Every time I pick myself back up on my feet this year someone else tackles me. They don't even wait for the snap to begin another dogpile. I just needed time to heal. I was borderline manic at the beginning of this month because a single punch was finally pulled. I was too caught up in missing the right hook that I didn't see the uppercut coming. Then the stressors of this month came out with the lead pipes to keep me on the concrete. People took all my goodwill and ran but I would have given it to them anyways. I have emotional maturity. I'm an adult; I'm not an animal. I can set my self-interest aside and recognize my wants aren't always what's right. I didn't have to be robbed and abandoned. That may sound like a victim complex and maybe it is but I would never treat a human being how I have been.

I tried to overcompensate with accomplishments. I was treated so worthlessly I thought if I could do things I didn't think possible of myself then I could be worth something. I couldn't prove it to myself let alone anyone else. It's desperate and sad. "Look, Dad! Are you proud of me?" I threw myself head first into writing this book, going harder than I ever have before, and didn't leave myself with the capacity for another calamity. I was naive enough to think the clouds had parted and life could go back to its boring self.  I thought I was finally being given the peace of mind to make such a commitment. Again, I was wrong.

So, for once this year, I'm just going to take the L with some semblance of grace. There's no time for a comeback this season. I've been shut out. I've got crutches under each arm; I don't even have a best foot to put forward anymore. I've been disfigured to the point where I'm no longer presentable. I'm going to accept that if I'm going to finish the marathon of this book, I need to be patient with myself. I need to let the fractures heal. I need to get the heck off the field and train harder than I ever have before so that next season I'll be ready. Right now, though, I need to accept that there's no gap for me to pass through. I'm not being given the opportunity to succeed. I'm not being given the opportunity to be happy or carefree. I've been trying to get off the bench all year but they simply won't have me on the field. (There are, like, 10 mixed football metaphors in this rant. Sorry.) After all the damage I've accumulated, I'm now walking around like I've been concussed. The only opportunity I'm being given is to get hurt even more. I'm not wanted here. I'm not needed. I need rest and recovery and I can get back to work when the time is right. 

​It's been a difficult year. Things have been bad for a long time and they never got an easier. It was the first time I ever felt life wasn't worth it. I have been on a journey to find a life worth living but so far I've only made wrong turns into dead ends. I've been grasping at straws to make sense of everything. "Oh, I worked on this project, so, it was all worth it!" "I had to go through that to be here." Every attempt has resulted in failure. It is frankly desperate and pathetic. I can't even take an L with grace. Hope dried up a long time ago and any bit I'm drip-fed sends me manic. Does someone like that even deserve good news? 

But I'm training myself to be grateful for the lessons learned the hard way. The rational side of my mind says that's masochistic. The student of Joseph Campbell in me says this is all a test I need to pass. I'm trying to find meaning in the suffering. I'm trying to use the pressure to strengthen myself. I just have to keep pushing forward in the faith that someday I will be thankful for all of this, that someone else will be thankful for me. Right now that doesn't seem likely but I'm going to keep doing my best and work to forgive my failures. 

"Of This World" in Funeral Gallery was originally titled "Gratitude." I cut most of the plot in favor of an ending more appropriate for the collection. (Brendan driving towards an unknown future with a ghost of his past riding shotgun.) It originally was to end with him finding purpose in helping others and enriching the lives of those around him in his new environment. 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d3k7lBdMXQY9b2MnVwXR-1WLbJn2yao1bMdE2qtDZEE/edit

If you read this, or anything I've written, I am grateful for you. If you've already given up on me, I don't blame you and I am doing my best to prove you wrong.

"yes I said yes I will Yes"
-the final lines of James Joyce's Ulysses​

I acknowledge and am aware of the fact that all of the self-improvement and the journey I have set out on while writing this novel is a massive cope. (What's the deal with that? Is it performance art? What do all these radical changes have to do with writing a fiction book? Good art should be transformative. If I want to write a book with the aspiration of changing readers' lives, I have to let the book change my own life. The book is my life now.) Behind all the accomplishments is tremendous sadness and fear. Tonight has been one of those nights in which the doubt and reality has sunken in. I appreciate nights like tonight. The most hopeless nights are the most important. Doing your best while feeling your lowest is to walk in faith. I'm thankful for the doubt and fears of the future, now. They remind me of what's at stake if I make the wrong choices in life. If I sit back and wait for everything I've ever wanted to fall into my lap, my worst nightmares will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. And in many ways, I'm already living out my own personal Hell, so, my misfortune has blessed me with newfound fearlessness. 

