FundamentallySound Blog

Last night Lee and I planned to see Mae-Shi play at LoBot Gallery over in west Oakland. To get to this gallery, in the middle of an area that could be described in no way other than Deep Deep Ghetto, it required us to walk for approximately 12 minutes down a strangely dark street with no foot or vehicular traffic, save for the occasional police car, surrounded only by seemingly empty houses with too-tall fences separating us from glaring attack dogs. The rooms in the dilapidated houses were protected with thick-barred windows, no comforting light of open shops anywhere in sight. It is not an understatement to say I was fucking freaked.

We started down the street, agreeing that if either of us felt unsafe, we'd turn around no questions asked. But we both felt that we shouldn't feel afraid, this is, after all, the richest country in the world. Knowing that the area we were walking in was simply just a neighborhood of normal people contrasted with the knowledge that we were targets ripe for picking on this unlit street created an inner conflict that I have yet to resolve. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I felt really nervous, what with me wearing a second-hand Comme des Garçons jacket, repeatedly consulting my glowing iPod for directions. Who in their right mind wouldn't rob us on this occasion with no witnesses around? Our potential attackers couldn't realize that we were probably nearly as poor as they were, it's just that our respective Gay Genes require us to present ourselves as though we aren't really poor. There you have it straight world, the secret's out: all the fags out there wearing designer labels, that's really the result of a genetic trait. But the thing the marketing firms might not realize is that this Gay Gene also allows us to find fashion on a budget. Fashion does not necessarily equate to a large disposable income, in fact it might be the opposite. But I've said too much though, my gay membership card might be revoked any moment if I continue.

In some ways our journey down that dimly lit street last night feels like an apt metaphor for my creative life at the moment. I am ready to dedicate myself 300% to a fully creative life, but I am uncomfortable with my hesitation, my inability to decipher real challenges from those that are just the product of my own insecurity, keeping me from getting where I would like to be. San Francisco seems to be full of others in a similar situation, a city of talented twenty-somethings who come here to retire. Of course it would be an oxymoron to say, "I am waiting to see where I will go." Obviously it is the decision of no one other than myself. Accepting the full implications of that is the hard part.

Interestingly, I think it would be completely natural for a Japanese person to say something along the lines of, "I am waiting to see where I will go" without the requisite feeling of shame from a seeming lack of motivation. What exactly this means, well, I'll leave that to all the Japanophile experts out there.