years but she could like refer to specific lines on specific pages as if she just finished it the other day and it’s like I cant even remember the name of the guy from catch 22 Karl: cmon man Yossarian lel Carter: but dude Karl: >me being smug about that even though catch 22 is one of the few books I’ve finished in the last seven years Carter: trying to think back on a book from high school which was only like 5 or 6 years ago all of those books I barely even feel like I read in the first place because I was not giving them the attention they deserved Karl: I actually really have a problem of not finishing all the books I start man like Carter: so it all just kind’ve blends together Karl: I STILL havent finished blood meridian Carter: it’d be impossible for me to sit down right now and write an essay on any one book but man I bet you my aunt could write a lengthy, beautiful essay on a book she read 20 years ago and it would be so detailed and accurate you’d think she WROTE the book Karl: I could maybe write something on Paradise Lost actually no I definitely couldn’t Carter: dude at this point blood meridian is a lost cause Karl: thinking about sitting down and having to construct an essay like that gives me a headache immediately I’m so glad I’m never going to have to write any papers like that ever again Carter: finishing it now just to finish it is pointless and does the book no justice you should honestly start it over if you actually want to read it Karl: writing philosophy papers in college was actually pretty fun >because I knew I was GOOD AT IT yeah I know I definitely won’t though I probably won’t even finish it tbh I’ll probably just sit here Carter: I at least want to make a dent in the sound and the fury tonight Karl: get TOMED and listen to salad days demos Carter: because it probably wont ever come up in conversation again but I at least want to get to the point she assumed I was at when I said that I had read it Karl: dude Faulkner is to Hemingway the way King Gizz is to Tame Impala where there’s a rivalry just because people always compare them Hemingway and Tame Impala are both entry level and Faulkner and King Gizz are complex and prolific Carter: Faulkner is an absolute mad man like this first part is from the perspective of a retarded guy and obviously Faulkner knew it’d be confusing for people to read and a lot of people would probably drop the book before they even got to the second part which is the Quentin Compson part dude my aunt said something like >a guy like you probably relates a lot to Quentin Compson but Quentin Compson is a 22 year old suicidal virgin so what did she mean by this Karl: LEL Faulkner was a manlet so you know he understands socially inept neets like us Carter: there’s no better feeling than unsheathing your bag of tome after a long day of wanting to kill yourself oh and dude guess where my aunt used to hang out Karl: where Carter: the thirsty memer Karl: wtf did you tell her that that is our shitty meet up point that we go to way too often Carter: or she’s at least has been there a few times the way she described it made it sound like she went there a lot Karl: and that one time I got laid by playing darts badly with a girl Carter: she was talking about meeting this douchebag she hates there once I think she was sitting right across from the picture of Bill Murray that’s behind the bar no dude I didn’t say anything for some reason I feel awkward acknowledging that I go to bars and drink in front of my family Karl: >douchebag she hates do you think they pumped Carter: lel I don’t know maybe she talked a lot about that guy and how he was just a huge dick in general Karl: >Bill Murray dude did you tell her about that theory with like Carter: but it was weird she kept saying how he’s probably old and alone now and she felt bad for him Karl: Pynchon and Bill Murray that’s probably gonna be me tbh if I don’t kill myself and actually end up growing old Carter: oh that’s just from an old thread on lit where this guy who just keeps posting pictures of bill murray presents these theories about Shakespeare’s identity, Finnegans Wake, CoL49 and then he has all these insane anecdotes about playing pool with Pynchon at a gas station or something and he’s really tongue and cheek about his identity that he’s just bill murray the running assumption is that it was Pynchon making all those posts and it’s really weird that there’s this unexplained picture of Bill Murray prominently displayed behind the bar at a cheap Irish bar on the lower east side so I think Pynchon designed this whole thing because he’s looking for his protege he made those posts and then put that picture of Bill Murray there and now is waiting for the right person to put all the pieces together it’s actually perfect because in Bleeding Edge Pynchon makes fucking Kojima jokes I bet browsing was literally how he conducted research for that book those posts were from 2010 he was definitely writing BE then Karl: dude it would be so sick if we brought it up to the bartender and then were escorted to an underground hidden chamber where Pynchon and a talking bandana possessed by the ghost of David Foster Wallace were hanging out, smoking weed and listening to dopesmoker and they congratulate us and invite us to sit down with them and we introduce ourselves and then I pull a bag out of my backpack and say >”Have you guys ever heard of kratom?” Carter: god >you will never casually discuss music and literature with Pynchon over a couple of joints why haven’t I killed myself yet dude actually at one point my aunt started talking about Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse Karl: >Hesse based german literature Carter: we have to read that book man Karl: god I’m such a pleb why haven’t I read Goethe Carter: it’s about this depressed guy that knows one day he’s going to kill himself Karl: I waste all my time playing fucking video games and then when I finally decide to sit down and read I pick shitty American lit when I should be reading something patrician Carter: but because he knows that that’s going to happen it makes him want to make the most of his life Karl: like RILKE or Lessing Carter: doesnt that sound exactly like us like we think about killing ourselves all the time and we’re pissed off that we havent done anything worthwhile Karl: we do talk about killing ourselves a lot that’s definitely not good Carter: and that’s making us want to do something creative, get something out there with our name on it as soon as possible my aunt said that if you don’t take risks you’re letting your life live itself for you our whole lives all we’ve been doing is avoiding risks because we’re too afraid to make a decision and bind ourselves to something we might not like Karl: yeah man and it only takes a few minutes of job searching to realize >“wow there’s no job out there that I actually want to do” everything good about being a neet is undone by us still living with our parents I wish we just had some shitty apartment in queens if we were just on our own man so much of our pent up frustration would just melt away Carter: it’d honestly be such a relief to actually live like that that’s the way two dudes in their twenties who don’t have anything figured our about their lives SHOULD live Karl: dude we’re delusional we think if we lived on our own that would unlock something and all of a sudden we would spend all our free time pursuing creative interests but dude that wouldn’t happen we’d just be really stressed out about money because we don’t have any stable income like I have all this free time right now and all I do is blast king gizz jerk off and message you about wanting to die Carter: and then self-medicate with tome so that we can withdraw and feel indifferent to our lives that are not going anywhere we want Karl: man we are so SPOILED Carter: the second we think about doing something cool like devoting ourselves to being artists, we feel the need to correct ourselves and get “““““realistic””””” because we know that getting a regular job is really the smartest thing to do because it’s secure and guarantees us at least a semi-comfortable life but I know if I don’t even try to be a writer the “what if’s” are gonna haunt me for the rest of my life so even though there are a ton of options for what I could do with my life I can’t permit myself to consider anything unorthodox as an actual possibility for me so it feels like there’s no way to avoid my life being miserable Karl: before I was just sitting here listening to Firth of Fifth in the dark and like at the three minute mark when it became that mysterious, contemplative melody I was imagining myself standing on like the edge of the Williamsburg bridge like on the outer trellis with the crisscrossing I-beams ready to just plunge into the water and never resurface I’m there staring down at the water and behind me there are a bunch of cop cars with like the red and blue lights flashing and there is like somebody with a megaphone calling out to me trying to reel me back in and there’s a helicopter with a spotlight pointed at me and for a second I actually think “I can’t actually kill myself what am I thinking” and I start to walk back and the people are relieved but then when the four minute mark hits, and the song changes and starts ramping up to a climax I stop walking and think “wait, why am I letting other people decide what I do with my life” and I start backing up and the guy with the megaphone is saying something and then I turn around and sprint towards the edge of the bridge and right when the music explodes into a happy celebration that’s when I leap off the side and go cascading through the air to my death Carter: there was this part she said where Steppenwolf who I was picturing as being like a demon or something until I looked it up he was getting ready to hang out with people and he was dreading every second of it all he wanted to do was stay home that reminded me so much of Courtney Barnett lyric >SHOULD’VE STAYED IN BED TODAY >I MUCH PREFER THE MUNDANE Karl: neither one of those things are actually helping us progress towards where we want to be in life I’m literally just sitting here looking up guitar tabs for king gizz song it sounds like I’m being productive but dude it’s seriously like becoming a musical artist has almost nothing to with actually being good there are so many people who play guitar way better than me and they get less than zero recognition for it it’s literally all chance, that hopefully your hat will get picked up from the ring but I don’t even know how to get my hat into the ring in the first place Carter: yeah man that’s exactly how I feel my aunt read me like parts of books and all of them were so incredible I was thinking that there’s no way I could ever write something deeply provocative or that powerful and there are definitely a ton of people who write all the time, who can express their ideas so freely on the page and have interesting techniques to cluster and present information in engaging and intriguing ways it makes me think what chance do I have of really standing out Karl: it’s not even like we don’t have drive or ambition we really aren’t lazy but