Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - The Escapers

Episode Date: January 28, 2016

Artist Gary Panter packs up and sizes down, Alix Lambert explains the new computer trap. Plus your host on Gordon Comstock (the escaper protagonist of Orwell’s novel Keep the aspidistra flying).  

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called The Escapers. I wake up every day doomed to be an artist and I try to make art. And I know wherever I am, that's what I'm going to try to do, you know, which is good and bad for relationships. When my friend Gary Panter told me that he and his wife were splitting up and that he'd be moving into an apartment all on his own, I was a bit worried about him. You see, for the past two decades, Gary's been living in this giant house in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. A mansion-sized house, like 15 rooms not counting the basement. So that's 15 rooms filled with stuff. Books, art, toys.

But now that he's moving into a three-room apartment, what the hell is Gary going to do with all that stuff? Take it with him? Throw it away? I decided to visit him and find out. Oh my God, look at this room. Oh my God, are you kidding me? So there's snow drifts of material, mountains and valleys. It's like that show Hoarders, except there's no diapers.

This is just toys. A number of the toys, piled up in the basement, come from when Gary worked on Pee-Wee's Playhouse. He not only designed the sets for that show, but many of the toys, too. So there's a lot of peewee stuff. I got one of every peewee thing that was ever made. And so I have tons of, like, peewee kids' pajamas and outfits. Most of the toys, though, are just weird things that Gary's collected throughout his life. Now he has to decide what he will take with him

and what he will throw away. This is really good. This is like some, I don't know what the hell that is. Oh, wow. It's like a pink flesh blob with a little pulsating heart and a lot of hair on the back. Where did you find that? That's Stoop Sail.

It takes batteries, so it does something. Maybe it talks. Phone E.T. with the Ewok phone. It's stupid. I don't know. My dad ran a dime store, and I couldn't take the toys home, so that's my excuse. Now I have all the toys. I have enough toys for my own dime store. I had a convenient moment where, you know, my parents got divorced, very similar, you know, the house had to be cleared out and I had all my stuff in the garage and I was going to get it and I was going to get it. And I was, you know,

kind of fighting with my mom at this moment. I was, I went to live with my dad and then finally I went to go get it and it had been cleared out and I lost everything. And I felt angry, but also relieved. It was a weird mixture of both. You didn't have to go through out. And I lost everything. It was gone. Yeah. And I felt angry, but also relieved. It was a weird mixture of both. You didn't have to go through it. And now on eBay, you can get it all back if you wanted it. You can find it item by item and have it mailed to your house. Maybe some of it's here. Maybe.

It probably is. That Mutant Ninja Turtle thing over there. I didn't see anything from my childhood. But I didn't check the giant piles that are going into the dumpster either. But I've thrown away thousands of things now. Maybe I should have. I've leveled up thousands of things. To be honest, I'm a little over-shocked that you're feeling so good

about de-assessing so much of this stuff. So much stuff. I'll still have more stuff than anybody else. For much of the time that Gary's lived in this house, he's used the top floor, the attic, as his studio. This is where he makes comics, hippie beaded necklaces that he sends to his friends, and paintings. I became a famous cartoonist and a famous illustrator. And am I a famous painter? I don't know. But I'm a painter. And since I was a kid, and everywhere I go, I make paintings, maybe just one a month, maybe one big painting a month, or maybe two little paintings a

month. And that's what I've done my whole life. Gary shows me a painting that he's just finished. It depicts a man and a woman waist-deep in blue shimmering water. The source material, he tells me, is a lobby card that he bought on eBay. Back in the day, movie theaters would display images from the films that they were showing in their lobbies, thus the name. The one Gary used for the painting we're looking at comes from some bad pirate movie starring Steve Reeves of Hercules fame. And so it shows him and a woman escaping through a swamp. And so I call it The Escapers. And so, you know, they're wading through this

water. It's very beautiful and iridescent with this dot filtering thing I'm working on. The Escapers is one of the last paintings that Gary will make in this house. It's a pretty personal and powerful, almost magical statement about where Gary is and where he hopes to go next. It's like Helene and I are escaping. We're friends, we're bound together

by being all of us parents forever. But we're escaping the routines and the ruts and whatever we haven't accomplished it's kind of like a marriage that was a success and we raised a daughter who loves us and we're friends and we like each other, but we ran out of gas in a certain extent and so I think this now is about us choosing and we like each other, but we ran out of gas to a certain extent. And so I think this now is about us choosing a path where we might be happier and live longer.

One of the reasons I'm cheerful right now is because the culture, when you turn 65, says, die, you know, you're done. You raised your child. Just go die. Go in a corner and just give it up, you know. But so this whole thing, whatever it is, is in defiance of that. Ten years ago, ten years almost to the day I recorded with Gary, I made my great escape from Boston to New York.