Every step towards an uncertain future hurts. I have to make peace with the pain. My trauma is a part of me. I accept my rejection. I'm thankful for my losses. I can collaborate with my struggle. It is a part of my story and I need to own it. You shouldn't be resentful toward challenges. Life has given me no choice but to strive for greatness. I'll either be a complete success or a total failure. I can't afford to settle. Mediocrity was never an option. I can make an origin story out of my regretful past. I need to look at existence with all the baggage and difficulties and still say yes to life, enthusiastically. Not only that but I need to be thankful for all the trouble because it will make me stronger. 2023 was resistance training.* I can be a better provider for those in my life who is more patient, more generous, more understanding, more kind. I can make sure I never make anyone else ever feel like I had to in order to get here. 

I know all this seems wholly self-involved and narcissistic but I'm not doing it for me. I don't want to live for myself. I want to enrich the lives of others. I wasn't put on Earth to age alone in my bedroom. I owe the world the best version of myself. I need to show the people who stuck around through my rough patch this year that I was worth the investment. The people in my life deserve the best of me, not excuses. I hope this motivates other people, to see me publicly eat dirt all year and then pick myself back up from it. I'm not special. 

​The world deserves the book that I'm writing. I had been slowly whittling away at it the last five years when I had a Field of Dreams moment. God, or fate, my ego (whichever you prefer) was, like, "You haved to write this book. You need t make these changes in order to get what you want out of life." And I thought, "OK." 

*I wrote this line that doesn't fit the vibe of this post but I'm too indulgent not to include it somewhere: Fourth quarter of the year and I'm trying to score. (That's a three-way pun. That was a normal pun. Hit 'em with a right hook, then an uppercut.)

Ugh, I'm sorry. I'm stupid and repeat the same mistakes and repeat the same mistakes. I've been doing a creative experiment in preparation for the football book I'm organizing and wanted to see if someone can at once be both their best and their worst selves. I hadn't drank alone since August (once on the anniversary of my friend's passing but I think calling that drinking alone is a matter of perspective) as a rule and gave myself one week at the end of October, after realizing my best self, to put myself back to my worst. I wanted to do it just to show myself I could bounce back and as a reminder that I prefer a healthier lifestyle. And I did. It was fun but I prefer running and reading to drinking and gaming. I actually prefer studying and writing my book. That can be fun every now and again but it got old years ago. I just think drinking should be for celebration and alone time should be spent bettering oneself. I have too much I wanna do to waste my nights listening to hyperpop and replaying platformers. 

I always say that art is like alchemy, you turn shit into gold. You can make a negative experience into something beautiful. I felt like if I wanted my "Runaway" I needed my VMAs moment. I needed to feel intense shame and embarrassment and carry that weight while working on this book. So, I put myself through pretty intense what I would consider "emotional torture," just getting in the ring with my worst self every night, confronting every insecurity and regret I've collected thus far in life. I told myself the last week in October that it would be the last time I would ever let those feelings hold me back and after that week was up, I could never use them as an excuse again.
​I had a rule to drunk post as much as possible. Be obnoxious, say things I'll wake up to regret. I'm writing about high conflict, aggressive people, so, I wanted to start fights. I felt like in order to write about such themes I myself needed to be a controversial figure. I asked to be "cancelled" (Nobody knows or cares about me. What would they cancel? lol.) and threw a lot of shade. My approach was that of the only person in the room with nothing to lose because they already took everything I cared about away from me. I do feel that way but feel that energy can be channeled in a healthy direction. I needed all my worst nightmares to come true in order to become fearless. I told myself and others it was performance art and that is true but it's also self-destructive. The tortured artist bit only works if you're talented. I can embarrass myself well enough without trying. I have enough guilt and shame for a lifetime as it is. People aren't an audience; they're people. I proved my point: I'm capable of accomplishing things both greater and worse than I thought possible and it's my responsibility to make the right choice. I put my worst foot forward and tripped and fell--twice in two weeks, once while black out drunk and the other time while jogging. I can make people laugh and I can make them worry. 

