sweet ’n’ sour tape #12: the yellow tape
WARNING: A lot of the images in the following tape are not optimized for phones, but why the fuck are you trying to read this masterpiece on your iPhone anyway? Get your ass to literally any other device, so you can fully enjoy the experience.
-FADE IN-
PROLOGUE
Childhood is the era where nothing you do has consequence, more or less. The Bison is grazing peacefully, waiting until the fates call on him to guide you. The Albatross lines up plot after plot, each nastier than the other, and oils up his conveyor belts, cannons, and all the other apparatuses he will use as instruments of his chaos. And Mothman? Well, he may not have even been enlisted by the Albatross yet. He was probably just doing typical Mothman shit- playing his PSP, smoking cigarettes after middle school before his parents got home, watching hentai, etc.
Childhood is something me and you have decided to fully let go of lately. I think you said it more bluntly than me, but we are no longer in that comfortable, worry-free space. We don’t even have the time to look back and wistfully reminisce now that it seems America has fully embraced not giving a fuck about corona. By the way, here are the numbers as of 9/5/2020 so you can update your small talk:
Total number of US cases: 6.22M
Total deaths: 188K (expected to go up to 410k by January 1st btw if mask use declines because these next months will be crucial)
Philly cases: 143K
Philly deaths: ~8,000
Anyway, I don’t really wanna have a big “hey this is what I learned during quarantine” moment. We know the process by now. No point continuously trying to congratulate ourselves despite fucking up because we realized some “meaningful truth about life” that we’ve already internalized God knows however many fucking times. It’s a bad look, it’s 2019 behavior.
As of writing this, things seem to be on the move again in the city. Time has returned. Structure has returned. The stakes, though always present, now feel grimly tangible again. Most of the college students have returned for school, which means the area around us especially is buzzing a lot. It’s been an impetus for all of us in the house to get back on our shit, even though I don’t even go to school haha. But seeing you and our roommates all fired up has got me back into it, too.
On a good note though, we both agree that we’re putting off all the distractions we got swept up in during quarantine to rest now. Todd has died and reincarnated as Princess Carolyn.
These quarantine entanglements, as Jada would call them, were like leeches on the soul that stopped us from going further in our actual work, all because they gave us that rush of feeling “productive”. We were basically trying to achieve the same high we get when we complete our actual goals, except this is like a cheaper, dangerous, off-brand impostor that requires less effort to feel the high.
False prophets are blasphemous, Kunal.
What we felt on our skin was not the kisses of progress, it was the barnacles of demise.
ACT I: THE ORGAN TRAIL
Ah yes, the Organ Trail. It takes many different shapes, forms, and names, but it’s the same path regardless: a wonky, bizarre cluster fuck. But this was our birthright. It all started with some random words we said as 9 year olds…
“Bro, we should start a company that makes video games!”
“Yeah, but what if we made other technology, too? We could be like-”
“…Steve?”
“Steve.”
Well, it went something like that. Anyway, my point is this: drive and ambition are not two sides of the same coin. I see drive like weather, and ambition like climate. Drive is the force you use to bust through the machines at the arcade and rack up your coins. Ambition is knowing what you want to get with those coins once you get to the prize booth.
They have a variety of relationships but ultimately, being driven is the ability to move efficiently, while being ambitious is the ability to maintain laser focus on a designated destination. You don’t need both to succeed, and one can help you with the other. But they require different things. Drive requires discipline, focus, and other things that every aspiring celebrity on Instagram claims to have. Ambition requires hard sacrifices- life and limb.
For us, I think ambition came first and drive was born from it. We focused on developing consistent drive, but that masked us from being real about how much the work we’re doing in the moment truly contributes to reaching our ambitions. In addition to that, ambition demands inconvenient decisions, an uncompromising mindset, a certain circle of friends and connections, and matching the pace it needs us to keep. It’s a lot, but it’s like you said last time: future us exists through our actions, right?
Once you realize the full scale which ambition operates at, you realize that drive is a mere prerequisite. It’s not even worthy enough of being on a list of demands because it’d be ludicrous for any ambitious person to lack in this area.
Senior year of college. Another year of trying to be a successful artist. Time is not cheap. You get my jist? Neither of us are trying to be a restless settler.
So my question for your next tape is this: Now that quarantine is over and you’ve gotten the reset/rebirth you begged the universe for, what is this reanimated version of you prepared to give to get closer to your ambitions? And where do you draw the line, if at all? I want a good answer. Be specific. Or should I say, perspicacious.
While that simmers, look at this:
ACT II: NO CHURCH IN THE WILD
ACT III: THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE
That’s the most important part: “Only as long as you let me be.”
I’m proud of how far we’ve come, but the coming years are gonna be make or break. Regardless of the outcome, it’s going to be really interesting. Summer 2020 was a wash, just like the rest of the year so far. With the world getting ready to rotate again, I’m glad we got out whatever was left of 2019, especially you with all of that bullshit you were caught up in. It’s time we stop being productive only in a manner that’s convenient for us.
The gestation period is over. 2020 was supposed to be about getting tangible W’s. Let’s remember that.
Oh I almost forgot the ending:
Thank you for reading the yellow tape.
CAST:
Me as “The Narrator” and myself
My brother as “Brother”
Kunal Duggal as “Kunal Duggal”
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as “The Bison”
Hood as “The Albatross”
Slurples as “The Barnacles”
Mothman as “Mothman”
-FADE OUT-
