Tao Lin. This bro is an artist/writer/poet that lives in New York City, New York. At one time he lived in Virginia, but i guess he moved. Don't know how much you can really get done in Virginia anyway. Seems like a lot of NASCAR goes on there, and really old bands like ALABAMA come by every once and a while to chill. Virginia is also "for lovers", which may partially explain why Tao has become a human "think-piece." For me, anyway. I guess lots of other people, i'm pretty sure I read human think piece on another blog. Have no idea how to define "think piece."
I feel compelled to write about Tao because I felt like some of the other people that wrote about him didn't really say anything. I know it's hard writing about a stranger, or someone you only know 'through words', but fuck.. seems like some people got really lazy and just synthesized what was on his website. Sometimes I felt like I was listening to a commentary on a DVD, but about a webpage and instead of the director giving the commentary it's like the costume designer or someone even further removed. Maybe they did it for mad hitz or free art shit or whatever... but to break down every little blog or post or activity that Tao has done in recent memory got me sorta pissed/irked/squirmy.
I imagine some Twilight fan girl meeting Edward from Team Edward and then re-telling him all the shit he has already done because she saw it on some gossip website. "Remember that time you did drugs and chatted, Tao??" Yes, of course. These are events that have already happened. I felt like some of the posts before me just regurgitated all of Tao's 'stunts' to a BEST OF CD compilation. I like Diablo II. Fuck. I get it. You do too. So did fucking everybody. Really hoping someday i can re-install Diablo II and maybe someday quest with some literary bros. I could be an Amazon and we could talk about Thoreau's Walden while ripping the shit out of demons.
It seems like people could write about him but needed to add a bunch of pointless shit to reach their word count goals. I thought I would add a "personal touch" to writing about Tao:
Last summer, I had taken a trip to new york city. New York is a large city on the eastern seaboard, it is a 14 hour drive away from me. This time in NY i got a unique view of the city that I hadn't seen on previous stays. I was down in soho, and just had eaten breakfast or brunch at this restaurant that had these long benches where you sat with people you didn't know. I sat next to a young family with a crying baby. Someone gave the baby a red balloon and it stopped crying. The food was alright, kind of small portions. I was still hungry and not totally filled by this meal. They made their own bread and i guess that was the gimmick of the place. I had a few left over beers from the night before and decided to *down them* for the subway ride to soho. So i was feeling sort of buzzed/lifted for this french bakery meal. The meal ended, seemed a little pricey but.. what the hell right? Living it up in the big big big big city. Gotta go home 2 Canada soon.
My friend and I leave this bakery and decide to wander around a little more. I wanted to go into the store "Evolution" because I like to buy their balsam fir incense and maybe a zany pin or something for someone. I bought a pin of a finch.
Then the fucking store.
"Am Appy."
American Apparel. 121 Spring St.
I don't live near an American Apparel in CANADa and this store is fucking packed. Especially packed. People everywhere. Girls are wearing strange headwear or headbands or funny hats. My friend mentions that this is like the 4th time we've been in an American Apparel and he is getting sick of it. I stopped and looked around at all these people. Everyone seemed self-consumed. Everyone living in their own bubbles with funny hats/headwear. I put on a $49.99 hoodie.. or coat. I guess they described it as a coat after. I don't know who could wear that apparel as a coat, it was pretty thin. I guess it was made out of new age or space age material. So i have my Am Appy coat/sweater thing on. Even if i wanted to ask someone a question, everyone seemed really busy or like they in some kind of shop bliss/nirvana. My friend says we should "get the fuck out." I leave.
"Hahaha, I can't believe you just did that."
"Yeah. Damn. What a rush."
Apparently in Montreal, AA has a "no chase policy." If you steal something from their store, they won't come after you. I had heard of a couple of friends who had worked there and stole endless amounts of 'stock' this way.
I was feeling pretty good, my flight or fight had kicked in and damn.. i am wearing a stolen jacket/hoodie on Spring St. Still not fully comprehending what I stole. I'm walking down the street and still laughing over this. Guy comes up from behind me and puts his hand on my shoulder.
"Don't make this harder than it has to be."
Caught.
Alright, I am caught shoplifting from American Apparel. This isn't so bad, right?
All these thoughts are rushing through my head as I'm being led back to AA and down to their basement. Guy tells me to sit on a stool and he is going to take my picture. I am smiling at this point, feeling smug or still buzzed I guess. I was going to have to sign a trespassing notice, Alright. Fine. I can do that, I don't even live here. I wrote down a fake name and a fake Quebec address. This is all kind of funny still. An employee comes down the stairs from another AA store and one of the employee's mistakes him for another shoplifter.
"I didn't know you got two of 'em."
"No, I'm from Broadway. I got a call. You were short staffed."
"Aw damn, Thought my boy was on today. Two shoplifters."
Then the heavy footsteps start coming down the stairs. I catch a flash of boots. Dark blue pants. They could be black. Damn, the New York Police Department.I am going to jail in a foreign country and in one of the biggest cities in the world. I am supposed to go back to Canada tomorrow.
Fuck.
I had a free sample of a snapple or something that one of the police officers threw out. He tried to search me and told me hated these 'tight pants' but the "boys downtown will like 'em." The boys downtown? Jesus. I was being scare-tacted. I guess it worked. I had to explain to him that this pair of pants only had one pocket. I get hauled out of the basement in handcuffs. I tell my friend I might be a while.