But I don't want to cause concern. I want to be someone who relieves stress, not provokes it. I want to do my best all the time. My goal was to inflict a lot of shame upon myself so I could better relate to the characters in my book and I certainly did that. I gave myself one week and then another day (due to celebrating getting great news) to see what damage I could cause and it was more than enough for me. Now I get to take that all that shit and try to make something of it. 

I'm posting this now, on 11/04/2023, but will refrain from sharing it with anyone until at least a week from now, once I've proven I stayed true to all this. If I don't, please, cancel me.
EDIT: I did update this with an additional sentence or two.

​In 2020, when I was writing Honest Work, lockdowns had caused my anxiety to come back and I developed pretty severe agoraphobia. I was afraid somethingnwould happen to me where I couldn't finish this book I had been working on since, like, college. I had to get on medication and that evened me out to the point where I could finish it. My biggest fear was dying I a car accident, something I'd written about since freshman year of college and the manner in which I had just killed off a character I'd been writing for nearly 10 years.
I was then put on another medication which had me sleeping basically any hour of the day I wasn't working and dissociative pretty much all the time. I could rarely drive because I felt too tired to do so safely. Then other times I'd be up all night tossing and turning in pain (as everyone I knew made fun of me for gaining weight on medication that causes 50% of people to do so and as I was practically bedridden from it.) Turned out, I had a diagnosis which was undiagnosed that causes specific and severe symptoms from said medication. So, I got off thst.
With my mind and health restoring in October 2021, I started writing what would come to be known as Funeral Gallery. Instead of handwriting or typing it in a Word file, I opened my own website and typed it up as a public to view Google Doc. I started a timeline of the updates, ala patch notes in a video game. I did so that I could live with peace of mind that if anything would happen to me out of my control, my work would be somewhere for anyone that cared. I was in two very minor car accidents that month and two other much more traumatic things happened that month that aren't my stories to tell but affect me to this day.
I really wanted to explore my own fears in the book, particularly that of my mortality and a lot of the book is about people grieving. One unused title for the project was "Dipping My Toes Into Hellwater." I wanted to depict the characters as suffering. In Conditional Love, "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" showed how things you sued to laugh off to cope with can eventually become serious. In Honest Work, the characters were rotting from the inside out. In this book, I wanted to show them as in Hell. (If I used a mood board, that shot of Major Tom from the "Ashes to ashes" music video would have been the centerpiece.)
Slowly, it began to hit me that I was being treated as an artist and as a human being in ways I would never accept anyone else being treated. If I was not being ignored, I was being prodded and pressured into submission through emotional manipulations. The common phrase was always, "I'm worried about you" because I didn't vote for the right politician or I don't like the proper movies. And they weren't worried, because they'd never check in or just socialize, they would only publicly state their vague concern in the throes of an argument or to convince my friends to abandon me. There was always an implied, cowardly threat of my own mortality and the solution was always the same, do whatever the person speaking to me wanted of me. It was a covert Mephistopholean offer in which I could avert some implied threat for my writing career or health if only I let them dress me up.
So, I turned my death from a fear into a tool. (I dunno if everyone will understand this and I'm almost positive someone will try to use this information against me but it was a very healthy, cathartic form of art therapy is all.) I began to acknowledge that I was being treated the way people are treated before they kill themselves. If someone read that story, you'd think, "Oh, well, those people should feel guilty for treating someone that way." I realized these people probably secretly pine for my expiration so they could cash in. They could either say I was always misunderstood or they would dismiss every unpopular opinion I've ever had as a symptom of some undiagnosed disease or unpronounced struggle I may hypothetically succumb to. (I was 27 at that time and thank God I made it to 28 or else you might have to see my face on shirts worn by people who hate me.) That changed the tone.
The project was already an exploration of individual identity, with the short film, "Daniel" and the eritten themes about family and reflecting on the last self. It became a rejection. I started responding to the silence I was being given as an artist. I started publicly feuding. I changed my name, because if some people can be Crawfords, then I'll give myself a new name. I assumed the identity of 5149 (One less than 5150) and Abandonment Issues. That's who I can be now, the crazy unstable, unwanted artist. I unpublished all my previous books. I made the ending of my publishing house a public event. I wanted real stakes and actual loss to permeate this weird performance art project.
Then, I ended it. What began as me facing my fears of mortality became cathartically actualizing it by simulating the unfinished posthumous found work. The project is intentionally unedited. There are some pieces written to completion but intentionally left as notes. I wanted to portray the puzzle pieces of an unfinished project. I'm always disproving the death of the author and this was another (successful) attempt. It's called funeral Gallery because it's about people looking back on their past and trying to piece together how they wound up in such a state of being but also because the work itself is supposed to represent the gallery of photos at a funeral and thinking about someone's life leading up to that point. I didn't want to leave the project unfinished but I recognized there was no other fitting end to that era. What made it special was seeing the pencil marks and the videos of me typing up the first drafts and the timeline of updates. Editing it and publishing it as a book proper felt vulgar. Ultimately, it became about exposure therapy to my fear of not getting to finish a project but instead of dying before I get to, I will have to live with the unfinished project.
The final piece is titled, "My First Moment Was A Near Death Experience." It's the only nonfiction in the project. It's about meeting my friend's daughter and my birth.
Anyhow, I felt like some eulogy for that project was fitting, and some unedited, self-important (sober) rambling makes the most sense to me.
Now, I'm Nawteur. I write by request. My politics are what you want them to be. My opinions are yours. You didn't want Todd, so, now you can look into a mirror, because that's so clearly what you want to see.

