I attended an art school house party once and met a young straight man with a twinky aspirational vibe. A freshman.

“I really fucked with your performance, man. Like, what advice would you give a nineteen year old who’s just starting out their artistic career, so to say?”

And this is what I said to the young man:

“I’d tell them to give up. Yeah. Just stop. It’s not for you. Other people are better at it and you’re going to find nothing but dissatisfaction around every corner. Some people should, but you shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. WE shouldn’t. Do you see what I mean? We’re not good people, can you grasp that? Look at us. Look where we’re standing. White American males. You haven’t even been to a bar yet. You’ve never fought anybody, and I can tell because I’ve also never fought anybody. What do you actually know— what do we actually know about the mechanisms which keep civilization running? What do we know about the sea? What do we know about WAR? ABOUT WOMEN? What do we know about cooking our own goddamn meals, for christ sake! Don’t kid yourself, man. Your dreams are a waste of time. Not because they won’t or cannot somehow come true, but because they should not come true. Your voice, your perspective, is genuinely useless to me— much less the majority of people in the world who need art that can resonate with their experiences. We are the most self-important people on the planet. People are so fucking tired of kids like you. Everyone of every age is wondering why our age group is so obsessed with being KNOWN. Needing so much attention. Because that’s all it is. Sure, you want to create something meaningful, but the meaning for which you search is no doubt contingent on some scale of external perception. As in, you’re not doing this purely for the art. You’re not doing this purely for yourself like you and your ilk (including myself) will claim. Because if you were, you would have absolutely no need to worry so much about how many people will see your painting in a gallery— or watch your short film. You want to make people care about your art, because you want to make people care about you, because somewhere down the line, you were not cared for enough; in a really major way.”

I told him this, in part because I think it’s true, but mainly because I hadn’t smoked a cigarette in several hours and I was relegated to taking drags off the communal college freshman porch cigarette. It was irking me. This guy was blocking the view of the sunset through skyline of downtown Kansas City. He was earnestly asking for advice. I gave him what few people ever hear in my world, but we all probably should hear. He seemed disappointed with my answer. But I continued.

“You know what you should do? Get into drywall. Learn welding. Become a maid. Work at a community garden. Work at a funeral home. Deliver pizza. Fuck your homies. Do drugs. Get on Grindr. Shoot some guns. Rob a clothing store. Work at a clothing store. Work a job that forces you to travel or experience unusual people. Go outside and ask people what is going on in their lives and just let them go for hours until they trip over themselves and start having a panic attack because nobody has ever listened to them speak uninterrupted for so long. Volunteer for the suicide hotline. Eat grass smeared with dog shit. Ask an EMT what he saw today. Go to a dive bar and get into an actual, real brawl for no reason at all. Make enemies. And just take everything in. You need to do these things, white boy. The prophecy.”

“Why do people need to do those things?”

“Not people. YOU specifically need to do that stuff.”

“Why.”

“Because otherwise, your art will mean nothing, and be completely worthless to anyone who doesn’t go to your school.”

The boy looked sad. I felt good.