Monday Morning: “must be a self-starter”
(I once did several studies of my tape dispenser while my boss was lolling around the beach in Aruba. At least for an artist, that’s sort of like getting paid to do what you like. I also used his beautiful vintage sx-70 polaroid camera to do this photographic study of my little green kewpie doll on the Lucent phone.)
I, too, used to look for employment in the classifieds, which is how I learned that the line in the job requirments that says, “must be a self-starter,” usually translates into, “must work harder than your boss, and for a lower salary.”
Well, it’s the July 4th weekend’s Monday morning today, and if you’re one of the poor souls that have to work, you’re probably not that happy about it. I can’t really relate, because I’m a freelancer and the two days that I didn’t work last week were vacation enough for me! I went to the beach. I’m rearing to get back in the saddle again.
Not so for you employees out there that didn’t have enough seniority to have the day off. Not that I want to make you feel worse, but all this working and overworking, the fear and trembling of the gainfully employed, well, it brings out my subversive tendencies. So, while your boss is in Sag Harbor, leaving you to toil at the computer and dally at the phones, why not let me share with you all my references on work, as well as what work was supposed to be like in the wake of the industrial revolution?
Read, first of all, Austin Kelly’s “Farewell to the Working Class,” in The Nation online, about the right to not work, the right to be lazy. Here’s the very beginning, to give you a taste:
In 1883 Karl Marx’s son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, was idling in a relatively luxurious political prison near the Latin Quarter of Paris. A Cuban-French socialist, he whiled away the days taking long lunches and discussing the evils of capitalism with his comrade and collaborator Jules Guesde, who happened to be staying in the next room. Lafargue’s other prison pastimes included relaxing in the bathtub that had been delivered to his quarters (at Friedrich Engels’s expense), practicing his German and, like any good nineteenth-century intellectual, revising his treatise—a pamphlet titled The Right to Be Lazy.
Next, to really get your steam up, rent (or order online while at work) this beautiful French film, “A nous la liberté,” directed by René Clair. “Work will set you free,” are the words the prisoners toil under, and they’re superimposed in my memory upon the poetic scene of the singing flower. The hero’s invention of mass production is meant to grant that all the factory workers may drink wine, play checkers, and dance with their loving women in the grass around the factory, while the factory does everything for them, with only occasional surveillance by the smiling, well-rested, well-loved workers. If you were a bright-eyed kid who believed everything you read in High School’s version of Greek Philosophy, you feel betrayed by what actually transpired in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, and perhaps you’ll dab away a nostalgic (for your idealism) tear.
Now, here’s a bedtime story for you, to give you something to dream about with your head on the mousepad. My friend Juan had an Uncle Pepe Fonseca in Uruguay. Uncle Pepe won the lotto as a young adult. What did he do with his money? Instead of splurging and living large, he decided never to work, and to live so frugally as to make the money last as long as possible. The story goes that he read Proust, drank wine, hung out with friends, became very erudite, but was a disappointment to his family. Because meanwhile, his brother Gonzalo went to New York and became a famous sculptor. One day, when Pepe was about 40, the money had just about run out. Pepe thought, well, he’d have to get a job. But then he won the lotto again. The story ends with the sum-up that when he died a few years ago, Pepe hadn’t worked a day in his life. Pepe had been happy, but whenever I mentioned Pepe to his family, they’d “tsk” and say, “what a waste.”
Me, I believed in Pepe.
Songs to listen to online after your nap, while you wait to clock out:
Je ne veux pas travailler, by Pink Martini
Lazy, sung by Marylin Monroe.
Lazy, by Deep Purple
Lazy Bones, by Hoagy Carmichael
Gawker on the orphaned Monday workers, here.
So, have you decided working sucks? Then read “Working Sucks,” by Tim Righteous, in which he’ll outline ways to work less, with the ultimate goal of “zero employment.” I recommend it with one caveat: not working is not for the lily-livered.
Now, go home!