I was out, like, a couple weeks ago, I don't fucking know, with my friend and her daughter, who I was meeting for the first time. The kid isn't fresh out the oven or anything, I just suffer from severe agoraphobia which is my excuse for being a deadbeat friend, so, a lot of connections made pre-covid have died on the vine or have reached extended family status (read: a couple times a year around the holidays). Anyhow, I was way late to welcoming her to the world or whatever and I should probably feel guilty for that, and I do feel guilty for that, so, I guess all is right in the world. 

Anyhow, we were at Applebee's (Go, Panthers.) and my friend had to get up for a moment. She asked me to stay with her daughter. I'm really bad with kids, like, really bad with kids. Being around kids made me realize that I would probably be a terrible father and should probably never have kids and that whatever illusion I entertain about ever being a parent is likely just the manifestation of daddy issues trying to self-resolve by in turn becoming my hypothetically own parent and "correcting" whatever wrongs my self-righteousness feels it was dealt developmentally.  But it's cool. What's the worst that could happen? Was her high chair gonna tip over and spill her onto the floor? (I always pronounce it, "height chair," idk why, I guess I'm just stupid.) Probably not. Due to my gross incompetence and lack of responsibility towards even myself, entrusting a child's safety to a manchild like me for even a moment is a risk but it was apparently a gamble she was willing to take, so, alright. 

So, I'm looking at this baby and she's a really cute kid. She has her mother's eyes. What really struck me, though, was that I was looking at this baby who has no idea that as long as I've known her mother (I've known my friend since 2018.) she has been wanting to have a child. This baby has no idea what hardships, struggles, and probably doubts her mother had to go through in order to have her. This baby's life was someone else's dream come true. I'm at the age where most functional (and even more dysfunctional) people have already procreated and, truth be told, there are a lotta babies that weren't exactly planned. (Way too many "Oops! I forgot to take my birth control and didn't tell you. Guess you owe me a ring!" situations for me to feel comfortable.) It was a really intense moment of realizing how valuable a human life is, not because of accomplishments or taste in music or personality, but inherently. I just kept thinking this baby has no idea yet how lucky she is to have a mother who wanted her so badly and loves her so much. 