it just feels like even when we finally are ready to change our lives in a big way, it ends up involving months and months of waiting for anything to happen and it hardly feels worth it 90% of doing something is actually just sitting around doing nothing even on days when I’m really productive and got a lot of stuff done, it doesn’t feel satisfying at all it just feels like I wasted the day Carter: even my aunt man, she was talking about how she had had literary aspirations and she had written some stuff here and there but never finished them or fleshed them out into anything significant she’s read infinitely more books than I have and she must spend every minute of every day thinking about those books and just writing in general I bet the things she wrote were insanely good but that’s just how it is man Karl: tfw those people are the real artists who like don’t even want glory who just make music for the direct joy and happiness it brings to their own life Carter: yeah our idea of artistic creation is perverted because it hinges on financial stability and recognition like if I write a book but it doesn’t get published in my head it won’t really feel like I wrote a book and dude I have like a bunch of stories that I just haven’t finished for some reason which is so bad like it’s never going to be perfect, but I just need to declare it done so I can move on Karl: yeah it’s better to release a shitty album and then start on the next one thinking >“This one is going to be way better” than to abandon it when you find you’re still unsatisfied with it or to just keep working on it and working on it for an indeterminate amount of time, expecting that there will be one day where you’re entirely satisfied with it and don’t want to change or add anything because that’s never going to happen just like listening to something over and over again or staring at something for a long enough time it just gets stale you’re never going to be able to look at it with fresh eyes and have the experience of taking it all in for the first time that you want other people to have but it’s hard because you don’t want to purposely put something on your record that you know isn’t that good everyone wants to be like that genius artist where everything they produce is gold plated diamond studded and especially if its your first record you want it to be really memorable memorable for all the right reasons or something that people go back and discover after your third record gets some acclaim but wanting everything accredited to you to be perfect puts so much pressure on yourself we gotta curb our egos man it’s the only way we’re going to make it like the first book you write is not going to be as good as V. the first album I write is not going to be as good as Nonagon Infinity but that’s OKAY Carter: dude my aunt said she never ended up writing anything because she didn’t want to put her name on something that later on she’d think was be embarrassed of and thought was like mediocre she didn’t want to just write something regular because she knew that if she just put in the time she could turn it into something really poetic and interesting but it’s like dude nothing’s gonna hold up as much as you think it will even Pynchon in Slow Learner is embarrassed by the stories he wrote in college but that’s just part of it making anything you have to idk dude it’s weird how like if you make something you like you’re actually kind of fucked because then you just don’t want to ruin it and then anything you add just detracts from it so you so then you can’t do anything my aunt wanted to write like intellectual stuff which I think just means putting a lot of pointless allusions to things people don’t know about so you can feel very smart and chuckle when people read it and don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about Karl: that’s retarded but fashionable because people won’t admit they don’t understand it and your aunt wants to be in the position where she can be like >“Oh well explain it to me if you understand it then” and then they’ll squirm and she’ll feel ingratiated that’s why music is better than books man everyone knows “““““intellectual””””” music is garbage but people take intellectual books really seriously Carter: dude no like the sound and the fury people think it’s scholarly because it has a lot of Shakespeare and bible references but that’s wrong it’s scholarly because of the way Quentin Compson’s thoughts are delivered it demands that the reader do extra work to figure out the new form the text is taking on, how it relates to the initial form of the text, and why this distinction is necessary and all of that, understanding the book, is a mental exercise that has a lot more to offer than thom yorke moaning for 6 hours and then playing one note for eight measures from every instrument in alphabetical order Karl: >thom yorke who is the radiohead of literature Tao Lin? Carter: lel well if Faulkner is the King Gizz of literature then dude no Tao Lin is definitely like Animal Collective Karl: >dude >PSYCHEDELICS >lmao Carter: yeah basically but dude we gotta just start putting stuff out there we’re not always gonna have the urge to create like we do now and we’re taking it for granted and wasting it we need to take full advantage of our YOUTHFUL Karl: yeah Carter: AMBITION Karl: honestly we should just make a shitty album as fast as we can and you should write a cringey YA fiction book and then we just release them that way our reputations as artists are completely soiled before we even have a chance to develop them and then society as a whole