Sunday 11 October 1998

At The Hurst for breakfast—is this my Sunday Project? Not really—it's not really the right place—I can't go into it really—I probably have, actually, well, when it's right, I'll discuss it then.

What do you do to a threat? And what am I talking about? An example from the Seafood Kingdom—there's a lobster, big and black (they turn black after they reach a certain age) (it's like a hundred), and it's become so big and old, it's cannibalizing other lobsters (thus cannibalizing the lobster industry). It got so big it was overturning lobster boats, regularly. So, what did they do about it? They fed it. Whale blubber, and grouper, and beef. Everything. Eventually it became so fat that its exoskeleton collapsed. It washed up on the beach in millions of pieces and we could smell it for like three months.

The same technique is used on humans, but generally feeding their ego or power cravings until they are full of themselves like a bloated tick. The examples are many: Francis Coppola, Bill Clinton, James Brown, Kurt Cobain, Jack Kerouac, Jack Nicholson, Jack Kennedy, Jack & The Beanstalk. I don't know about him. I guess that beanstalk is nothing but a giant penis. That story is nothing but saltpeter for pre-adolescents. Certainly Pinocchio—also, with that penis thing—the story of fattening up someone to turn him into a slave. Hell, with Hansel and Gretel they're just eaten—or should be. (Or is that Little Red Riding Hood?) Anyway, in my case, it's a sad story about my countercultural, revolutionary magazine that threatened to blow the doors off of American culture—well, to make a long story short, I was heaped with praise, good reviews, and fat-dripping accolades to the point that I had a bigger head than Jeff Goldblum. Just at the point when I couldn't walk down the street without doing an interview—it just stopped. Now, there was no conspiracy—no one planned it—it's just the way the system is set up. The system that has been refined over ___ years of human civilization—and I suppose ___ years of life on Earth before that. Essentially the same thing happened to me as happened to the Roman Empire. In my case, I lived, but went into seclusion, started drinking—well, picked up the pace of my drinking—and didn't do any art for years. Well, I did, but I kept it to myself, put it in my drawer—filed it under “work on later.” You know that “Work On Later” file is the same as “File 17,” or whatever the other name for the trashcan is (the “Circular File”—whatever). I could have been somebody, the next Jann Wenner, certainly, but here I am in Portland, Maine, writing about lobstering. Fuckin' lobsters, man, interest me like not at all.