Then it hit me, "Oh, fuck. I have one of those, too." My mom and I both nearly died when I was born. (Sorry about that, Mom. I didn't quite stick the landing with the whole "being born" thing.) I'm walking around, taking my life for granted, allowing myself to be taken advantage of for the slightest chance of approval, and somebody almost died just to make sure I was born. Then that person raised me and dealt with a lot of stuff that nobody deserves for, like, 20-some years. With that knowledge, it's really hard to just "get through the day" or accept a mediocre life. (I don't know that I believe in such a thing as a "mediocre life." Doesn't that imply that God's work is hit-or-miss and that some people's lives are like B-plots in the story of life? but in case they do exist, I don't wanna be an example of that.) It's impossible not to do my best with that pressure weighing down on me. What? I'm supposed to ease into my spot on the bench, waiting around for someone to give me a miraculous chance? And what then? I already wasted all my life sedentary instead of preparing for the best. I'm Scottish, German, Italian, and Irish; I'm only happy when I'm fighting. Fuck it, I'll break the door down. I don't need other people to value me to have self-worth because I was born with it.

Good artists don't explain themselves. They let the work speak for itself. 

Daniel means "God is my judge" in Hebrew.

The opening of the video is a self-parody venting as though at a therapist's about being misjudged by people. 

The bookending vignette parodies the introduction ([Max Bemis] "I have to record the spoken-word introduction to the record." [Peter Bemis] "Still?" [Max Bemis] "Yeah. It's only a few lines, but I'm having anxiety about it") and final track ("I worry about how this album will sell/Because I believe it will determine the amount of sex I will have in the future") of my favorite album, ...Is A Real Boy. It lends to two things: One, a sense of time overlapping with itself (Time travel is a big theme in most of my books, including the ones referenced in this video/rant.), with the opening and concluding tracks occurring at the same time. Also, the beginning of the album is a conversation between a father and a son. If my middle name was not "Daniel," I would be a Jr.

Including my cat with a stock sound effect of a lion's roar is further assert that the short is not to be taken seriously by doing such an obvious, hack joke. Also, the reference to a lion calls back to the Biblical Book of Daniel.

​Jesus turned water to wine. I parody that in Conditional Love, with the character Wes transforming from an alcoholic to sober. An image at the end of the book is his glass of water next to another character's glass of wine. The joke here is that in the shot, the glasses of both water and wine are half empty.

The cross made out of cans is a reference to the alcoholomy tattoo mentioned in the audio (it in itself using converting a non-Christian concept, that being alchemy, into something used in a Christian sense). The alcoholic containers are turned into a holy object. The title of the chapter read in the video is "The Son is the Light of the Moon." The moon gets its light from the sun but as a metaphor for Christ working in unconventional ways (paralleling the focal character in the chapter's struggle). It's also paralleling the dichotomy of woman as a whore (the girl in the bed whose hair gives her a halo like a painting of Christ and framed like a painting by the doorway) and as a virgin (Mattie, the former step-daughter). The three female figures in this also reference the Holy Trinity as women, one we can see (Christ) and two we cannot (God and The Holy Spirit). Dirty the Monkey appearing cruciform on top of the cans could be seen as a callback to my second self-published book, The Final Gospels, but really, I just wanted to reassert the cruciform imagery in the audio and wanted to give Dirty a cameo.

​Nebuchadnezzar was a king who denied God and was stricken down, essentially living like an animal before finding God and regaining his composure. The triptych of my books is a retelling of that. 

​The picture frame thing is an obvious Life (Young Adulterer), Death (Conditional Love), Rebirth (Honest Work) metaphor as well as the artist being framed as a work of art, him- or herself, and being uncomfortable with that perception. I went into hiatus after completing Conditional Love and re-emerged with Honest Work, my first book published under the name "Todd Daniel Crawford" rather than just "Todd Crawford."

​Wes gets prescribed glasses shortly after reprioritizing his life. Whereas, he was a Falstaffian buffoon (ie: living like an animal, back to the story of Nebby), once he gets his glasses, obvious visual metaphor for him seeing what's in front of him. The Scooby Doo Velma looking for the glasses (known to academics and dance enthusiasts alike as, "Doin' The Velma.") is that. Also, glasses were the original cover for the book they're placed on (Honest Work)--I changed my mind once I was prescribed glasses, myself, because I didn't want people mistaking the metaphor for autobiography...hearkening back to the self-parody's anxiety about being misunderstood.