But I have no heroic image of a man with his sleeves rolled up confidently navigating a swamp to share with you. Rather, only a fuzzy memory of myself riding a packed New Year's Day Chinatown bus, hugging a shabby broken suitcase to my chest. A suitcase that contained most of my precious possessions. Well, at least the ones I was afraid my now ex-girlfriend might break. Of course, in my mind, I was an epic hero, for I had finally escaped from Boston, that provincial college town that had ensnared me for way too many years. And I was escaping to New York,

that magical city where I would finally be able to live, truly live, the artistic life. There was this guy on the bus sitting next to me. For some reason, he just couldn't stop laughing at my situation. Like I said, the bus was packed. We all had our possessions in our laps, but he just thought it was a total riot that I was moving on the Chinatown bus. It was stupid of me to tell him everything, but I was so emotional I just couldn't stop myself. I told him how I just

said goodbye to my girlfriend of six years and our cats and my father-figure landlord and how I had no idea of where I was going to live or what I was going to do. And I told him about the other woman in New York, the one that I'd be staying with until I figured it all out. If this encounter had taken place today, I am certain that this guy would have just posted the whole exchange surreptitiously on Twitter. Guy next to me says he ditched girlfriend in nice apartment because he needs to be alone. Moving in with new girl tonight. Hashtag the lies we tell ourselves. Dude on the bus next to me has all his things in a broken suitcase. Says the future is going to be awesome. Hashtag happy diluted new year.

I really made a mistake though when I told him about my podcast and my theories about art. At this, he erupted with laughter. Guy on the bus has a plan to record himself talking and put it on the internet. Hashtag YOLO poverty. Perhaps I deserve the mockery.

I realize now that on that night, I was pretty much channeling Gordon Comstock, the main character in George Orwell's 1936 novel, Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Because Gordon is a patron saint to all escapers. At one point, Gordon was a copywriter at an advertising agency. But he quit. Advertising, by his definition, is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.

When we first meet Gordon, he has just taken a position as a poorly paid bookseller in a dreary part of London, so he can focus on his poetry. The title of Orwell's novel is a play on the socialist slogan, Keep the Red Flag Flying. An aspidistra is a fern-like houseplant that by the 1930s had become a symbol of lower-class striving. Gordon sees them flying in almost every window he passes. For him, the Aspidistra is a symbol that the working classes are aspirational

rather than revolutionary. Gordon wanted to escape the world of money. He wanted to escape down, deep down, into some world where money no longer mattered. He wanted to live among the lost people, the underground people, tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. He liked to think that beneath the world of money exists a great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning, a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal. Gordon, it turns out, is the true revolutionary socialist.

But of course, once he descends down into real poverty, he discovers that he has no time or will to write, because he is always hungry and cold and lonely. Readers of Orwell's more well-known travelogue, Down and Out in Paris and London, will recognize some of the descriptions of Gordon's poverty. Absolutely wretched humiliations and indignities. The novel is clearly autobiographical. In fact, George Orwell wrote the book while working in a bookshop in Hampstead.

In many ways, the ending of Keep the Aspidistra Flying mirrors the ending of 1984. Gordon Comstock swears off writing poetry, just as Winston Smith swears off rebellion. Winston Smith comes to love Big Brother, and Gordon Comstock comes to love the Aspidistra. After getting his long-suffering girlfriend Rosemary pregnant, Gordon renounces his poetry and returns to the advertising agency. We say goodbye to Gordon Comstock just after he purchases an Aspidistra for his own flat. Keep the Aspidistra Flying is a perfect satire. It's one of my favorite novels and an important literary bridge that links Dostoevsky's Man from Underground with the

generation of angry young writers that emerges in the 1950s and 60s. Orwell, however, hated this novel. He refused to allow it to be reprinted until after his death, and he would recount with glee how 3,000 copies of the original print run were destroyed by an early World War II bombing run. Why did Orwell hate this book? Perhaps he, like Gordon, once made a resolution to dirt-cold hunger and loneliness. Perhaps Orwell, like Gordon, once believed with all his heart that it is better to sink than rise. Or, my theory,

Orwell just never forgave himself for not allowing Gordon to escape. Thank you. Did you make any resolutions this year? I never make resolutions because then I'm just starting the year off with a guaranteed failure on my horizon. Well, for me, it's kind of like Charlie Brown in the football. Every year, I make a resolution, and every time, I think it'll be different. Every year, I think, this time, I am going to kick the resolution ball to victory. Well, I have that too, for sure. I mean, I repeat things over and over again with the idea that maybe it'll be different. But I also am completely superstitious.

So I feel like if there's this mandate that you have to make a resolution on this day, you're just setting yourself up for failure. And how old were you when you figured this out? Oh, you know, like three. I had a dark view of the world very early on. I'm a little worried you're going to make fun of me, but my resolution is to get a new computer. I've been using the same laptop for five and a half years now.

