Auto Fellatio

 A Self Interview--An "Autoview" Zip interviews Zip

Zip: Why are your posts generally so angry?

Zip: Because I am angry.

Zip: What are you angry about?

Zip: I don't know.

Zip: Then why don't you calm the fuck down?

Zip: Because I'm mother-fucking angry.

Zip: Do you think you're funny?

Zip: Yes.

Zip: Well, you're not, bud. You are a whiny little son of a bitch and

you have no class.

Zip: Well, I feel angry about the world and how totally fucking

fucked up it is.

Zip: What the hell does that mean? That could mean anything and

it's a cliche.

Zip: No, it's not a cliche. It's a fact. The world is totally fucked up.

People are poor and unemployed, uninsured, uneducated,

uninvolved, living in denial, earning minimum wage, voting for

people who keep raping them over and over again...

Zip: Oh, that's such a lie...The world is beautiful as it is! Just look

out the window and see the sunshine!

Zip: What? Are you some kind of faggot?

Zip: Wait a minute, what did you just call me?

Zip: Look, moron, the sun will shine even when we blow ourselves

up. So what difference does it make?

Zip: Zip, I have had it with you! You are a defeatist and a

determinist! I thought you were some kind of existentialist, with

some choosing ability...

Zip: Look, Peeeedur, our choices are for shit! What choices did

Holocaust victims have? What choices did Sharon Tate have?

Zip: That's not the point, Zip, goddammit!!! The point is how you

react to horror and misery. You just revel in it like a pig in slop! You

never change your reactions to your own horrors!

Zip: Well, Zip the shmeeter, doggie doo eater, you don't know

doodley squat.

Zip: And I also know why you lament your position in life: you

thought you'd be this famous musical genius by now, and you're

not! You are just another alcoholic bum dreaming about what will

never be!

Zip: THAT is cruel, Zip! How dare you say something that horrid!

Zip: It's true! You can't even face it head-on! That's why you drank!

You knew you were a mediocrity the whole time!

Zip: Wait a goddamned minute, you! I am not a mediocrity!

Zip: How do you know?

Zip: Because I gave my music my own stamp of feeling. It had my

signature all over it! People knew it was me when they heard it!

Zip: They did?

Zip: Yes.

Zip: Oh.

Zip: Yeah, how about that, huh? You scum-bum from the slum

alum.

Zip: How did you do that? Put your real feelings into your music?

Zip: I did it by NOT doing what my professors told me to do, and

sho nuff, they hated my work.

Zip: There you go again, bashing academics! Why?

Zip: Because academics are soulless, heartless, myopic,

intellectuals who have cut the light that shines from their heart, and

they are feeding a system that has stifled the progress of music with

their status quo competitions and awards that go to dr,y boring, dull,

turgid music that no one wants to remember. The emotional palette

is very narrow for people who have not suffered that much. Your

average academic does not suffer.

Zip: How do you know?

Zip: Because they still get up in the morning and go teach and earn

$ 100,000 per year. Those are not suffering wages. Those are the

wages that cause the cutting off the light from the heart. When you

read about the troubles of my brothers from the past, you get the

picture: melancholia, depression, alcoholism, insanity, suicide

attempts, drugs, dispossession, divorce, alienation, unpopularity,

psychosis, neurosis, mania, schizophrenia, homelessness,

institutions, death....That is where art comes from. Nowhere else.

This is an artist's education and training, and anything short is pure

academia. Trying to circumvent the pain others had gone through. I

forgot about homosexuality, too; some of our brothers are also gay

in a time that was shameful and had disastrous effects on their

careers and reputations. All of this paid the price for their gifts. Even

those who were political exiles and ex-patriots--Nancarrow and

Rziewski.

Zip: Well, so they had pain, does that always create art?

Zip: Pain is art. Where does compassion come from? Where does

empathy come from? Where does insight into the human soul come

from? Happy well-fed idiots?

Zip: Fuck you, Zip.

Zip: Fuck you, too, Zip.