Brendan being naked before the moon and comparing it to a peeping Tom is obviously a parallel with Adam and Eve being ashamed of their nudity before God after eating the fruit of knowledge.

​Billie Bear is a metaphor for Brendan and his role in raising Mattie.

The dove in the window is...a hint. The Biblical parallel should be self-explanatory. 

Nebby had a vision of a tree that was chopped down and growing back, an allegory for God giving us the opportunity to get back down after we fall down, essentially, and the punching bag/phallic inversion of that is how artists create this underdog narrative to gas themselves up and how it's really just mental masturbation rather than a legitimate struggle. Hugging the punching bag is just a silly way of representing how mythologize and love our own struggles.

The Bible with a sticky note placed on it reading, "For Shane <3" is an old prop from an episode of the Renaissance Men production, Plan 9 Reviews. A crazy fan mistakes me for Shane Dawson. The meta-joke was that I used to get compared to Shane Dawson in high school and hated it (and maintain that I never have and never shall resemble him). Here, it is a realization of my anxiety about being misunderstood or mistaken for someone that I'm not. There's a bit in The Book of Revelations where we all have a secret name that only God knows and will share with us in time. The context here is that God sees me for what I am, a washed-up prettyboy fraud. Except, God didn't write on that sticky note. I did, back when we were filming the Plan 9 episode it was originally used in. This adds to the theme of artists manufacturing struggles to overcome (making mountains to climb out of mustard seeds) but also how our views of religion are often shaped by our neurosis from the past.

​I just wanna talk stats real quick.
​
I have written and released four of my own books and recorded two audiobooks in one take in the last five years.
Long Shot Books has put out three books, a nearly feature length documentary, apparel and other merch, as well as online contributions like other people's work, podcasts, interviews, etc. (To give myself too much credit, at least 75% of that work is credited to the artists, of course, and 15% is Maureen's work.)

That is while navigating losing and re building everything in my personal life. That is while being on medication that kept me borderline catatonic. That is while working a day job plus some. That is while being under fire for having morality and not submitting to mob mentality. That is while dealing with grief. that is with both my hands tied behind my back.
The last five years were a warm-up. I was just stretching. I wanna make that clear. If you think I'm talking out my butt, look at my numbers. That's not ego. I've been given little but abuse from a majority of people this past half-decade. That's self-defense, saying, yeah, a lot of people were speed bumps but I made it there anyhow.

That's not "suffering makes for great art." I'm not giving awful people credit for my work. I was gonna do what I'm doing no matter what. I accomplished what I have despite the suffering. That is a gaslighting platitude people tell artists. "You're welcome for hurting you. Now you can find the strength to heal." Fuck that, you already had the strength.

I'm not talking about just myself here. I'm just a loudmouth speaking up because others are suffering and succeeding in silence. I'm saying what everybody whos' made something of themselves should tell theirselves. Be thankful for the lessons you've learned from other people's mistakes but don't thank them for inflicting them upon you. I've made mistakes, too. I've hurt people I care about and people I should have been more caring towards. Someone told me my wrongful actions helped them grow and I was like, "No, dude. you did that. All I did was fumble. You're the one that picked the ball up and carried it to the goal."
​
People say this in jest but you literally are a gift to the world. You have potential in you that you owe the world. You mean something to others, including people that you don't yet know look up to you and people who don't even know of you yet. When people try to strip you of your value, reduce yourbaccomploshments, or make you feel futile, they're just another weight, another rep.

I'm not saying to hate them or to treat the implied "other" cruelly. They matter just as much as you or I do. If someone's lashing out, they are likely acting in pain. You ever stubbed your toe? You ever been spoken to within thirty seconds of stubbing your toe? Most people are not at their most patient or understanding when hurting. We all have inherent value. Some people's souls look like the lungs of someone dying from a life of smoking and air pollution. Treat them with sympathy, patience, and support. Try to see challenging people as a challenge, a test of your own kindness. Think, (but probably don't say, because it looks better written than it sounds said) "What hurt you? How can I help you repair what this world has done to you? What is your masterpiece and how can I help you build it?" 

