Deadbeats of the Soul: A Cut-Up Manifesto
They crawl out of the fetid alleys of existence, these word-slingers, these paint-drenched maniacs. Society calls them deadbeats, wasters, men and women with holes in their shoes and existential dread clinging to their trench coats like yesterday’s smog. But burrow deeper, past the pawn shop trinkets and ramen noodle stains, and you’ll find the raw, churning engine of creation.
The Curse of the Unmarketable:
They crawl out of the psychic gutter, these real ones, the unwashed darlings of the Moloched Muse. Forget your “creators,” your self-congratulatory Michelangelos. These are the word-bleeders, the canvas-convulsers, hacking out their visions in flickering neon dens.
Society, that bloated gasbag, wants to label them “deadbeats,” these tattered vessels of chaotic beauty. But the label sticks like a leech to a corpse, meaningless in the face of the hungry ghost that drives them. They are possessed, you see, by the Bleed.
The Bleed, a psychic hemorrhage from the raw underbelly of existence. It spills through them, a torrent of fractured visions and forbidden colors. They can’t not create, not spew this chaotic ichor onto any scrap of canvas, page, or flickering screen they can find.
Money? Ha! A laughable abstraction. They barter with scraps of meaning, fleeting moments of connection in the cold, digitized wasteland. Anerkennung, recognition? A fleeting chimera. Validation is a bullet they dodged long ago.
They are the fallout of a fractured world, the broken mirrors reflecting the grotesque reality corporations try to peddle. Their art? A scream into the void, a desperate attempt to find some semblance of order in the maelstrom.
So call them deadbeats, if you must. But know this: when the chrome flakes from the empire and the false gods come crashing down, their art will remain. Scrawled messages on the peeling walls of a burned-out world, a testament to the unbowed human spirit clawing for meaning in the face of oblivion.
Creator drips with Bourgeois Productivity
“Creator?” scoffs the jazz-soaked poet, smoke curling from a Lucky Strike dangling from his lips. “Creator? That’s for marketing whores who churn out pop pablum for the boob tube. We are alchemists, goddamn it! We traffic in stolen moments, slivers of eternity wrestled from the void. We translate the screams of the subconscious into a language that tears at the edges of sanity.”
They are not creators, these deadbeats of the soul. They are vessels, leaky faucets spewing forth the chaotic overflow of the universe. They are antennae trembling in the cosmic static, desperately trying to capture a shred of the ineffable.
For the true artist is not a creator, a sterile architect of pre-packaged realities. They are a conduit, a raw nerve ending exposed to the screaming void. They are the starvers, the bleeders, the uncalled – and their art, a testament to the beautiful, terrible truth.
The Bleed sputters a fax machine, spewing out a sheet of paper in a jittery stream
They dangle the carrot of “creator,” a title dripping with bourgeois productivity. But the true artist, the one who has glimpsed the writhing chaos behind the facade, knows better. Creation? A laughable illusion. We are not marionette masters, yanking order from the void. We are cockroaches scuttling across the linoleum of existence, picking at the fetid crumbs of the ineffable.
The Word flickers on a neon sign, distorting and bending
“Deadbeat” – now that has a certain ring to it. It captures the essence of existence, teetering on the tightrope strung between genius and madness. We are the unwashed, the unkempt, the ones who have seen too far behind the veil. We are the chronic voyeurs of the psychic gutter, transmuting the rancid effluvia of the subconscious into grotesque beauty.
The Flesh a grainy photograph develops in a chemical bath, revealing a distorted human form
Society, that bloated tick gorging on conformity, seeks to categorize, to label. “Creator” – a sterile term, fit for the assembly line drones who churn out milquetoast depictions of a reality they’ve never even smelled. We, the deadbeats, we traffic in the contraband nightmares, the psychic hemorrhages they dare not acknowledge. We are the bad touch in the sterilized supermarket of normality.
The Void a black hole sigil pulsates on a cracked mirror
So let them call us deadbeats. Let them scoff at our tattered clothes and bloodshot eyes. We wear our dishevelment like a badge of honor, a testament to our nightly wrestles with the howling demons from beyond the veil. For in the crucible of our deadbeat existence, we forge the raw, pulsating heart of true art, a grotesque hymn that echoes in the hollowness of their manufactured reality.
fax machine whirs to a stop, the paper sheet curling slightly at the edges