A Conversation

From Kara Brown and Erin Brown

[first published in The Contrarian, 2006)

Erin

Fuck this day then, if it's going to be like that.

Unfortunately, and despite my many attempts to think myself out of existence, I remain here and alive. It's getting to the point that I listen to my conversations with people like I'm not even participating. Halfway through a sentence I realize I'm the one that's saying it. I can't figure out how my brain is able to form cohesive thoughts and sentences.

It sucks to think about the future. I think the most important thing is freedom. Now, normally that can be equated with money, but I'm finding that's not necessarily true. I still believe that money would give me the freedom that I desire, but the problem is that I don't have it right this second, and I don't much care for the pursuit of it. I think I would be the happiest if I had no obligations. At least to other people besides those I really cared about. I want to be The Dude, but not in L.A. and not a bowler. And a little more opinionated. You know what? Fuck it. I don't know. I would like to do something meaningful, I'm just not sure what actually is meaningful. The point I was trying to make is, I go back and forth on the issue of life, contributions, happiness and purpose on a 10 minute to 24 hour cycle. Ask me later, and I'll tell you ice cream is the key to success.

Kara

One thing I've discovered for myself is that it is ok to define happiness by other things and people. Of course, you need to like yourself and love yourself, blah blah, but if a bowl of ice cream makes me goddamn happy, then that's ok. Denis Leary said it well: "Happiness is the cookie, is the cigarette, is the orgasm," everything else is all the bullshit in between. I'm trying to enjoy the things that make me happy while they last, and not worry about the things that don't while they last.

Erin

I've grown to despise money, it having let me down and not representing the value I once gave it, and it being the main thing that limits me in life. And if that's why I'd do something...it's almost disgusting. I think I'd rather suffer in some other way than be comfortable and in intellectual anguish. But once you really think about it, money makes things really easy (although, admittedly, complicating things at the same time, but it makes life a little more comfortable and gives you ways to temporarily and shallowly ease your pain). What I'm saying is, I can survive on my principles, however bare-boned they may be, but eventually being stifled and strangled by bullshit would kill me.

Kara

Tonight Green Day was on TV, and Billie Joe looked straight at the audience and pointed his finger and said sternly, "Remember, do what you fucking believe in." Simple yes, but no truer or better advice ever spoken

This other stupid band who won an award said, "If we can do this, that means any one can." That is dumb. No, anyone can't do it. (And I question a whole system that lets you do it...beside the point.) If you can't recognize your own talent as unique, then you are living a bullshit lie. This also perpetuates the myth that you can do anything if you try hard enough. Another bullshit lie. Especially with "mainstream" "success," which depends mostly on luck and manipulation.

Erin

If you don't think you're fucking special, then you're probably not. And perhaps, anyone could do what they did, that is, sell out to corporate record companies, make shit music that gets in the top 40, and get an MTV award, which has been imbued with all the evil that man is capable of. So yes, anyone who isn't talented and doesn't have a passion could do that.

Kara

I hate rich people. I hate people with money who go buy these pre-fab suburban cookie-cutter houses that come already furnished and you walk in and have no sense of anybody actually living there, let alone who they might actually be, because the whole place looks like it was designed by robots.

Erin

No, you see, the problem is that is doesn't look like it was designed by robots, because robots would design something ultra-functional, which would be beautiful in itself. But these places were designed not to appeal to anyone, and worse, to not offend anyone. It is the absence of desire, function and innovation. That is what is so disgusting. And what's more disgusting is that people would choose to live surrounded by intellectual and visual mush rather than try to understand their own tastes.

Kara

I saw a commercial for Country Crock mashed potatoes that come already prepared in a plastic tub and you just heat them up in the microwave. What is the world coming to? It really shocks me how much processed, packaged food it out there, and it makes me sad. How can people eat that shit? I mean I have my little junk food obsessions, but seriously, eat some real food, people.