I say this to all my friends and family who are parents: Get your kids out of public schools. We're at the point where the things they are teaching is going to mess them up, not to mention the huge controversies here in PA over mask mandates. Whether you're for or against masks, the protests and tension between parents of different ideologies and the schools following the laws does not appear to be a healthy learning environment. I regularly watch school board meeting just like this where parents are openly disrespected and silenced when they unearth the horrors of the modern education system. This parent isn't describing an inclusive book showing that you should treat people of different persuasions equally. It's depicting a horrific act of perversion in detail. I'm Mr. Free Speech but there is no good reason for that to be in a school library. A few years ago, I wrote an article about not caring much if To Kill A Mockingbird (one of my favorite books, also one of my favorite movies) remains in curriculum. Well, if we're debating the necessity of that book, this content is way outta the question. (Lolita is a disturbing masterpiece. At least that has literary value and cultural merit. If that was removed from high school libraries [not that I know it to have ever been available there], I'd understand why it's an important book but also feel that should probably be left up to the parents to decide if their kid is mature enough to read such a provocative book.) This isn't an isolated event. It isn't one school board that resents its parents. It's not one book with questionable content. At what point can we be open and admit there is an ideological tug-of-war between parents and the public education system? 

"But Todd, you're not a parent--" Thank God for that. I would not be as mature and respectable as this lady is if I found such content at my child's school. Also, I don't have kids (that I know of, jk) but I do have family. One sibling is in high school, and despite them being much more mature than I was at that age and also probably at this age, thinking about them reading that makes me wanna vomit. (I mean, I read the complete works of Marquis de Sade and Venus in Furs at, like, 16, but A.) literary value B.) It wasn't provided to me by the fucking school library. Despite my reputation, I'm pretty fucking liberal, especially when it comes to art, but at a certain point, everyone has their limit.) I think having books depicting predatory things and how they are wrong can have merit but to quote advice I was given from a family member about my own writing, "They don't need every gory detail of it." It isn't a great work of art but Speak by Laurie Hals Anderson has a good message that kids should have access to without an explicit depiction of assault. At the very least, it isn't a smutty depiction of perversion.

I was very fortunate in public high school. I think my teachers were so good that it honestly made college a major disappointment, also, because half of those professors were corrupt ideologues or simply pieces of garbage coasting off tenure like it's welfare. (Obviously, I had a lot of great college professors, too, and am immensely grateful for their impact on my life. The sad reality is that not all teachers live up to this standard.) It saddens me to say such negative things about the American education system (never been outside it, so, I'm not endorsing other education systems, simply speaking on the one I've gone through) but times have changed in the decade since I graduated. This video clip is not an isolated event. I've heard anecdotal stories secondhand and seen many video clips/read articles on this. I think respectfully and professionally voicing concerns is a high road to take but it's a high road to nowhere. I think protesting and such forms of demonstration is a bad idea in this case and at worst could be confusing or traumatizing emotionally for the children to be subjected to. I've read about protests around some schools in local news for various reasons and without blaming anyone, I think that is very tragic and has to be upsetting to the students, and after all, it's them we should all be the most concerned about. As I opened with, if you can afford it, take your kids out of this system. There are many great teachers doing their best and I sympathize with their position in this mess but they are working from within a broken system that does not have the children's best interests in mind. 

 I've seen many examples of it. Parents in my timeline, take an active interest in your children's education. Try to be involved in a productive way, if possible. We're at a point in the history of America where there are three camps. Those of us who are disgusted by what is happening, they who are imposing this upon the future generation, and those of us with our heads in the ground.

