Dishevelled With A Purpose
What is the allure of appearing to struggle?
Without going too deep, to begin with, let’s start with the aesthetics. Baggy clothes and unkempt hair. Tired eyes and odd socks. Something else to make this a list of three. This stuff doesn’t annoy me; it’s more that the appeal of it confuses me. See, I also want to look like I don’t care. In fact, recently, I remembered my hair is curly if I let it dry. Oh, what a find! It looks like I’ve slept in! Had to rush out of bed! But here I am, ready to do whatever the fuck I’m here to do without any visible vanity. ‘Cool kids never have the time’ Don’t get me wrong, some people genuinely do not care about the way they look, and I applaud them for that. However, I’m going to guess that the majority of people definitely do. Because let us not lie here, yea, you look so carefree, but you look carefree in a rigorous, deliberate way. So is it the hidden vanity that appeals us to the working-class aesthetic, or is it something else?
The Struggle.
My bank account is empty, and I’m rummaging through a massive Smirnoff Vodka bottle money bank to filter out some piss-soaked twenty pence to buy a bag of Himalayan tobacco. Who pissed in the bottle? Who knows! But boy, did they have my respect.
I want to be the struggling artist or, most likely, the failing artist. For all my money to be hurdled at my craft. Doesn’t matter what I look like because I have shit to do. For my room to be war-torn, for my mental state to be a disaster. It isn’t ambivalence; it’s caring about one thing. One overbearing passion that detoxifies your ego. Be Howard Roark.
However, the reality of the struggling artist may be horrific. Stand-up comedians constantly talk about the decades of poor living before they make it. Their art only became passable by the five-year mark. Writers gaining success after their umpteenth book or even, more romantically, after their death. Although, take Bradley Cooper’s character in Limitless, for example. At the start, he’s a failing author losing interest in his own description of the book he’s working on as he talks to some girl at a pub. Is it pathetic, though? I mean, traditionally, I suppose he is 100% definitely a loser wee cunt!!!!! So the film continues blah blah blah turns out at the end he doesn’t need the smart pills he has been taking, the genius and productivity was apparently always inside him. There he is, though, clean-shaven in a fucking suit. Is that what happens to the great struggling artist? They just become another vain suit man? Vanity on show, I remind you.
It’s like the cliche ‘it’s not about the finishing line. It’s about the journey or whatever the fuck it is. Maybe that actually holds up. How many bands, artists, comedians etc. etc., do you know that were previously great, became famous and then utter pish?
Ultimately, success is just being able to get by whilst doing your passion. To actually check the price of the food you're buying. Putting on a jumper instead of turning on the heating. Stealing plastic bags from supermarkets- you like that, don’t you? Theft whilst harming the environment. As long as you have a passion that somewhat pays the bills? Fuck it, you’ve won.
You don’t have to be great; just be good. Making it is doing it. If you’re shite? Man, realise it quickly because the love for the struggling artist is very fragile.
Either be ‘Dishevelled With A Purpose’ or put on that suit. I know what one I want to be. Money is fucking great, though…and what if you don’t have a passion?
Cheers