Every once and a while my boss sends me across Manhattan picking up equipment for a production or shoot. I’m always sweating. Probably because I wear all black, but that’s a personal choice, so I can’t really complain.
But I trek across Manhattan and end up in parts of the city I would never expect. Strangely enough, I’ve never been to the west side of Midtown, just like I’d never been to the Brooklyn Bridge until about a month and a half ago. I don’t really get out much; I’m just a different dude.
And being different is one of the greatest gifts I’ve been given, whether from my multiple moves and inconsistent childhood settings or from my interracial, immigrant parents. But it’s taxing, and a highly unique experience. My whole life, I never saw one man or woman that was successful that looked like me, grew up like me, or had my background. My role models could only be within my family, but even my father, for instance, would and will never be able to understand what growing up with a perverted social and political identity and no hometown would be like.
At sixteen I experienced being inebriated for the first time in the Hague out in Holland. Olivier, my day one, brought me along slowly, knowing I was real reluctant to do anything too crazy.
I told you I’ve been a pussy for a long, long time.
The next morning I didn’t understand why I was so thirsty, so I drank a liter of milk when I woke up. Stupid shit, but that’s what you do when you have no clue what you’re doing.
And I? I have no clue where I’m going. It doesn’t really make much sense, does it? I mean, what exactly is this that I’m doing? A written album for Action Bronson? If I told my father that’s what I spent my time on, that’s what I daydream about, and that’s what I’m obsessed with at the moment, he’d probably disown me, take my dog, and tell all his coworkers that I’m at Goldman Sachs.
Just to save face.
But right now I’m as confused as I was waking up with my first hangover. None of this shit makes any sense, but I do it because that’s what needs to be done. I’m already slowly going crazy, at least this is postponing the slide a bit.
I’m just trying to make my own out here in a way that hasn’t been done before. It’s difficult not to doubt yourself, especially when your ideas require convincing those around you, simply because they don’t make much sense to them. You do what you have to do, I guess, but it’s taken me three years to make this step. Doing what you have to do just ain’t that simple.
Because, hell, everyone’s a goddamn critic.