Youtube Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Xm4AX25tE&feature=youtu.be
Article about the video, since the video will almost certainly be deleted by either YT or the school board itself. (Yes, it's Daily Wire. If you don't like it, make your own fucking site that reports on subjects like this. Idk what to tell you. If NYT or HuffPo wrote this, I'd share it just as enthusiastically. Deal with it.)
https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-mom-reads-graphic-gay-porn-found-in-school-library-to-school-board

I think "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman is the second best song of all time. When I first heard it, it was a revelation. The production and simple arrangement gives it this youthful, haunting-yet-vulnerable feeling that supports the lyrics of a woman being taken advantage of time and time again, being at the end of her rope, and setting an ultimatum for a man who most likely will fail her one final time. The anecdote about the father failing in his role as a husband and father adds a much deeper level of generational, psychological, and economic tragedy. There are a lot of great pop songs about young love but this might be the only one I've heard that feels so realistic, like it's a telling the archetype many of us have seen from people we've grown up with, or even in some cases, ourselves. (I identify with both the man and woman at this song for different reasons.) The themes are universal and transformative in that way us artists tell ourselves all art is but deep down now only great works can accomplish. The song can change your worldview, if you open up to it. Either, it can make you reflect on someone you had once dismissed as being "trash" or some other slander as having unfair challenges you were lucky enough to have avoided, it can show you why promising young girls may waste their time on men who for all appearances seem to be going nowhere in life and are quite content with that (not to dismiss the tragedy of the male character, either, which I would say is present but far more subtly conveyed). The verses are all so gritty and raw, yet the chorus uplifts you from the hellish struggles of simply trying to exist and live a decent life in the same way carefree moments together once did for the narrator or for the more fleeting, self-harming way getting drunk likely does her lover. At the end of the song, the haunting chords play, like this is one cycle in a neverending loop in our country. I've never tried it but you could probably play the song on repeat and it would sonically play as though it has a circular structure like The Wall or Finnegans Wake. Because it does, as our own narrator's mother seems to have went through the same struggles the narrator is at by the climax of the song. The only nitpick that might take .01 off it's 15/10 rating is that a comedian once pointed out, "Aren't all cars technically pretty fast?" and I can never forget that joke when I hear this song. The only modern song that I think competes with this is "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac.

For a few weeks, I probably sounded like I was proselytizing it to everyone I knew, like I had discovered this gem in the coal mines of the Spotify playlist algorithm. Everyone else was just like, "Yeah, Tracy Chapman's a household name. Everyone has always known this is a great song."

This song helped me a lot while writing Honest Work, particularly Ione's portion of the narrative. I've always been endeared to characters like Hedda Gabbler and Lady Macbeth in a way that could probably warrant Freudian evaluation. I didn't want to write a female villain, though. I wanted the story to be one of three people all putting their honest effort into raising a child and into their own personal lives and despite their equally good intentions, they come out with very different results. I wanted to create a character who starts the book as a victim and blossoms into a complex human being. In the first scene written about her, it is described as though she is a prisoner of her own home that we view through a security camera in all her private, mundane, and embarrassing moments. She's an actress upon a stage without a script to follow, so, she's just existing before a crowd of voyeurs. (This is not long after the introductory chapter, in which another character directly addresses the audience of a classroom, planting this motif in a reminiscent fashion of my personal favorite play, Our Town.

You see her perspective of her husband and later her husband's perspective on her. You know their loneliness, their inner struggles, how one has an idealized view of romance and the other has a more cynical, "realistic" perspective on it. You (hopefully) don't really know what will come of it until the ultimate betrayal in a relationship is committed. (In this instance, I would compare the act of penetration to that of impaling oneself or more accurately, the ending of Romeo & Juliet in which one character stabs herself, mistakenly thinking her lover has already left her behind.) At that point, you can view it from a multitude of ways, nearly all of them valid to some degree, ethically speaking. She ends the life she has been building towards and in turn, destroys the man living to serve her, which she (but not he) sees as setting him free, (mixed metaphor incoming) ripping the already-peeling band-aid of their marriage off so that he has the opportunity for rebirth. She did, what she at least, saw as the right thing in a confused fashion, much like the comedy of errors that their romance was ("You cheated on me." "I cheated on you? You've been cheating on me." "No, I was working late and exhausted so I could provide for you." "You never provided for me emotionally." and so on.) depicted in until it's take too far and becomes a tragedy. (See above.)

So, thank you, Tracy Chapman.