I am taken to the Chinatown precinct.
"What's this guy all about?"
"Shoplifting from American Apparel."
"Not another one of these fucks."
The main guy. Uh.. warden. I don't know what his position was starts asking me if I can get my parents phone number and maybe i could get a conditional release or something. I'm not sure what exactly he said, reminded me of a science fiction robot like a 'T1000' or an 'IG-88'. I stayed in a small cell for 3 or 4 hours with some Senegalese bootleggers. Felt like me speaking french to them formed some sort of solidarity or whatever. A crying asian woman came in, she was really distraught about jail. But this wasn't even jail, it was just a holding cell. It wasn't even that bad. Everyone was really nice, especially one woman who told me what to do/what not to do when you get to central booking("Whatever you do, don't tell them you feel sick when you get to medical"). One police officer told me i was "fucked" and "I would be lucky if I got out by next tuesday." Everyone else in the cell was getting released because they were petty crimes. All booked for selling fake shit on Canal.
I got to take a trip to central booking. Two female police officers escort me to a patrol car. I get in the car and the solo from Eric Clapton's "Layla" is playing. Then the real soothing part of that song came on. It made me feel better. I waved to someone.
Now, I am in the shit. The catacombs. The darkness. And I'm playing Jeopardy! The guy who takes my mugshot is watching Jeopardy! Damn. How comforting. There is a question about the St.Lawrence river in Canada. I get it right. I am playing Jep in jail. The guy in central booking also put up a funny/zany pic to look at while getting your mugshot. This picture was a dog's body with a human's face. I think it said "What are you looking at?" or something. I had seen this picture on websites before.
Jail.
Gates closed. I am in a room with many cells that are the size of your high school locker room cut in half. Cut in quarters. There is around 20 people when I first entered. There is an open toilet if you need to shit.
I'm going to be
here
for
a while.
I guess I feel compelled to write about this because i felt like I had some sort of spiritual connection or some meta-physical shit of a connection when reading Tao's book. Like people from Vietnam/Iraq/Abu Ghraib have some sort of connection because they have seen the same shit. They have been in the same location and experienced the same sort of trauma. What i found when reading SFAA was how similar our stays in central booking were. There was the drunken white guy, the smelly Asian, the frantic Hispanic. I had experienced a mosaic of people that fucked up. Some people were nice, some people were frightening. What Tao wrote had actually fucking nailed/mirrored my own experience. There can be a million stories of what goes on in a central booking day to day. Shit you would not believe unless you actually were there. All i could think of when I was in jail was that I was in a wealth of people's stories/struggles/lives. Hearing someone on the phone for an hour about how they knifed someone and probably were gonna go to jail for a long time is something sorta surreal. This is some gritty shit, like some sort of real life ashcan poetry. Tao manages to capture some of the essence of these feelings in SFAA.
A few months after I got out of central booking/NYC/America. I went home and bought some art of Tao's off e-bay. I have two of his viralophagus pictures on my wall. I don't know if they are a reminder of what exactly I went through when I chilled in jail for a while or not. He even sent me a copy of the book after it was published.
But it isn't the whole shoplifting that connected when reading a copy of his book. Alienation in our world, alienation with other people, alienation in our relationships. Too much time spent on *fkng technology**. All these things I had felt in and out of jail were here. Call it guidance for a generation that really doesn't have much to define themselves but Tao's words seem to echo what some of us/me out there feel.
Damn. I am the 'twitter generation'? It doesn't matter if i even use twitter/meebo/friendster/myspace. I am the twit gen. It is the moniker bestowed upon me. I'm the bro who is going to play Diablo III 'all the fucking time' because what the hell else is there? No great struggles for this generation. Everyone is on an even playing field now. Technology has become the great equalizer and also the great neutralizer. I feel like we live in a very bland point in time. The era of (not giving a fuck). We see copies of copies of copies by artists and writers. I don't wanna read J.D Salinger or Bret Easton Ellis anymore. I sure as hell don't want to read books that recycle these bros. We are the generation that has Saw fucking Six. To quote Tao Lin "I honestly feel detached."
Me too.
I also honestly feel like Tao's writing takes all this alienation and well, gives me/other people encouragement for our future. I feel compelled. I feel engaged. I feel that I shouldn't "smash the fuck out of my NEC LCD computer screen." I should get my shit together and do something that makes people think or react. I think of those make-a-wish foundations and how if "we bring a smile to 1 sick kid's face" all is worthwhile. Michael Jordan/Sheryl Crow/Tao Lin may benefit also from bringing a smile to "1 sick kid." Damn. I think that Tao could be one of the writers of this century that gets through to a couple of 'sick kids'. Maybe even the internet bringing more people together, rather than being an overload of shitty information that is coming at you from well, mostly everywhere. For every 100000 Farmville or Mafia Wars posts, something comes a long like a "Shoplifting from American Apparel" or "During my nervous breakdown i want to have a biographer present."
It's a start.
I guess there really is hope and truth. On the internet. I guess sometimes you just have to dig through the shit pile.
I hope.
or maybe see you in Diablo III.
Damn.
