In Slippery Ditch, Utah they do not "abort" babies. They don't put family into mental institutions, especially not a pregnant teenage daughter, and they don't much care if the names they choose for a little one have ever graced a popular baby names list.
Under these particular circumstances Fenwick George Noodleman came to exist. Son of a mad girl and, if you are prone to believe a mad girl's testimony, a "God" described by this young woman as half-coyote/half-man, suspiciously like a video game villain. No terrestrial fatherly DNA matches could be made, no lineage established - a considerable statement in Mormon country.
Fenwick George was discovered 3 months along inside his crazy mother's womb. Her parents, George and Esther Noodleman, people of conservative values and limited means, never indicated any disappointment, disapproval or dissatisfaction with the situation, which caused more than a little gossip in this tiny agricultural community. One outspoken temple elder went so far as to suggest and frequently repeat that George and Esther couldn't have planned a happier little accident for themselves. Grandchildren are always a blessing.
His mother, Bethany, spent her days sitting on the sofa, drinking soda, eating Cheetos and chocolates and playing video games on her playstations, 1, 2, and 3. She'd been home schooled, such as it was, since the age of 9. By 14, she'd grown to 300 lbs. It was a miracle her pregnancy was discovered at all. Bethany called the little one inside her "Dewd." She called most people Dewd actually. Dewd, with this alternate spelling, if she ever wrote it down. Her parents assumed it was because her favorite drink was Mt. Dew and everybody else blamed the crazy.
Dewd, all pink and fetal, got a steady diet of corn syrup, red dye #5, artificial flavors, caffeine and a host of other non food nonsense. Miracle #2, he grew anyway. And for his baby mind there were no Baby Mozart audio tracks, no Baby Genius books read to him. Instead his mother consumed the modern myths of video games, stupefying and infantilizing. She played RPGs, MMOs, FPSs, Sci-Fi, High Fantasy, Shmups, Brawlers, and Racers. She watched the twitch channel, other people playing video games. She watched every Star Wars movie and tv show in a continuous playlist, looping ad infinitum. Dewd was witness, captive audience incarnate.
And it was in this way that Dewd became the person he was, he is and will forever be. He was born with a personality fully formed, an ego like concrete, an unshakable sense of self, his strengths and flaws entrenched and intractable.
Under these particular circumstances Fenwick George Noodleman came to exist. Son of a mad girl and, if you are prone to believe a mad girl's testimony, a "God" described by this young woman as half-coyote/half-man, suspiciously like a video game villain. No terrestrial fatherly DNA matches could be made, no lineage established - a considerable statement in Mormon country.
Fenwick George was discovered 3 months along inside his crazy mother's womb. Her parents, George and Esther Noodleman, people of conservative values and limited means, never indicated any disappointment, disapproval or dissatisfaction with the situation, which caused more than a little gossip in this tiny agricultural community. One outspoken temple elder went so far as to suggest and frequently repeat that George and Esther couldn't have planned a happier little accident for themselves. Grandchildren are always a blessing.
His mother, Bethany, spent her days sitting on the sofa, drinking soda, eating Cheetos and chocolates and playing video games on her playstations, 1, 2, and 3. She'd been home schooled, such as it was, since the age of 9. By 14, she'd grown to 300 lbs. It was a miracle her pregnancy was discovered at all. Bethany called the little one inside her "Dewd." She called most people Dewd actually. Dewd, with this alternate spelling, if she ever wrote it down. Her parents assumed it was because her favorite drink was Mt. Dew and everybody else blamed the crazy.
Dewd, all pink and fetal, got a steady diet of corn syrup, red dye #5, artificial flavors, caffeine and a host of other non food nonsense. Miracle #2, he grew anyway. And for his baby mind there were no Baby Mozart audio tracks, no Baby Genius books read to him. Instead his mother consumed the modern myths of video games, stupefying and infantilizing. She played RPGs, MMOs, FPSs, Sci-Fi, High Fantasy, Shmups, Brawlers, and Racers. She watched the twitch channel, other people playing video games. She watched every Star Wars movie and tv show in a continuous playlist, looping ad infinitum. Dewd was witness, captive audience incarnate.
And it was in this way that Dewd became the person he was, he is and will forever be. He was born with a personality fully formed, an ego like concrete, an unshakable sense of self, his strengths and flaws entrenched and intractable.
"What we call a creative gift is merely the social license to be obsessed."
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
The work of art is the artist's attempt to justify his heroism objectively, in the concrete creation. It is a testimonial to his absolute uniqueness and heroic transcendence. But the artist is still a creature and he can feel it more intensely than anyone else. In other words, he knows that the work is he, therefore "bad" ephemeral, potentially meaningless—unless justified from outside himself and outside *itself*.
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
“To grow up at all is to conceal the mass of internal scar tissue that throbs in our dreams.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
"In sex the body and the consciousness of it are no longer separated; the body is no longer something we look at as an alien to ourselves."
-- Earnest Becker, The Denial of Death
-- Earnest Becker, The Denial of Death
“The key to the creative type is that he is separated out of the common pool of shared meanings. There is something in his life experience that makes him take in the world as a problem; as a result he has to make personal sense out of it. This holds true for all creative people to a greater or lesser extent, but it is especially obvious with the artist. Existence becomes a problem that needs an ideal answer; but when you no longer accept the collective solution to the problem of existence, then you must fashion your own. The work of art is, then, the ideal answer of the creative type to the problem of existence as he takes it in-not only the existence of the external world, but especially his own: who he is as a painfully separate person with nothing shared to lean on. He has to answer to the burden of his extreme individuation, his so painful isolation. He wants to know how to earn immortality as a result of his own unique gifts. His creative work is at the same time the expression of his heroism and the justification of it. It is his "private religion"-as Rank put it. Its uniqueness gives him personal immortality; it is his own "beyond" and not that of others.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
"Either you eat up yourself and others around you, trying for perfection; or you *objectify that imperfection in a work*, on which you then unleash your creative powers. In this sense, some kind of objective creativity is the only answer man has to the problem of life."
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
"(B)oth the artist and the neurotic bite off more than they can chew, but the artist spews it back out again and chews it over in an objectified way, as an external, active, work project. The neurotic can’t marshal this creative response embodied in a specific work, and so he chokes on his introversions. The artist has similar large-scale introversions, but he uses them as material.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
"When you no longer accept the collective solution to the problem of existence, then you must fashion your own. The work of art is, then, the ideal answer of the creative type to the problem of existence as he takes it in."
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
3 Red Dots