For every day of my life over the last 12 years, I’ve consistently done this one thing.
Smoked weed.
No, that’s not it.
I’ve written.
Late nights, early mornings, and most often in the space between, I’ve sunk into this process of channeling my thoughts into my fingertips to tell stories in the most interesting, amusing, or inspiring ways I can come up with. Almost entirely, I’ve done that within the world of music. What a wholesale blessing that’s been. My wildest dream job, truly.
But I have to admit, I’ve been itching to do more creative writing.
I hope you don’t mind if I indulge myself with a quick page.
Scene
Kevin Curtin has been screaming for more than 15 seconds – crying out in terror as if he’s in the front seat of a car that’s driven off a cliff. He’d been doing dishes, but the plate he was scrubbing is now broken in pieces in the sink and on the floor. Facing him, square on from 2 feet away, is a rail-thin young man with spiky, leopard-spotted hair and a chain around his neck clasped with a small padlock. Curtin has immediately recognized his guest – it’s himself at 19 years old, having appeared before him in a flash of green light. Present-day Kevin Curtin, a 38-year-old with the same adventurous eyes but a face worn by the world, continues to shriek uncontrollably until he hears his toddler begin to cry from the back bedroom. It’s 3am. He covers his mouth with both hands.
Young Kevin: You have a kid? WHAT!?! What the fuck man, wow … oh Gaahhhhhd! Can I … can I … meet him?
Present-Day Kevin: Hell no, dude! I don’t know you.
Young Kevin: I’m you!
Present-Day Kevin: No, you’re not, because I didn’t have time travel.
Young Kevin: I think I’m on a divergent timeline from you. Remember our eccentric hoarder neighbor in Lansing – Greg? He invented a way to travel through time.
Present-Day Kevin: Crazy! How many time travel adventures have you been on?
Young Kevin: This is my first.
Present-Day Kevin: Shoot, well, I’m kinda honored.
Young Kevin: Listen man, I have to be honest with you … I’m not a time traveler … I’m a hallucination. You’re on drugs.
Present-Day Kevin: Oh right. That makes sense.
Young Kevin: Man, your house is significantly smaller – and just in general, shittier – than I would have hoped for at your age.
Present-Day Kevin: My girlfriend, Molly, owns it. And, hey, apparently it’s worth like a million bucks. It’s sort of a lot to explain, but basically we’re in Austin, Texas, and the housing market here has become absurdly expensive since she bought it.
Young Kevin: Molly? That hot green dreadlocks girl I just met in Lansing?
Present-Day Kevin: Yessirrrr.
Grinning, the two versions of Kevin share a fist bump.
Young Kevin: I see we’re still washing dishes though.
Present-Day Kevin: No man, I’m actually the music editor of The Austin Chronicle – we’re like the second-most prominent alt-weekly left in America or something. I still play in bands, but I’ve been writing about music for over a decade and I make a living from it. Plus I haven’t had to work for the Man since our time at McDonald’s and Walmart.
Young Kevin: Hallelujah, dude! Being the music columnist at a local paper is literally my dream!
Present-Day Kevin: Well you’ll be stoked to know that I was, in fact, the Chronicle‘s music columnist for seven years.
Young Kevin: Awesome work old me! I can’t believe you got your shit together … or, I guess, you got my shit together. You’re really living my highest aspiration. So … does it feel like a dream to you?
Present-Day Kevin: Actually, that’s something that’s been on my mind. Can you excuse me for a few minutes?
Thirty-eight-year-old Kevin negotiates his way around his past self in the comically compact kitchen and enters the converted garage that he uses as an office. He sits down at the restaurant booth where he does all his writing, turns on the window air-conditioning unit for white noise, and begins typing.
Dear Readers,
To my surprise as much as anyone’s, I’ve come to find that hanging out with little kids – just getting to be an enormous goofball, going on adventures, eating snacks, and riding shotgun on their exploration into creativity – is preferential to the adult world. So I’m going to try to revert to being a kid again. I’ll be doing so with the help of our 2-year-old son, Quinn, who we all call “Quinny,” and our second son, who is due to be born in November.
When you have kids, your household starts to feel like a band. And, of course, that’s just what I needed: a fourth band, but it turns out we fuckin’ rip … and we need a bass player – hence, the new baby.