And I know that's ancient in computer years, but it actually works great because five and a half years ago, i know that's ancient in computer years but it actually works great because five and a half years ago i locked it down so i haven't updated anything or upgraded anything why everything works and also you don't have to learn new things exactly but the problem is i'm just no longer compatible i'm using this recording studio now. And a few weeks ago, I was showing one of the engineers how I put the podcast together on my laptop. And he's like, Whoa, I haven't even seen some of these programs in like three years. And so I can't use the stuff in the studio, unless I upgrade and I can't upgrade unless I get a new computer. So that's my simple resolution. Okay, um, yeah, I need to get a new computer too so maybe

we should do that together you mean like a joint resolution no i don't make resolutions it would just be something we do together just a shopping trip a social shopping trip you know what i can be i can be your resolution enabler that's what i would be i would be benjamin's resolution enabler. That's what I would be. I would be Benjamin's resolution enabler. What's wrong with your computer? Well, my computer will just go to sleep whenever it feels like it and act like a bitch, kind of. And then I, who have no technical gifts whatsoever, curse at it a lot and push buttons. And that doesn't really help anything. But the reason I haven't bought a new one, partly because I don't like any of the new computers that are out there. I don't like the new options because they don't have what I want.

Like what? Like the DVD player. You know, you can get an external DVD player. I don't want an external DVD player. I want a laptop that does everything in one compact thing. That's the idea. If I'm on an airplane, I'm not going to, you know, pull out my computer and my external DVD drive and hook it all up and then watch something. I just want a laptop. That was supposed to be, to me, the selling point of a laptop in the first place.

You know, I can't even recall the last time I put a DVD in the DVD slot in my laptop. But I hate the new models too. It's like all of a sudden, there's a whole new infrastructure. Like overnight overnight they changed everything and now you have to upgrade constantly if you even want to use stuff that works and then if i'm understanding this correctly you have to rent all the programs now i wish my only

complaint was the dvd player okay so this is my problem too i mean you i was just starting with one issue but there's like a broader i'm mad at everything so this is a problem for you too uh yeah hugely i just i paid adobe 200 to quit using their service wait a minute you have to pay money to quit yeah you have to pay money if you want to stop your monthly payments before a certain time you have to then pay like 200 or you have to keep paying and then remember in that tiny window that that's when you can quit using them this is even worse than i thought it's completely absurd and it makes me so mad and just on principle it makes me i just feel like okay if somebody wants the subscription great they they can have it but i want the other thing you know this might really

change things if creative people need to rent the tools they need to make art exactly and i think it is the enemy of creativity what do you mean one thing that pisses me off is they're saying well if you can't afford to pay monthly then you're a hobbyist you're not a professional artist okay well i don't i know a lot of professional artists who can't afford to pay for this very specific service every single month right and then they're making these price comparisons that are based on the idea that everybody who buys software to own it is upgrading every 18 months, which is really ridiculous, right? People keep software and use it for decades. Five and a half years. Yeah.

So that's like a complete fallacy. And I didn't explain very well why i had to pay them to quit but basically it's like a phone subscription right you you commit to a year and if you want to get out of that a year in less than a year you have to pay 200 to get out of it that's so complicated why don't they just charge people what the thing costs well okay so this is why i think it's the enemy of of creativity so people i know uh freelance artists artists who make a living freelancing don't have a consistent lifestyle you know one month may not be like another month you may make money and then not make money, and you may be doing a number of different

interdisciplinary kinds of things. So maybe I'm going to need to use this kind of software for two months and then not need it for a year because I'm working on a book or I'm working on something else. And I think a lot of creative people live like that. And I think that they're making it so that those people aren't able to make things and that the people who are able to, maybe there's some of them who are, you know, wonderful and brilliant,

but they already have this, like, way of thinking and also an ability to pay for it. But if you want to just drop out for six months, you're going to be less likely to do it if you have this like monthly payments and stuff that you have to do. Well, congratulations, Alex. You have successfully pulled my 2016 resolution football out from in front of me before I even attempted to kick it. I'm like holding my computer as you're talking caressing it saying oh don't worry i'm not going to upgrade you i love you yeah because the way i was going to say because and this goes in

with the with their like completely false idea about people upgrading every 18 months is that i like to complain about my computer's glitches but because I'm good at complaining, and I think people should do what they're good at. But the fact is, I probably will not take my computer in for a new computer until it dies completely. I guess what we really need to figure out then is how to resurrect dead laptops. Well, I mean, my go-to highly scientific approach

to any malfunctioning appliance is what I used to do with my VCR, which was put in the closet for a while and then start it up again. And it would usually work. you have been listening to benjamin walker's theory of everything this installment is called The Escapers. This installment was written and produced by myself with Alex Lambert and Gary Panter.

I ended up helping Gary move. Well, if standing around with a microphone while a bunch of guys move boxes counts as helping. It was incredible. He got all of his stuff in the new apartment. And there's still room for painting and tacos. We'll definitely be checking back in with Gary Panter soon. The Theory of Everything feed lives at toe.prx.org. Try telling a friend about the podcast. And then if they tell you that they need to talk to you about this show, well, you will know that this friend is a true compañero.

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