“The Natural” by Maxwell James
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But then came the next memo. Now, not only did I need to do Environmental Nourishment, I had to actively engage as many of the customers in conversation as possible. Our conversations were too heady, and I needed to start engaging people on their terms. If a customer came in, and started reading a book, I needed to ask them about it, and to discuss it with them, and I had to make them feel like they understood it just as well as me. I needed to ask people what they thought about me. When I was talking to the Old Man, I needed to tone down my opinions, and not express them in so forceful a manner, because I was making people afraid to talk to me. The coffee shop would never live up to its egalitarian goals if the customers did not feel comfortable taking part in the ambiance. The main thrust was to remember that I was here to empower others, not myself.
This memo was harder to accept than the last one. My first reaction was that they were telling me to be less myself, and I didn’t like it. I brought it up in Environmental Nourishment one day. The Old Man said that I may be right, but looked up at the ceiling real fast, just to make sure the “may” had been clear enough. I answered him by saying that I saw no reason why I had to dumb myself down for the rest of the world, not even the people who signed my paychecks. I was an Artist. I had no master. I said it good and loud, because I wanted the Barista to see my righteous act of defiance.
But when I took my victory lap to the counter, she looked down, as if distracted. When I asked for my refill—being extra polite, my usual signal—she kept her eyes on the counter, took my cup, and turned to fill it. When she came back, she gave it to me, and said—very quietly—“Here is your majesty’s cup,” and then turned away, and began washing dishes, clanging them loudly into the dish rack.
She refused to speak to me for several days after that, and I was left in a vacuum. Environmental Nourishment was empty and meaningless. She treated me just like anyone else. Without her silent consent, everything I said felt dull and contrived. I had trouble speaking up, and the Old Man had trouble hearing me, and when he would ask me to speak up, I would become even more embarrassed. I’d sit in front of my laptop and be unable to focus. Whatever writing I was doing felt foreign, the result of some bizarre trance-state that had passed years before. I began to wonder whatever made me believe I had anything of interest to say. I could feel everyone in the coffee shop seeing through me, and could feel that knowledge digging into my body, leaving me barely able to stand up, move, or speak, because everything that occurred to me seemed obvious and insignificant.
It was the day that I sat in front of my laptop all day, without writing a single word, that I began to give shape to these feelings. Here I was, alone, isolated, with nobody to pay attention to me. All because I had to get on some Artist trip. What good was I doing? What good was an artist if nobody cared what the artist had to say?
That day, a middle-aged woman came in, sat down, and began reading a book written by a Buddhist monk from Massachusetts. I grit my teeth, walked over, and asked her about it. She began making repeated asinine statements about “energies,” and “chakras,” and moving her hands is curved, flowing motions. I tensed every muscle in my body, and listened. I got through the conversation just fine, and the Barista even smiled at me from behind the counter.
It got easier. People came in. I spoke to them each, in turn. My feedback cards got better, and I stopped getting memos. As long as I thought through what I said before I spoke, the Barista listened—and agreed—with me again. Things weren’t the same, but they were good. I began to see more and more how egomaniacal I had been before—I had been so focused on myself that I had forgotten what my duty as an Artist was—to serve the people. I had set myself up as somehow separate from the world of work and life, and had not realized that in that world lay the raw materials of my work, and that by somehow setting myself apart from it, I was isolating myself, and being left behind, and therefore rendered useless. And I was doing less writing than ever, but feeling more fulfilled at the same time, and that was because I finally had a function, and was making a direct and real difference in peoples’ lives. I could see the looks on their faces as they spoke to me, as they left the coffee shop, with their experience having felt somehow more real. They were leaving with a better idea of what it felt like to be a struggling artist—the problems I faced, day-to-day—the sense of not belonging in society—of a constant, endless quest that you knew would never end, but you nevertheless could not stop yourself from undertaking. I took many cues from the Old Man in sharpening my message. I was still doing everything that an artist was supposed to do—I was reflecting the world back to people, and showing it to them in a way that they hadn’t thought of before. The only difference was that the result—the reflection—was no longer the writing I created, but the image of me, being.
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