Shrinkage and Freebagging: A Lesson in Writering

We all have those things that we have to do--mow the lawn, go to work, feed our children, be nice to people. I'm okay with that...to an extent. Lately, however, I've found myself marginalized through my desire to make myself look like something that I'm not. I've been wearing my fancy little khakis and $6.00 Wal-Mart polos so I look like the good little graduate student, happy to service all of your computer needs. By the way, I've just completed my 200th college credit, and none of them had anything to do with computers. It's not often that one can be hired and pursue a job which he is completely unqualified for...unless that person is a republican.

So, what does this mean to the true artists of the world? What happens to an artist when all he does is the things he has to do? I like metaphors, so I'm going to say that this artist's unit shrinks up, leaving his unprotected beacons of manliness fluttering in the wind like two freshly hatched butterflies right before having their eyeballs pushed through their anuses by an 80 mile-per-hour Peterbilt windshield. Not a pretty sight, but I can hear the rumble of the eighteen wheeler bearing down on me as I write this. Let me metaphorically turn the page.

We, the spare tire of the arts, have become a bit too complacent with what we do. Our risk taking often consists of using 11 font instead of the 12 that the publishing company requested. "We'll show them," we think to ourselves in the fairy tale we've created in our mind. We have become too safe, writing, painting, and photographing the familiar. This is resulting in the stagnation of art, and I've had it up to my poorly groomed goatee with the penumbra of complacency and safety that we as artists huddle beneath just so we may score our next fix (That would be an acceptance letter for those who didn't catch the metaphor change). We need to let our junk hang out! (See title). I think of authors like Plath, Kerouac, Sapphire, and even Chaucer, to take it back a bit. These dudes and dudettes could write, but what made them great was the fact that they did not hold back. They left all of their cards out on the table. John Stuart Mill once wrote, "A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

Writers and artists, go piss on your safety blanket, wrap your neighbor's dog in it, and set it on fire if you need to. I'm not looking for safe and neither is Stoneboat. Stretch yourselves and send us some risky submissions. I'm not looking for safe. I'm looking for mordacious--now bite me!