Erin

I heard a disturbing advertisement for Budweiser. It was some guy talking to the Vice President of the company he works for, saying that he'll be down in the bar after work with friends making fun of "everything corporate." Then this obviously proprietary song masked as some kind of alterna-pop comes on with words like "Now that I've gotten all the crap out of the way, this looks like it might turn out to be a great day" or something. So, essentially what is being portrayed is that every workday of people's lives is so silly and tortuous that they are blatantly promoting self-medication via alcohol. Is this fucked up to anyone else but me? If all the enjoyment you have in a day is the couple of hours after work when you get trashed, which means you're not accomplishing anything significant and not bringing yourself any fulfillment at all, then just FUCKING KILL YOURSELF.

And the really sad part is that people really don't even have those couple of hours to spend. People have to use those hours to do housework, yard work, eat dinner with their family, and whatever else of the innumerable, unpredictable obligations/tasks that come along, not to mention doing anything meaningful. I mean, let's not even take that into account! Buddy Dumbfuck needs to make sure he can lease his new BMW. Instead of sincerely trying to pursue happiness, people choose to live miserably and appease themselves with extraneous possessions. I don't think I can survive in a world with values like this.

Kara

You know what's even worse about the Budweiser commercial? It's a fucking corporation trying to sell you freedom from "everything corporate.” So not only are you a slave to your boss, you are a slave to the fat cats at Budweiser. Bud is not your friend, your buddy, your bartender, or your beer. He is a huge, international, multi-million dollar corporation that is trying to sell you a sense of “identity;” you are just another commodity to Budweiser.

Erin

I was thinking earlier about how so much is bad and unjust and simply doesn't make any sense. And the world isn't like a fairy tale or movie with well-defined good guys and bad guys, and there's no evil leader out there making all these decisions, it's every day people doing it every day, and that makes it all the more frightening and discouraging because it's a lot harder to stop a bunch of brainwashed, disoriented, misinformed people than it is one single person, however intensely evil they may be.

Kara

The world is mentally retarded I have those days where I just want to go apeshit or bitchcakes and just let loose. And oh my god, I wish I had a talent. If I had something I could do, I wouldn't care if I was poor; I would have a purpose. But here I am sitting on my ass with nothing to do or give or take or make or create and explicate or anything. I think I'm fucking insane, actually. All day I've been thinking about what I would do if I didn't have to work, and you know what the nice thing is? I could do anything I wanted.

Erin

I just wish the world knew how far it was pushing us.

Some times it really does worry me that I might just be crazy. But I do know that everyone else isn't sane. They may be in some kind false equilibrium, suspended by the mush of mediocrity and security. But they're fucking delusional. At least I'm trying.

I read a question in a magazine saying, "Do you feel you've been manipulated and permanently distorted?" And that really hit me hard, because I do. Not in a sense that I am a victim, because I think my past is something that can be learned from and it's made me who I am, but in a really angry way. These religious people who take children and manipulate their brains when they're the most delicate, impressionable and flourishing, then squelch any creativity or insights they might have, or try to anyway, sadden me.

Kara

I understand. Even though I know compared to many we had an amazingly fortunate childhood, we were manipulated and distorted. We were brainwashed. And I think that's why we hate authority so much--because we were, in effect, betrayed by the people we were supposed to be able to trust most.

Erin

I keep shifting, very rapidly, between states of crippling despair and ethereal happiness. Neither is fully formed, but I can’t get rid of or disprove either.

Kara

I really think that I think and feel too much for my own good, except I don't want to be turned-off and not experience or analyze or be aware of anything. I want my life to be rich and layered, but it is also so much harder that way.

Erin

Learning is all I want to do. That is what I would spend my time doing if I had any. Bettering myself, improving myself, and potentially our society, culture, planet, and quite possibly, the universe. Why would the world rather me work 50 hours a week in a mind-numbing, ultimately pointless job and spend my hard-earned money on things that cause other people to have mind-numbing jobs? We are trapped in a cage that we can’t see, but has very defined boundaries, and we’re constantly told we can be anything and do whatever we want, but that’s just brainwashing, too, because they still only give you choices in their little board game of human existence. But their weakness lies in the fact that they use their own empty creations to entangle and entrap us. Realize that they aren’t real, and you’re free…or crazy, I’m not sure…

Our conveniences aren't conveniences, they're fucking burdens and constraints. When did man sacrifice depth of consciousness for processed, pre-sliced cheese?

Hope for some off-the-wall, inexplicable reason you have a good day today. Fuck, I mean, you never know.