Like a River, Like a Wave

2018

These are the scars of a starving artist so why should I ever be biting my tongue?

An irresponsible libido entered Mick’s eardrums as he felt a drop of sweat drip down his forehead and a core memory emerged. A litter of youngins squatted on a cobblestone porch trying to make a name for themselves… 2119 Almond Avenue in Shawnee it was, yep.

“What up everybody,” said a ponytailed motherfucker in a T-shirt and jorts as he smiled at the group. “I’m Ron Drip.”

“Hey Ron!” replied Mikey as he adjusted his wire glasses. “It’s good to finally meet you, man!”

The twentyagers shook hands as Ron from Arnton settled into a lawn chair and grabbed his copy of the poorly-written script. As far as cinema… well, Ron had never acted. His lane was rap—he grew up in the ghetter on South Ninth Street right behind ZoominAmerica. At twenty-two he chose to venture out and expand his massive stock.

See, there is no stopping fate when that performer comes out. Some are born with it and some learn it along the way, but the bottom line is: that boy was a natural… and so was Mick, and they both got the shit beat out of them in the first flick. The second one? They became the bad guys, and they got to beat the shit out of everyone else, and it was awesome, or so they thought, but nobody ever really watched it and the producers stopped promoting the films when Mikey had a nervous breakdown and gave up filmmaking.

The scene trauma bonded through art, and they soul-bonded through 2am conversations and prank calls and night drives. In a town with no university, this was the college experience of a subset of young adults—Mick and Mikey and Carissa were anxious at nineteen, but twenty-two year old Ron never let them see him sweat. Nope, it was against his religion, that motherfucker, and he partied and partied until the cows died a few years prior—his college experience.

A wave was a brewing, yes sir, like a surf latte—and they chainsmoked on that porch and chainsmoked on that porch and chainsmoked on that porch when the legal age was still eighteen, of course. The natural drawl of time ebbed and flowed like the Mighty O, and Ron’s wheels torqued their way into a bad verbiage.

“Yo Mick,” said Ron as he tapped Mick on the back of the shoulder. “You have a nice camera right?”
“Yeah it’s alright,” replied Mick. “It gets the job done I guess.”
“You ever thought about taking photos for rappers?”
“What do you—”

“I know a lot of people and we’ve got this thing going at the lodge,” said Ron as he continued. “I’m on the board now. We’re doing shows there. I want you to take photos. I will pay you American dollars to do it.”

The shoulder tap started a partnership that lasted—Ron Drip and the rest of the Arnton gang detonated in Kyova, and the Collinsworth rappers on up the river scanned their sets in fear… or so Mick thought, because paranoia was his daddy and the pacifier fell out long ago. Ron put him on though, and the other rappers utilized his services. They paid him real money, and he earned enough to brag about it to his parents… until Snappe came along with his camera.

Competition mode began for those sh ifty bastards. One was anti-social and one was hyper-social. Both neurodivergent men knew what was at stake. They were in a documentition for a throne no one cared for… a dying form of art in a changing digital age, and Snappe saw the writing on the wall and went for it while Mick stuck with stills and burned himself out of the edge that made him different. He fucked around with video… but his poverty-ass mindset never let him buy the proper equipment to edit the videos he shot. Maybe that was an excuse he made for lack of drive.

A new artist sprung up on the scene like a cock in the morning light: Parker Loudpack, an odd and scrawny feller from another ghetter in Arnton. Snappe shot a lot of content for him, and Mick bought a modest amount of weed from him. Parker had the image and the sound… that drugged out pitched down pop punk sample emo rap style… I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, right? And the face tats, man. He had them all over, so anything was fair game… Snappe knew he had a viral moment in the sleeve, and he launched it.

Parker got a new tattoo on his forehead for a famous podcast: NoCucker. He got it tattooed right there above his right green eye and sent it in and got what he wanted—the host sent attention his way and his debut single hit 100k views.

“All my friends say that I’m blowin up…”

Mick took some photos for Parker too, but he wasn’t very associated… he was an outsider to their scene and he knew it, yet he knew he could outrap any of them too. He had a concept album, and he’d tell you all about it, and he might even let you hear a beat or two from it, and if you were a very close friend he would rap it for you while he drove you around. He didn’t have a lot of those.

Imagine devoting years to an artform, and sitting on the sidelines while a bunch of artists do what you always wanted to do… and you’re photographing them. Did Mick get artcucked? The world may never know, but the truth is that it ate him alive and he absolutely hated Parker at one point in time because he obtained the one thing Mick always wanted: a viral moment of fame.

Mick didn’t stop creating anything but life, and all the others stopped creating anything but life, and well, it’s hard to write a bar when you’re stuck in the bar to escape your fucking family for a few hours after work. Parker fell to the same fate as the other men, just more slowly. He had his moment and a cult for a few years… but fate willed it that he too would remove his face tats and return to normalcy and fatherhood.

Like a river, like a wave.