The Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet

I always resented all the years, the hours, the minutes I gave them as a working stiff. It actually hurt my head, my insides, it made me dizzy and a bit crazy. I couldn¹t understand the murdering of my years.
Charles Bukowski

Author¹s Preface

Never heard from again?

David Barsamian: The rewards for playing ball with the system in this society and this culture are very clear. The financial rewards are obvious. What about the other side of the coin? What about the punishments?

Noam Chomsky: ³Societies differ. It can happen [in the U.S.], but it¹s not on the scale of a state that really terrorizes its own citizens. If you come from the more privileged classes, if you¹re a white middle-class person, then the chances that you are going to be subjected to literal state terror are very slight. It could happen, but it¹s slight. What will happen is that you¹ll be marginalized, excluded. Instead of becoming part of the privileged elite, you¹ll be driving a taxi cab. It¹s not torture, but very few people are going to select that option, if they have a choice. And the ones who do select it will never be heard from again. Therefore they are not part of the indoctrination system. They don¹t make it. It could be worse, but it¹s enough to discipline people.²

Sooner or later (as Ani DiFranco reminds us in her poem, ³My IQ²) every school child encounters a test in which they are shown, say, two squares and a circle. The Q&A that inevitably accompanies these images will go like this:

Q. Which one doesn¹t belong?
A. The circle.

Consequently, at the tender age of 5 or 6, we are taught that different does not belong.

The 24 individuals who have shared their stories in this book just might have been absent on the day that exam was administered. Each of them has made the premeditated decision to become an activist and/or artist and, by definition, be ³different² in a culture that values sameness while marginalizing individuality.

As Professor Chomsky articulates above, the price paid for being different in other nations is considerably higher than that in the U.S., and this book is not a collection of stories from whiny, misunderstood geniuses blaming the world for their perceived misfortune. Rather, The Murdering of My Years offers a sampling from a nearly invisible minority in this coast-to-coast mall we call America. Activists engage in social action during their ³free time² with no promise of results (other than police harassment and societal stigma). Artists creation often without even a glimmer of possibility that financial remuneration lurks anywhere on the horizon. Such acts, I submit, are revolutionary within the context of a corporate capitalist social order.

Everywhere we are inundated with the American theology of individualism within the entrepreneur model. The ³heroes² that are packaged and sold to us are Wall Street speculators, professional athletes, and digitally- or surgically-enhanced celebrities. The dreams we are encouraged to fulfill seem to be limited to appearing on television, purchasing consumer electronics, and gambling on the lottery. Civil society is vanishing while fortitude is measured by bungee jumps, morality is dropped along with cluster bombs from 15,000 feet, and solidarity has been reduced to waiting on line for weeks to see a blockbuster film.

The participants in this book (myself included) aren¹t martyrs or heroes. Artists and activists are driven by more than material accumulation and, as a result, are often relegated to the margins. The Murdering of My Years is one small step toward widening those margins and making ³different² belong.

* * *

Earn without selling out?

³Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift.²

There were two converging catalysts in the writing of this book. In 2001, I finally got around to reading Frank McCourt¹s best selling memoir, Angela¹s Ashes, and found myself captivated. This got me thinking about the notion of memoirs in general. Sure, McCourt grew up in abject poverty but most humans on the planet today dwell in abject poverty. McCourt¹s life story is far from exceptional.

Q. What made Frank McCourt¹s autobiography special?
A. The way it was told.

Well, I thought to myself: My life has been at least as interesting as Frank McCourt¹s. Why don¹t I pen a memoir? I commenced making notes and working up the nerve to share this scheme with my agent.

Meanwhile, back in Astoria, running parallel to my memoir fixation, more money was needed in the Zezima household. My wife, Michele, works as a pediatric physical therapist. As the job title implies, the work is physical. There was no way around it. She needed more help from me on the fiscal end of things. But how would I earn without selling out and still have time to write?

To help answer that, I e-mailed several colleagues to see how they were managing. As I read their replies, I grew fascinated with the results of this impromptu survey. If you had happened to be in the one-bedroom apartment Michele and I call home, you might have witnessed the image of a light bulb illuminating just above my shaved dome.

What if I compiled a book based on this subject and included my own story as a provisional fix for my memoir mania? In short order, I amassed a list of potential suspects, wrote a concise e-mail invitation, and hit ³send.²

* * *

Working without a net

³Uh, can anybody help out a young, poor, sad, poor, young, struggling musician? I¹m, uh, not hungry or anything, but I do have a huge phone bill.²

The initial response to my e-mail varied widely. Some expressed genuine alarm at the prospect of discussing how they made ends meet. For example:

³I try to sail beneath the radar on such matters.²

³I wouldn't want to put on public record some of my survival techniques, especially in the current political atmosphere, which is going to last a long time.²

A particularly gratifying bit of feedback was from the many respondents who saw it through to the end and found themselves enriched by this exercise in self-examination.

In many cases, however, the response was no response at all. Well over 100 artists and activists were invited to participate and the vast majority did not even acknowledge receiving the invitation. There were some who voiced interest but employed the ³I¹m too busy² defense. Even more requested the questionnaire and then promptly vanished. Others waited until they were reminded about the deadline to back out; some waited even longer. I wondered if this pattern was verification of my thesis that the work of artists and activists is so de-valued in a corporate-dominated society that few even have time to promote their efforts or causes in a book. Then again, the remarkable lack of follow-through and the sheer inability to hit a deadline may also speak to the type of people drawn to non-mainstream pursuits and their unwitting complicity in the sad state of things. (Either way, don¹t blame me for the disproportionate amount of New Yorkers and vegetarians in this book. I invited a broad, nationwide cross-section of candidates.)

None of the above responses surprised me, but the number of those who wondered why they were asked took me aback. They were, by their own admission, ³doing nothing special² or ³not really an activist² or merely ³boring.² That last comment carried through to the answering of the questions I eventually proposed. Quite a few respondents apologized in advance for their ³dull² lives and ³mundane² answers. While this internalization of conventional perceptions is yet another obstacle lying in the path of any non-conformist, I¹m here to declare that ³dull² (as defined by today¹s one-size-fits-all society) is nothing to be ashamed of.

No one in The Murdering of My Years has climbed Mount Everest or won an Academy Award or appeared on a game show (at least that I know of). But their stories are authentic: no laugh track, nothing re-touched by computer software, very little editing on my part. These folks are working without a net to create and/or disseminate art and dissenting opinions within a commercial framework designed to co-opt such output and feed it back to us as ³trends.² They are challenging the status quo. They are living their lives outside the cookie cutter formula.

Is the life of an unknown artist and/or activist dull or mundane? With so few mechanisms set up to facilitate such work, sure, it can be at times. However, I believe a more pertinent question remains:

Q. Are the struggles of artists and activists worth reading and sharing and emulating?
A. After reading the stories herein, I trust you¹ll agree they are.

With The Murdering of My Years, I hope to reveal an alternative paradigm by tapping into the motivating power of example. Beyond that, it¹s up to each individual reader to decide of what use these examples are.

As Mao urged: ³Absorb what is useful; reject what is useless.²

As Bruce Lee modified: ³Absorb what is useful and develop from there; add specifically what is your own.²

	The Murdering of My Years Mickey Z. $15.00

ISBN 1887128786 SOFT SKULL PRESS