FOR ANGRY MR PATRICK (THE ARTIST)

Patrick was born a few decades ago. When he was young, Patrick dressed as an artist because he wanted his peers to think, “Wow, Patrick is an artist. Look at his tight jeans and lomo photographs!” He went to art galleries and music festivals and screamed at the top of his lungs and grew his hair and wore dirty skinny jeans and, when you’d read his Facebook wall, it’d be filled with comments from people you wouldn’t know, people you’d never meet, and they’d ask him about a party, or invite him to a party, or complain about a party, or compliment a party, and there’d be a photo of him (taken with a Polaroid camera or photoshopped in a way so that it would look like it was taken with a Polaroid camera) hugging a typewriter while some strange pill would linger on the tip of his tongue, and every so often he’d post a video of YouTube video of a band only recognised by maybe a hundred people.

Patrick once saw a documentary about how people killed sharks to get shark fins for shark fin soup: they’d cut the fins off the sharks and let the sharks drown in the sea. Patrick was deeply appalled by this so he protested against shark finning everyday until he realised the process for making the beef and pork he ate was just as violent and cruel as shark finning. Patrick couldn’t live without eating beef and pork. To make things worse, he then saw a documentary about how a lot of big name chocolate brands made their chocolate through child slave labour in Africa. Chocolate was one of the only things that made Patrick happy - he couldn't give it up. He decided not to think about any of these documentaries again.

But Patrick needed something to be angsty about - he was an artist! A year later he read the book summary of the book The Corporation on Amazon and because of reading the book summary of the book The Corporation on Amazon he hated corporations, detested them, called them The Devil, until he graduated from his university studies and found a job working for a multinational corporation because he could no longer afford food without actually having to work. Plus he went to McDonald’s every weekend, had an iPhone and wore leather. Patrick decided to never mention The Corporation again.

Throughout his life, Patrick confidently argued against monogamy. He argued that people are free to do what they want to do, that marriage is a falsity and the concept of commitment is a lie fuelled by a conservative government. This was until his eighth girlfriend broke his heart by cheating on him. “Why do women cheat?” He’d ask people while crying afterwards. He’d call her three times every night for the next month, begging her to marry him. It never worked out.

A month after his breakup, Patrick quit his job to become a full time artist. He was enjoying it for a while until he realised that he was trying to create art for money, and he once used to say art wasn’t about making money. He gave up art and found a job in the government, and in his years in the government he realised one thing: whatever you do, you’ll make someone angry and they'll blame you for their suffering. He didn’t like being blamed for anything, so he quit.

Patrick, in his pain, realised that he lived in a world where every argument had a counter-argument. Patrick hated counter-arguments. How could he hate a government that he voted (and worked) for, protest against corporations that he contributed to, hate animal cruelty when he ate meat, fight for polygamy when he couldn’t stand it if women cheated on him and call himself an artist when he created no art?

The world was made by people and people kept fucking everything up. In his self-hatred he burned down his ex-office, he burned down his home. He murdered people. He threw away his clothes and found mountains and woods to live in. He lived on fruits and leaves that had fallen on the ground and at night, he’d think of stories (he made sure to never read books again – books were made of paper, which contributed to the death of the environment, and electronic books consumed electricity, which also contributed to the death of the environment and could even also promote sexism and slave labour in some cultures; plus purchasing books or paying for Internet service providers only further strengthened the evils of capitalism and greed) in his head.

Naked, he cried, “I am an artist!” to a moon that was nowhere to be seen.