will have given up on us and we will have absolutely no pressure on us to be geniuses or really make a difference and we’ll be able to make stuff we like freely and easily without thinking we’re going to be letting ourselves down and then ironically enough we’ll start producing stuff that’s actually good Carter: lel that’s not really how we think man we’d release those shitty things and then we’d be so embarrassed that people would read it and bring it up to us and then we’d feel even MORE pressure from OURSELVES to create something good people completely overlook the first thing and we’d stagnate completely Karl: dude if we spent half as much time actually working on stuff as we do talking about working on stuff we would have written like three albums by now Carter: lel that’s like from the german DFW interview where all those reaction faces are from where he’s like >I spend about 6 or 7 hours thinking about writing for every hour that I spend actually writing Karl: >DFW tfw you will never go to the AVN Awards, write Infinite Jest, and then kill yourself Carter: now that’s a feel Karl: we could live in queens or brooklyn south of prospect park like parkside avenue or even we could try all the way uptown on the upper east side like on 1st ave far from the train Carter: I want to get out of this city man I have only been to like a handful of states and I’ve never even been outside the fucking country Karl: same well, I’ve seen a lot of states but the only time I left the country was to go to Canada which was shitty and doesn’t even really count because we didn’t go on a plane Carter: my aunt quoted this guy who said travelling was the only way to learn so I guess by his standards I’m functionally retarded because I’ve never been anywhere she was saying how she still wanted to see new places even though she was like >it’s too late but I doubt she really wanted to do like poor, scavenger type travelling like backpacking where its really a lot more about the journey and surviving and not so much a vacation I mean it’s a vacation but like it’s not supposed to be relaxing Karl: yeah man and if we were gonna travel that’s the way we would do it Carter: it sounded like she just wanted sit on the beach and be pampered Karl: we’d stay at cheap hostels eat cheap food Carter: she mentioned going on the trans-siberian railroad Karl: like the premade wraps at the grocery store and stuff dude we’ve got to go to eastern europe Carter: but I don’t think she realizes that that means you literally live on a train for multiple days Karl: and just do a tour through the Balkans Carter: and she would not be able to handle that even that’s too rugged for her Karl: and then head to Germany dude Germany would be perfect they have the Goethe monument for you and the WIENERSCHNITZEL for ME YES Carter: god man I would love to see Berlin man isn’t it so depressing Karl: yeah what are you talking about Carter: that for us, a trip like that would be the adventure of a lifetime a week or like ten days seeing the bottom half of Europe getting lost in the streets meeting locals and other travellers from even more distant parts of the world we would talk about that trip for the rest of our lives there are people our age who aren’t just talking about it they’re actually DOING it RIGHT NOW why isn’t that US Karl: because our middleclass upbringing has taught us that leaving your comfort zone is irresponsible and we like the security of knowing we could do something if we felt like it more than the experience of going out and doing it we don’t want to give up the ability to maybe do anything for actually doing something Carter: dude when my aunt pointed out a small, intimate detail from a book or something just from the way she talked about it you could tell it that it really affected her that it changed the way she thought of herself and viewed the world she had so many revelations whose lifelong effects she can still ruminate on fifty years later fifty years from now I’m not going to be thinking about how listening to mac demarco while tomed at my desk fundamentally altered my worldview Karl: yeah man we are just losers who frantically stir a green opioid surrogate native to southeast asia into either coffee or tea, or grapefruit juice because the citric acid potentiates the stimulation of our mu-opioid receptors hopefully fifty years from now I’ll have been dead for 46 years Carter: trying to make the same songs we’ve listening to hundreds of times feel new again by listening to them in a different order Karl: tfw our playlists are just mac and king gizz echo chambers actually dude we’ve been pretty good lately at finding new stuff Carter: I cant even imagine how I’m gonna look back at my 22 year old self when I’m that old it’ll just be like >“I spent most of my time trying to figure out exactly why I felt so shitty when the reason I probably felt so shitty was because I spent most of my time trying to figure out why” Karl: lel “to some unstable, deeply pessimistic kid with an addictive personality who spent all his time reiterating that lsd saved his life and diagnosing himself repeatedly with various psychological disorders” Carter: actually knowing me when I’m that age I’ll probably remember that I spent a lot of time in my twenties wondering how me in my sixties would remember my twenties and I’ll probably be puzzled as to why that was such a big deal to me I’ll probably remember this exact conversation honestly I really don’t anticipate age distorting how I understand myself Karl: dude when I’m your aunt’s age I hope I’ve forgotten the way I act now imagining the old man I’m gonna become one day watching me interacting with my family at the holidays makes me want to kill myself going into a room alone and anxiously pacing in it like an absolute schizo then going out to show my face because I know if I’m gone for too long it’ll be weird my uncle saying hi to me and then me immediately dropping eye contact and scratching my fucking arms and I blame my dry skin even though it’s my timid personality more than anything dude even around my family I’m such a fucking beta my uncle asking me what I’ve been up to is enough to make me curl up like a pill bug I know they’re just asking because it’s polite they don’t actually care that’s just kind of what you do when you see your family but it’s such a waste because nothing really changes from year to year no one’s ever going to have any real exciting updates because every person’s life is stagnant as fuck including my own the most exciting thing I could report from now on is that I have a job and all they’re gonna say to that is >“Oh yeah? Doing what?” and I’m gonna say >I sit in an uncomfortable chair for seven hours a day glancing at the clock every five or so minutes and they’re gonna say >“Wow! Do you like it?” and I’m gonna say >d-didn’t you just hear what I said? Carter: lel I mean that’s better than the arrogant thing people our age do where they’ve had a job for 3 months but they talk with this phony air of professionalism like they actually have a vested interest in the company Karl: yeah man but you realize those are the people who are going to run the stock market and become CEOs Carter: >“Officially, service clients and telecommunications operators, but on a daily basis mostly what I’m doing is conducting and compiling research from various insider journals directed at industries like ours” Karl: yeah that’s literally what you have to be like Carter: it’s like alright dude, you fucking sit on excel all day like the rest of us Karl: that’s why you and me are going to be lucky to make 70k because we’re too stubborn to play that game so those guys are gonna trample all over us because it’s literally all about image Carter: I guess a lot of guys our age really do idolize the image of the white collar executive and are just really desperate to become that as soon as possible but it’s like nobody thinks a 23 year old is a cutthroat shark nobody’s impressed people just think you’re obnoxious Karl: dude why the fuck do we idolize trashy, slacker musicians from the commonwealth and suicidal and reclusive authors from the tri-state area our image of success is totally warped because of that Carter: god dude we are such fucking frauds my aunt had an interesting, adventurous life that just made her more cosmopolitan by nature and it feels like we should be that way since we got an expensive education like we’ve been engineered to be high brow or not even high brow just well-informed and intelligent enough to take an interest in like world affairs and contemporary art but we don’t pay any attention to any of that stuff all we really care about is pushing headphones deep into our ears and pumping music directly into our heads Karl: dude it’s whatever being ordinary is sick instead of taking vacations to like Europe or something we’ll just take more tome and go on a mental vacation at our desks where our thoughts become a movie montage and the soundtrack is king gizz it’s a million times cheaper and equally as relaxing Carter: you’ve got to be joking man it’s not about relaxing it’s about finally maturing actually becoming independent by putting ourselves in a situation where we have to be my aunt talked about feeling trapped in New York at our age Karl: dude no wonder you’re anxious all the time Carter: she felt constricted and like she couldn’t accomplish anything she wanted to by being here Karl: you’ve gotten into the habit of using theoretical scenarios to willingly overwhelm yourself Carter: which dude that’s how WE feel and then she said when she finally went to Europe she felt like life opened up and for the first time she felt like she could do whatever she wanted Karl: it honestly doesn’t make any sense that we feel so restricted by nyc literally the only reason why we feel like that is because we still live with our parents like dude I bet you if we got a shitty apartment on the lower east side tomorrow we would start to love new york we don’t need to fly to some far away country to find ourselves we just need to MOVE OUT Carter: that’s definitely part of it but man idk I feel like still being in this city dude there’s not a corner of this city where we haven’t had some weird story or bad memory that occurs to us the second we’re somewhere familiar Karl: yeah that’s true Carter: and it’s inescapable man like I don’t think I will ever be able to walk by the Angelika without thinking of going on a date once there in high school I’ll never be able to walk around the upper east side without thinking about how we used to go into central park up there and drink beers on the rocks near the baseball fields our embarrassing lives are splattered all over every inch of manhattan we need to get out just so we aren’t constantly reminded of the thousands of missed chances, wasted nights, and retarded decisions we’ve made like dude there are so many stops on so many trains that we used to go to all the time and when I get off on them now I can’t help but remember the thousands of juvenile incidents that started with me getting off at those stops and I don’t think that’s ever gonna go away
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