Been a long time since I rock'n'rolled

Early March:
Oh my brothers, this has been a long and hideous month. I have been much assailed by the machinery of modern society. I have drawn up Five Year plans. I have asserted I am not a Communist, genocidal maniac, prostitute, drug addict or polygamist. I have had long-distance meetings. I have been told "The president is a very busy man" and I have said "I know that, just let me know he got my message."

Freelance journalism is one of the strangest professions in the world. One must be deferential enough to persuade the people with the money that they want to exchange a portion of it for a cleverly compiled list of your words. One must also be cutthroat enough to persuade the people with the information to exchange part of it for their sanity, moral well being, or self-aggrandizement.

It comes to a matter of "How many bridges can I afford to burn today?"

Hunter S. Thompson would answer, "All of them", both when he started in the late 1950s and presumably now, in his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado.

Times change. While they stay the same in many ways, that sameness is what is driving the schism between sincere writers and poseurs. Every day I see material from some bland lukewarm-shot who thinks peppering in some attitude is enough to make up for lack of discipline. The only excuse for not rewriting is having that Mozart-like talent that lets you work it all out in your head. So if you can turn your subconscious into your artistic slave, go ahead. If not, learn to rewrite.

This is not Generation X. This is Generation Nothing; a pack of blackboard-shrieky lazy slobs with the unwillingness to drive one more bit of lemming talent off the cliff into the dilution. Some will ask, "Why do it well when it won't make any difference?" The answer: "Because otherwise you're a black void of bullshit." But you already knew that, didn't you? You were looking for a quick hot fix to give your life meaning. Meaning ain't easy or cheap; work is anathema this decade; there is a lot of shit on the shelves.

If you're going to do something, you have a moral imperative to do it as well as you damn well can. Not just for your co-workers, your friends, your fans, but because otherwise, in twenty years, when you're as old as the people you see repressing you today, you're going to wake up and feel like a total waste.

Your eyes will roll back in your skull and you will see your own pulsing brain, and you will realize that this is the closest to introspection that you have ever come. Fascinated and horrified, you won't be able to stop. Eventually they'll take you away and put you somewhere with a lot of round corners and soft walls.

When that happens, don't call me. I'll be off frolicking in the surf on some tiny sandy island, living on raw shellfish and oil slicks, training the monkeys to assemble crude typewriters from rocks and snakes, to pound pineapples into paper. Or maybe not. Maybe that lifestyle has been obliterated in the last fifty years. If this nonsense continues, though, I'm going to find out for myself.

Yours in incoherent disgust, Auntie