I found out about said descendant in late February. I was at the Chronicle office and Molly texted me saying, “I have a surprise for you, come outside.” I was excited because I assumed she’d brought me tacos. She had a pregnancy test with two lines on it. We glowed together in the parking lot for 20 minutes and then I walked inside and asked our music columnist Rachel Rascoe if she was ready to be the paper’s music editor.
So now it’s time to share what’s been in the works for months and months: I’m stepping down as music editor and shifting to being a freelancer. Technically, I’m quitting; spiritually, I’m entering a period of sabbatical; but in actuality, I’m restructuring. My writing will still be in the Chronicle all the time, writing features for the Music, News, and Culture sections (unlikely I’ll be in the Food pages unless they’re doing a special feature on chips), but I won’t be running the show.
Lengthy negotiations surrounding my exit from the ranks of Chronicle salaried staff have resulted in the following deal: I leave them one prewritten Willie Nelson obituary. They grant me permission to sleep on the old green couch in the music staff section of the office for a period of three years.
A trio of squealing hinges harmonize distressingly as the door to the garage office is thrown open. Nineteen-year-old Kevin barges in, shattering his elder self’s concentration on the drafting of his “retirement column.”
Young Kevin: Hey, Kevin, sorry to interrupt. I was just thinking … do you have any helpful advice you could give me?
Present-Day Kevin: Don’t try to do too much. I’ve done that before and it’s awful. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’m almost done. You can keep yourself entertained with this. I smashed the one you had onstage during a show, but this one’s better.
2022 Kevin hands 2003 Kevin a 1953 Martin A-style mandolin and motions for him to go away. He resumes typing.
In his 1873 poem “A Season in Hell,” Rimbaud asks himself: “To whom shall I hire myself out? What beast should I adore?“
Over all my time writing I’ve saved up $23,000 – an unimpressive reserve for sure, but it should be enough to fend off full-time job responsibilities for roughly a year. During this time I plan to spend most of my time playing peek-a-boo with an adorable little baby and bringing our growing family around the country to meet old friends and relatives, but I also have some new projects I’m anticipating with delirious excitement.
I’ll begin penning my first work of long-form fiction: a dark comedy about the Beatlemania-like effect of a new drug called OxyContin throughout a small town in the Nineties (a cultural phenomenon I witnessed close up). I’ll be sharing new music within a collaborative project called Grease Jordan that deals exclusively in the themes of nostalgia, family, and criminality. I’m also preparing to make my longtime fake business – Manville’s Non-Material Deliveries – into a real LLC. It’ll be a writing, consulting, and public speaking service with prices that drastically fluctuate based on my level of give-a-shit.
Of course, you can be certain that I’m ready to delve further into making dumb video skits, because making my friends laugh remains a primary objective in my life.
It’s been a hell of a lot of fun being an editor. To use a basketball analogy, I’ve approached the position like a pass-first point guard, distributing the ball to writers so they can score.
I’m especially proud of the new voices I’ve brought into the section in the past 14 months – 10 writers have made their debut during that time. Our most valuable player, though, is still Rachel Rascoe, who – let’s just be honest – will be an upgrade as she succeeds me in this role. There are people who are on top of things and then there are those who are two steps ahead – she’s the latter. I believe Rachel has a fresh and youthful vision that will take our music pages to new places and I look forward to pitching stories to her.
My last day as editor will be September 23; until then I can be found at my desk, inserting Oxford commas into any sentence in need.
As Kevin closes his laptop and unplugs the window unit, the familiar crows of his neighbor’s rooster signal that it’s no longer late – it’s early. He smiles and rests his head down into his arms on the old cafe table, falling fast asleep. Slowly and quietly, the door opens and 19-year-old Kevin tiptoes in. He looks at his future with pride and contentedness … then picks his wallet off the table, empties all the cash out of it, and bolts.
End Scene
Whew, this “creative writing” thing really tickles my soul! I must admit the time traveler bit was fiction and – good lord – I would never begin a column with the words “Dear Readers,” but the rest is true. Especially the part about the importance of being a kid.
I think humans tend to view childhood as a prelude to adulthood, but based on my experiences over the last two years, I really believe being a child is the best era of one’s life because the world is so wondrously interesting to you. Those little ones – they’re visibly stoked to be alive and being witness to it inspires me.
So I’m going off-staff later this month to be the best I can be at something my 19-year-old self would have never thought I’d become.
A dad.
This article appears in The Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival.