*** AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following posts were part of an “online journal” that Mark Sahm kept from 2000-2002 on a previous incarnation on his website Unsung Fu. Since that version no longer exists online, the entries will now be archived here. Any opinions and facts may be grossly outdated and should only be viewed for the historical value of this website and its creators.
January 9, 2001 - A Magazine Cover and An Empty Soul
Since I am a very private person, putting my work on the internet has been a big step. I recognize that this is a great marketplace for people to see my art, perhaps one day even sell some of it. But sometimes I wonder with a cynical smirk on my face: what if my pipe dreams don’t actually go up in smoke, and I do become successful?
In a fantasy like that, you must then ask yourself: what does fame really mean to me? I did, and my answer goes like this.
Fame - A magazine cover, a TV interview, a million teenage girls screaming my name, a horde of paparazzi with zoom lenses taking pictures of me scratching my crotch while I pick up my mail from the box. Do I really want or need that? No fucking way… not unless I have seriously lost my mind. For me, I am not ignorant to the fact that in the long run, it is better to fail and stay original. Sacrificing your privacy and your personal integrity to get quick fame by selling out is not something I want to partake in. Because life should never be about fame; that’s the problem with our society nowadays. Too many people spend too much time trying to become a rock star or famous actor, and most of the rest of us spend too much time idolizing those celebrities.
A prime example: take a look at all these people on these so-called ‘reality TV’ shows. The Real World, Survivor, Road Rules and their countless spawn of mental garbage… people go on, get their year’s worth of fame and then somehow feel their life is complete from there. That’s fucking sad… basically it proves my theory that hard work is vastly underappreciated; nobody wants to work for anything nowadays, everyone wants to take the easy road. It’s something I call fast food fame: they were in the right place at the right time, got eaten up by pop culture, and are subsequently dropped into the toilet of obscurity. What a life… I sure know that when I’m 75, I’d be proud to tell my grandkids that the highlight of my life was that I was the jackass who got kicked off the island in the 7th episode.
Consequently, there’s a specific reason why I’m using a pseudonym… I have no wish to be famous. I don’t want my face on a billboard, I have no need to go to big gatherings of celebrities and get my photograph taken on a red carpet, all to get on some type of powerful ego trip. I like being able to walk the streets and I’d never want special treatment from anyone. My primary reason for trying to market my art is for the art’s sake, so it can make an impact on people’s thinking and their imaginations. I’d never want to sell myself, I’m just an average guy, just like anyone else, just like what many celebrities fail to realize. Once you use yourself as a conduit to sell your art or your product, your art loses credibility and so do you.
Lastly, infamy is vastly underrated: people totally miss the concept of someone like a mysterious ghostwriter of some award winning movie, because they get too caught up in the media imagery with that movie. But I love it: you may not receive the credit you deserve because all the sugar coated celebrities get it. But you retain your credibility, and most importantly, you know what’s really up. The actors were just puppets speaking your lines, moving and flailing as you wrote it. I can’t think of how fame can possibly compare to that.
January 29, 2001 - The Ravaged Soundwaves
I wonder some days about who deems that adults can only have adult toys in their possession once they reach a certain age. It’s that whole issue of maturity— what event decides this for you? High school graduation? College? Wedding? Kids? It bothers me sometimes, that I am always thinking in a cartoon state of mind, but pretend to be mature and adultlike. I find it amazing how everything can have this redeeming imaginative quality to it, no matter how grim or sad, if you think hard enough. It’s kind like Billy Joel’s ‘New York State of Mind’ on high grade acid. Just kidding. But it is all natural in my brain, and it’s not always about complicating things. I believe that sometimes you need immature things to balance it all out the intellectualism… well, at least for those of us who use our brain on a daily basis.
Thus, my issue with losing my childhood toys— shit, I would totally trip out to be sitting back in the 80’s thinktank where the concept artists were coming up with TransFormer names, or in the Star Wars studio when they were designing the Millenium Falcon… that would be most transcendent to me. To think of where my creative and imaginary realms of thoughts would be without those things… damn, that’s a lot to grasp. Every evening on my walk through Midtown Manhattan, I see Autobot and Decepticon novelty t-shirts in a corner store near my day job. I’m very tempted to go inside and buy one, but I fear I can’t indulge in it. I know I couldn’t dare pick up a Transformer or Star Wars figure nowadays in front of people and play with it, without people thinking I’m out of my cranium. But I laugh at the imagery: pretending I was actually in its’ head, controlling it as a race car or F-14, firing missiles and so on. That was imagination at its’ best… not like nowadays where video games do everything for you.
But don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I am unsatisfied with adult toys; cars and computers and gadgets amongst lots of other chrome plated things… it’s all good. I’m certainly not on that headtrip that he who dies with the most toys wins. I have a little more depth than materialistic desires. But I don’t necessarily want to lose touch with my childhood either— why do you have to choose in the realm of toys? Who decides? Who makes the rules? And why the hell did I sell all the Transformers I owned at a yard sale for only 60 bucks? :o)>